Public Administration Gender Gap Wages Essay

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Counter Attendants- Counter Attendants are people who work in cafeteria, coffee shops or food concessions and serve food to their clientele. The job is quite exhausting particularly for women as they need to stand long hours at the counter in shops or cafeteria. They get paid typically on an hourly basis of about sixteen thousand.

Farm Laborers - Farm Laborers are also thought to be worst paid in spite of the demanding work they do. They also do not have minimum pay policy which is one of the causes of them earning so less. Those working the farm typically earn about $9 per hour. They are involved in sowing the seeds, cultivating as well as harvesting vegetables, fruits, nuts or other crops. They mean annual salary amounts to about seventeen thousand (Croft, 2010).

There are certain occupations that are measured masculine by some people and women are not expectant to enter these fields. Still, women have administered to not only enter but do extremely well at careers dominated by men. They have demonstrated that women can do well at jobs that persist to be considered better matched for their male counterparts. Police work has traditionally been a man's job. Nonetheless, in 2008, Cathy Lanier became the first female police chief for Washington, D.C. She accomplished this in spite of being a high school dropout and becoming pregnant in the ninth grade. She joined the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department at the age of 23 with a passion for taking advantage of its tuition reimbursement program. Slowly, over time, Lanier worked her way up to the top (John, 2012).

The sport of car racing and the Indy Car circuit has been the area of men for generations. Some women have tried to break through but only one has managed to win an Indy Car race, Danica Patrick, in 2008. She also holds the record for the highest position attained by a woman in a car race. Patrick grew up with a father who loved car racing and she raced with her sister as a child. She entered the sport at the age of sixteen when she dropped out of high school and moved to England to race. "Since those days she has worked hard at improving in the sport, moving up the rankings and being named Rookie of the Year twice "(John, 2012).

Even though women have been a part of the American armed forces for a long time, it took Ann Dunwoody to make contemporary military history. In November 2008, she became the first female four-star general in the United States Armed Forces. Dunwoody comes from a family that has served in the military for many generations. "As far back as the 1700s, her family members have fought in the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War, Korean War and others. Prior to becoming a four-star general, Dunwoody also had other accomplishments including being the first female battalion commander of the 82nd Airborne Division and the first female deputy commander of the Army Materiel Command" (John, 2012).

Although women have traditionally cooked for their families, professional chefs are frequently male. And in the White House, the chief chef was always a man until Cristeta Comerford became the top chef for President George W. Bush and his family in 2005. "Previously, she served in the White House kitchen under the Clinton administration's head chef. In 10 years, Comerford went from being a kitchen staff member to being the head of the White House kitchen" (John, 2012).

The past two decades has seen a lot of controversy regarding women's rights and feminism within the military, especially in times of war. However, time has proven that women are just as capable in holding important and vital positions as their male counterparts, both in and out of combat specialties. However, the Marine Corps are an equal opportunity employer. Not only does the Marine Corps demand and require the same output from female Marines as they do from male Marines, they also share the same pay scales and opportunities in regard to most military occupational specialties (Marine Corps Opportunities for Women, 2007).

While the military has yet to allow women everywhere their male counterparts are allowed to go, women have come a long way since they disguised themselves as men to fight right alongside them in the Civil War, or served as front-line nurses or stretcher bearers in the Great War, as well as filled hundreds of male positions during World War Two. Since Korea and Vietnam, and the conflicts in the recent past, women have made steady process entering formerly male dominated careers and specialties.

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Women are encouraged to enter technical and weapons fields as much as they used to be encouraged to enter office or administrative jobs (Marine Corps Opportunities for Women, 2007).

It's not just the choice of major that determines how much college students will earn once they graduate. Research also shows disparities based on gender and race. Much of that wage gap can be explained by the types of careers the different women go into as well as other demographic considerations, like education, age and experience. Even after controlling for those factors, though, an unexplained gap still exists across nearly every job category. The gap is particularly large in the highest-paying professions. PayScale, a company that collects salary data, has analyzed its database of millions of employee profiles to see how that gender pay gap varies by college major (Rampell, 2012).

On the other side of the coin, it often appears that the more education a woman has, the greater the disparity in her wages. This certainly doesn't mean women should shy away from professional positions, but they should be aware that they may have to battle harder for equal pay. "Women in professional specialty occupations were found to earn just 72.7% of what men in the same position earned, and women in upper level executive, administrative and managerial occupations earned even less at 72.3%. If you compare this against the average of 77.5%, the numbers speak for themselves" (10 Surprising Statistics on Women in the Workplace, 2011).

Minority women fare the worst when it comes to equal pay. African-American women earn just 69 cents to every dollar earned by white men, and for Hispanic women that figure drops to merely 59 cents per dollar. Asian women are the exception, earning 90 cents for every dollar earned by white men -- a sum higher than women of all other races/ethnicities as well as African-American and Hispanic men (10 Surprising Statistics on Women in the Workplace, 2011).

Minority women have the biggest earning gap in the nation, with Latina women who work full-time earning 63% less than white men. The disparity affects African-American and Asian women too, according to the study by a Washington-area women's foundation. African-American women earning 45% less while Asian women make 41% less (Minority women have biggest pay gap, 2011). "Wages gaps also exist within minority men and women. For instance, in 1999, white women made an average of $30,900 compared with white men, who made on average $44,200. African-American women, again, on average, made $26,600 versus $33,100 earned by African-American men" (Sullivan, 2004).

Women have identified the issues that accompany rising up the corporate ladder and fighting for raises and promotions since it became culturally acceptable for them to hold white-collar positions. Some have found the solution is to redefine success while others have chosen to leave the corporate world in favor of starting their own businesses. But for those women with aspirations to have a successful career in corporate America, something has to be done to decrease the gap. The solutions are all around us but need to be put into practice in order to be effective (Peterson, 2010).

Some of the more obvious solutions include:

1. Ending salary secrecy - according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), about half of all employees are either forbidden or strongly discouraged from talking about how much they make with their co-workers. And it's pretty hard to sue an employer for pay discrimination without first knowing what everyone else is making. The idea is to force all employers, public and private, to let everyone talk freely about how much they make. Americans should rapidly get over their uneasiness about talking money, and employers shouldn't care if their lower paid employees start working towards six-figure salaries.

2. Raising the minimum wage - according to the National Women's Law Center, about two-thirds of all employees making the minimum wage are women, and they're also about two-thirds of those in tipped jobs that frequently pay a base rate far below that. "Making the federal floor of $7.25 an hour nets a woman just $14,500 working full-time for a year, which adds up to more than $3,000 less than the poverty line for a family of three. Raising that wage could mean a raise for 28 million workers" (Covert, 2012).

3. Fixing the broken career pipeline - companies need to.....

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