Gender Wage Gap Research Paper

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Pages: 3

Why Income/Wages are Different Between Gender Groups One of the biggest reasons for the gender wage gap is that women and men work in different occupations and industries. Gender is used to divide work in the home and economic realms. Women's jobs tend to mimic the work that they would do at home like child care and housework which then leads them to jobs such as sales, clerical, secretaries, administrative assistants, registered nurses, and school teachers all of which typically have lower wages than those that men occupy. According to The Long Shadow by Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson: “Clerical and services account for 66 percent of African American women’s full-time employment and 53 percent of white women’s, and neither group has much presence in the high-pay skilled construction craft”(170). It is argued that we would be able to avoid the gender wage gap if women would stop selecting to go into female-dominated industries, but we know there are factors that causes these kind of choices. For example, gender socialization teaches women at a very early age to incorporate traits like nurturing and service to others because these …show more content…
Women not only work in lower paying industries than men, but they also were fewer hours. According to The Inequality Reader, “Mother’s work 35 minutes less per day than men, among full-time working men and women”(366). Not surprising to notice that when work and childcare are accounted for the time gap is very different between men and women. Again, due to gender socialization, fathers do not spend the same amount of time as mothers taking care of their children while still maintaining a job. Fathers are often times advantaged to work more hours if needed and were offered significantly higher salaries in part because fathers are assumed to be the breadwinners for their families even though most married men have working partners (Grusky et al.