Guaranteeing Equal Pay for Women

More than 30 years ago, the United Nations (UN) held the first Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women known as CEDAW (Ramdas, Janus, 2011). Since that time, nearly every single member nation of the UN has shown its support for the convention by ratifying the treaty associated with the convention and resolving to work with other member nations to ensure that gender equality is reached across the entire globe. What is surprising, however, is that the U.S. is not one of the member nations to support CEDAW. It is one of only 6 of the 191 UN member nations to have yet to ratify CEDAW. For more than three decades, the U.S. has failed to sign on to the treaty, while so many other countries around the world have acted with conviction to end gender discrimination. The story in the U.S. is one where discrimination against women continues—most notably in the workplace where women are routinely paid 20% less than men are (Holmes, Corley, 2017). This paper will show that there should be more legislation passed to guarantee equal pay for women for three reasons: 1) CEDAW is widely popular around the world and shows how far behind the U.S. is when it comes to embracing gender wage gap laws; 2) guaranteeing equal pay for women would show on the world’s stage that the U.S. is ready to combat gender inequality which would give confidence to other countries—especially in the Middle East, where equal rights movements need all the encouragement they can get (Ramdas, Janus, 2011); and 3) equality is equality—and that means men and women should be paid the same when it comes to doing the same work.
The first reason there should be more legislation passed to guarantee equal pay for women is that CEDAW has already happened and much of the world has already embraced it: yet the U.S. remains stubbornly behind the curve as though it did not want to give up on its old-fashioned sexist ways. By refusing to adopt CEDAW and ratify the treaty, the U.S. is essentially saying that the laws it has on its books are good enough. Yet every other country can look at the U.S. and shake its head knowingly because the U.S. does not want to admit it has a problem. As Sommers (2011) notes, the U.S. has been unable to stand with the other nations of the world for over 30 years when it comes to guaranteeing equal pay for women: it is the backward child on the block still attempting to fit in yet never willing to conform to the standards that everyone else approves of and supports. Simply in order to be taken seriously by the rest of the world as well as by its own people at home, the U.S. should ratify CEDAW and support more legislation guaranteeing equal pay for women.
The second reason for more legislation is that it would set a great example to other countries who look to the U.S. for guidance. Countries like Iraq and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia look to the United States for leadership—and the women of those countries want the same things the women of the U.S. want: the opportunity to be treated equally and to earn as much as their male counterparts do (Ramdas, Janus, 2011). By passing more legislation to secure equal pay, the U.S. would be setting an example for the leaders of these countries and showing that they too should adopt such legislation. The protection afforded women would spread beyond the borders of the U.S. because of this country’s influence and allow women, particularly in the Middle East, to obtain their dream of gender equality as well.
Finally, more legislation should be passed because doing so would help to enforce the idea that equality is equality: if the nation wants to espouse the ideal of equality, then it better back up that belief with practice. That means laws need to be put in place to ensure that equality is respected. For women to earn less than men just because they are women, as Gould, Schieder and Geier (2016) all agree is the case, the U.S. is simply showing that it does not actually believe in or affirm the principle of equality. If it did, it would change its policies—i.e., it would pass more laws to guarantee equal pay for women. The fact that this has not yet occurred means women are not being treated fairly and that they are seen as less valuable than men in the workforce. To eliminate this notion, the U.S. should put its laws where its mouth is and support equal rights and equal pay for women. If the United States truly believes in equality, it should stop allowing women to be paid less than men just because they are women. It should pass more laws to prevent this type of bias and discrimination from occurring in the workplace.
In conclusion, the gender wage gap is a real issue that the U.S. has failed to address for many years. Meanwhile, other nations around the earth have called for and shown their support for change. Almost all of them have embraced and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Many of them still look to the U.S. for leadership and guidance. And yet the U.S. struggles to practice what it preaches: it has failed for 30 years to pass CEDAW even while women continue to earn 20% less than men do in the U.S. In order for the U.S. to win the respect of the rest of the world, give a good example to emerging nations like those in the Middle East which look to the U.S. for direction on how to treat women, and promote the equality it has so long said it cherishes, the U.S. must pass more legislation to guarantee equal pay for women. Only then can the United States be the nation it wants to be and the nation it wants other countries to be too.
References
Gould, E., Shieder, J., Geier, K. (2016). What is the gender pay gap and is it real?
Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-and-is-it-real/
Holmes, K., Corley, D. (2017). International approaches to closing the gender wage gap.
Retrieved from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2017/04/04/429825/international-approaches-closing-gender-wage-gap/
Ramdas, K., Janus, K. (2011). Ratifying women’s rights. Retrieved from
https://www.hoover.org/research/ratifying-womens-rights
Sommers, C. (2011). Feminism by treaty. Retrieved from
https://www.hoover.org/research/feminism-treaty