GENDER PAY EQUALITY - PART 1

If Companies are paying equally for equal work, why are women getting only 82 cents for every dollar a man makes.

The answer is simple.

Unequal opportunity for higher-paying work.

This is most obvious when you look at senior jobs in a Company as a CEO. In 2020, less than 8% of Fortune 500 top companies have a women CEO. Sure, all of these companies would pay a woman CEO the same as a man. But why are so few of them selecting women to be CEOs?

It is not just all about CEOs and seniority. It is also the massive pay gaps that exist across professions. Less than 15% of nurses and less than 25% of school teachers are men. Sure, men and women nurses and teachers get paid the same. But why are these crucial professions so underpaid? Nursing assistants for e.g. make $26,000 median income per year, while surgeons, in the same health care field, make $ 100,000. The gap in some areas is widening - less than 20% of the fast-growing software field are women.

While we are making progress towards equal work for equal pay, the gap can never be fully closed until we level the playing field of work. A great place to start is in the new emerging professions of the 21st century. Let us get them started equally, so we don’t have to “fix” an inequality problem later.

[https://www.thirdway.org/one-pager/women-still-crowded-out-of-highest-paying-u-s-jobs]

[https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap]

picture credit

[https://www.moneyunder30.com/the-gender-pay-gap-in-the-21st-century]