Why the Gender Wage Gap is Really a Myth Essay

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document

Total Length: 1078 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 3

Page 1 of 4

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 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work” is based on the average earnings statistic—not on an actual analysis of a side by side comparison of pay for men and women doing the same work (Sommers). But if you ask Nikki Graf, Anna Brown and Eileen Patten, writing for Pew Research, you will research a much different answer. They argue that the pay gap is closing but that women are still behind by as much as 15 cents on the dollar. However, if one pays attention to the data that Graf et al. are using, one can see that Hoff Sommers has a point. These studies are not of side by side comparisons of wages for men and women doing the same work. They are rather statistics of median earnings—and all they really show is that men make more money than women: they do not actually show how that is happening, i.e., whether men are working more hours, working different jobs, or receiving higher pay because they have higher positions in companies. Both sides of the argument are correct, nonetheless: there is a wage gap—or rather an earnings gap. The only difference is in how the sides interpret the statistics.

If one is going to accept the argument of Hoff Sommers, there really is not anything that needs to be done about it. If women want to make more than their male colleagues all they have to do is put in the kind of hours at the kind of level where they will earn a higher salary.

Stuck Writing Your "Why the Gender Wage Gap is Really a Myth" Essay?

View All Our Example Why the Gender Wage Gap is Really a Myth Essay

Have A Custom Example Essay Written

It is not a question of…

[…… parts of this paper are missing, click here to view the entire document ]

…children or to step aside for men is actually an extremely sexist thing to say. Women have children because they want them. They don’t go after that higher paying job with the more intense hours and responsibilities because they choose not to—they do not want it. They pick different education pathways in school because those are the pathways that appeal to them (Sommers).

In conclusion, the debate is all about how men make more than women. The wage activists say it is because of illegal discrimination against women by virtually every HR department in the country (they don’t say this explicitly but implicitly this can be the only way such a conspiracy against women could actually happen). The realists point out that the wage gap is really just an earnings gap—men make more than women because they have different jobs with different demands and typically longer hours. It is not a conspiracy against women—it is simply a reflection of the different choices and pathways that men and women take in their….....

Show More ⇣

     Open the full completed essay and source list


OR

     Order a one-of-a-kind custom essay on this topic


sample essay writing service

Cite This Resource:

Latest APA Format (6th edition)

Copy Reference
"Why The Gender Wage Gap Is Really A Myth" (2020, April 14) Retrieved June 14, 2026, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/gender-wage-gap-really-myth-2175075

Latest MLA Format (8th edition)

Copy Reference
"Why The Gender Wage Gap Is Really A Myth" 14 April 2020. Web.14 June. 2026. <
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/gender-wage-gap-really-myth-2175075>

Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

Copy Reference
"Why The Gender Wage Gap Is Really A Myth", 14 April 2020, Accessed.14 June. 2026,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/gender-wage-gap-really-myth-2175075
   

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document
order custom essay example