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Wage Equity for Women
Compensation and Gender Pay Gap
Compensation is one of the main functions of human resource management (HRM), with the goals of meeting an organization's objectives, maximizing an organization's investment in a labor force, and rewarding employees for their contribution. Ideally, HRM should implement a compensation policy that provides equitable and consistent treatment for all employees, thereby improving productivity, employee retention, and loyalty. The term 'procedural justice' has been used to describe this process and represents, for example, whether an employee perceives a compensation policy as equitable and fair.
Based on Taylor's (1989) analysis, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 fails to address procedural justice because it ignores jobs with 'comparable worth.' The Equal Pay Act requires equal compensation for equal work, but Taylor (1989) points out that jobs with equal value to an employer or society also deserve equivalent rates of compensation, regardless of whether comparable jobs entail the same education, skills, responsibility, and tasks. The standards used to determine comparable worth are internal and external equity, which represent pay rates that accurately reflect differences in job content within an organization and across an industry, respectively. The use of these standards, however, becomes problematic when evaluating whether there is evidence of gender discrimination within a female-dominated...
Perry and Gundersen (2011) list these improvements, including women representing nearly 50% of the workforce and recently outpacing men in earning undergraduate and graduate degrees. The number of women working in historically male-dominated professions has also been increasing, but the pay gap between men and women remains significant at 20% overall, with younger women doing better than their older counterparts. In support of this finding, Perry and Gundersen (2011) present data showing that women in management, engineering, and information technology earn significantly less than men, in contravention to the scope and purpose of the Equal Pay Act.
Taylor's (1989) argument for equitable treatment based on comparable worth still seems valid in light of the pay differential between women currently entering the workforce and older women who have been in the workforce for decades. For example, Perry and Gundersen (2011) cite data showing women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience a gender-based pay differential of 93%, while women aged 35 and older have a pay differential of 75%. While this does reveal a positive trend over time for a reduced gender-gap in compensation, the magnitude of pay discrimination is much greater for older women who may be working in…
References
National Women's Law Center. (2013). 50 Years & Counting: The Unfinished Business of Achieving Fair Pay. Retrieved from http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/final_nwlc_equal_pay_report.pdf.
Perry, J., & Gundersen, D.E. (2011). American women and the gender pay gap: A changing demographic or the same old song. Advancing Women in Leadership, 31, 153-9.
Taylor, S.H. (1989). The case for comparable worth. Journal of Social Issues, 45(4), 23-37.
Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. Leading up to the Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. case of 1970, women had been primarily viewed as being part of the domestic sphere. Their traditional role in society was to take care of the house and kids while the man went to work and supported the family by earning the paycheck. Following WWII, when the women were pushed out of the home by the necessity
gender-based wage disparities still reflect serious issues of concern (Hirsch 2008). Major disparities remain for women. A 2008 article captured a good deal of interest with its simple declaration that "Across-the-board figures from February this year indicate that full-time female employees earned an average $1,004 a week compared to fulltime male average weekly earnings of $1,190" (The Lamp). Others too have sought to use drama as a way of
Gender Equality: The United States versus the United Kingdom Introduction The United Kingdom is often called the mother country of the United States. However, in some ways, the countries still differ, including in their measures of gender equality. Perhaps the most notable example can be found in the leadership of the United Kingdom. Unlike the US, the UK has already had a female head of state, in the form of Prime Ministers
The Wage Gap Whether or not the wage gap exists depends entirely upon who one asks. If one is asking Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and writer for Time, she will say, no, it does not exist: “The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time.” The enduring myth that “women earn
Gender Divide Negotiating isn't something most of us ever learn in a deliberate manner. It seems to be something we're all supposed to acquire somewhere along the journey from childhood to adulthood. Women in particular often feel uncomfortable with the aggressive, male-oriented power tactics generally accepted as the norm in business negotiations. What is really important about the art of negotiating and the gender divide is the economic issue of salary
Gender Bias in the U.S. Court System Statistics regarding male and female criminality Types of cases involving women and men Sentencing guidelines for judges imposed to diminish disparities Feminists say women should get less jail time Number of women vs. men arrested Women committing misdemeanors get little or no jail time Death penalty cases 10% of murder cases are perpetrated by women Leniency of juries on women defendants Easier for women to be treated leniently by juries Sex crimes involving men