The gender wage gap that exists in the United States is not a secret. It has become common knowledge that women don’t make as much money as men do, even when they are doing the same work. Women earn, on average, only 80.5 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn, according to Business Insider. The median annual income for women is also $10,086 less than the average for men.
As if these numbers aren’t upsetting enough, let’s not forget that these disparities exist more than 50 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed. You know, the piece of legislation that was supposed to prohibit discrimination on account of sex?
Unfortunately, sex discrimination against women in the workforce doesn’t stop there. Society’s patriarchal impulse to pay women less money than men goes beyond just unequal paychecks for the same job. This phenomenon has actually started to impact the salaries of entire industries.
Research has shown that when women take over fields once dominated by men, the pay for that entire field declines. In fact, the difference between the pay offered in industries dominated by men and the pay in those led by women has become the single largest cause of the gender pay gap. This phenomenon can be cited as the reason for more than half of the instances of wage inequality between genders.
Since women started entering the workforce in high numbers, pay has declined in the industries they flocked to. According to research from Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, between the years 1950 and 2000 drastic changes in median pay were seen in occupations that became dominated by women. During this time, the pay for designers dropped by 34 percent. Pay for recreational workers decreased by 57 percent. Housekeepers saw their wages fall by 21 percent and pay for biologists dropped a whopping 118 percent. All of these fields saw a shift from male to female domination. These declines are each taking into account the change in the value of the dollar.
This imbalance also often exists between jobs that are virtually the same, save for the majority gender of those who hold positions in the field. For example, janitors, a job usually held by men, make about 22 percent more than maids or house cleaners, which are jobs typically held by women.
The reason for this gross imbalance isn’t that women are less educated — in fact, women are actually now more educated than men on average. The problem isn’t that women are less skilled than men or that they have a poor work ethic. The issue isn’t that women are too concerned with raising a family or unwilling to demand the wages they deserve. The obstacle facing women is a lack of respect.
Women and their work are not respected. The idea that the feminization of jobs is linked to a decrease in pay for that entire field is proof of this sexist practice. When a job is viewed as something that even a woman can do, it loses value and respect in the professional world. This is a societal construct we need to defeat, and it is something that must change if America ever wants to see an equal society.
Abigail Miller is a UF journalism and political science senior. Her column appears on Fridays.
