Equal Pay in 2021: What's the Status of Pay Disparity in the U.S. Today?

Credible studies show women's pay - hour for hour and apples to apples is fair an equitbale and it is becuase employers have no incentive to pay one sex more than the other. If employers were allowed to discriminate and pay women less than men, they would ONLY hire women.

The GOP yaps about people going back to work. This article tells why this isn’t happening. It’s a must read for GOPpers who don’t get it. This applies to the Texas Three Stooges Louie (Curly), John (Moe), and Eduardo (Larry). Women work for pennies on the dollar and fewer benefits than men. Wonder why women aren’t ready to face the work grind? Stupid chauvinistic Texas gov cut the Fed Supplemental unemployment funds thinking it’ll force people to go back to work. That’s the same BS logic Louie used to force his thinking family members to agree with him. Ain’t gonna happen folks.

It is unbelievable to me that this is still an issue! Again the Republicans have refused year after year to represent their female constituents and take active part in suppressing women’s success.

It always has been and still is!

Does it exist? Possibly, in a scattered fashion, much like slavery still exists in the world. Do I believe there is a systemic, endemic problem with women getting less than equal pay than men with equal performance, experience, and knowledge? No, I do not. If those conditions do exist, they are wrong. But I believe they are only isolated incidents where they exist. As more women become part of the professional world and are holding positions of greater responsibility, as they should based on their abilities, the "pay gap" will disappear. I have worked both with and for many women. If their pay was not comparable with a man doing the same job, at the same level, with similar experience, I have not seen it. Less skilled jobs pay less money. That's the pay gap. Unfortunately too many women do not have higher-paying jobs from historical gender discrimination or bias. This has been changing and is continuing to change. This change is a good thing. A great thing. And a slow thing. If a woman is being paid less than a man of the same employer simply because she is a women, then that is a travesty and is illegal, as well as being sexist, unethical, and very shortsighted on part of her employer. She has every right to sue for discrimination and should not hesitate to do so. After she leaves that shithole company and that shithead boss and goes to work somewhere else where her knowledge and abilities are appreciated. Then the pay gap between men and women will close a little more. Every employee, of any gender, at any level, has the right to vote with their feet and work somewhere they feel appreciated and are compensated commensurately with their abilities and performance. The bad actor companies will eventually go out of business because they only have people working there that cannot get a job anywhere else. That stagnation will allow their competitors to thrive by having the greater employees working for them, of all genders. And the pay gap closes some more.

This is how German’s lost Germany to the Worker’s Socialist Party. “Do you want to make Germany wealthy and strong?” Who’s going to say no to that? Only intelligent people who can see more than an inch beyond their nose. To make these visions of utopia possible, the tricksters ask for total control. How does the saying go? Power Corrupts? Well, let’s look at a couple countries who have tried the administrative/authoritarian state model. Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, Iran, Fascist Italy, and every other dictatorship that has ever existed.

Let’s just face the fact that we are a misogynistic culture - sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. Household tasks and child-rearing still disproportionately fall to women no matter how many hours they work relative to their partners. The proportion of women to men is way out of balance in legislatures, Congress, senior management, and board rooms across the country. Women still make less than men for the same work. Women are sometimes denied employment because they might become pregnant. It’s still acceptable to make suggestive comments to women and touch women without permission. Women are more likely to be judged by physical traits, such as aging, and dress than are men (by both women and men). Women remain under-admitted to training and under-represented in career fields that are traditionally male dominated. The list goes on. One of the sorriest aspects of our culture’s misogyny is that it’s not only men that contribute to it - it’s women, too.

Nobody should have to work 3 jobs to live

Isn’t this because many women refuse to be underwater welders, constructors, mill workers, factory assemblers, plumbers, electricians, port workers, regular welders, and etc. saturating a labor market for hr, and more office jobs with little upward mobility. Men get paid more because the labor supply for those jobs is cut in half since a large majority of women don’t want to do those jobs and therefore settle for less pay on average as a gender. It’s not that they make less than than men, it’s that they choose not to take the higher paying jobs for whatever reason.

There should not be equal pay or anyone should go along with your education and your ability .

worked on healthcare since 1970. Training, skills, experience, etc all fair

We need aggressive action to make this equitable now. We can not wait any longer. Enforcement of existing laws & more is needed.

I think that wage disparity exists generally but depends a lot on the industry, the size of the employer and the availability of workers willing to accept lower wages for whatever reason. … … … Long ago, just after moving to a new city for grad school, I walked into the lobby of several big companies that did stuff I found interesting, gave the receptionist a resume and told them I was looking for summer work. It turns out that the executive VP for engineering was doing a study on the long term costs of converting their company’s product line (industrial process controls) to the metric system. In today’s world they would be about a $400M -$500M company. I was asked to help design the study, do specific tasks and even join in presentations to the board of directors.. I leaned a great deal about how things work in such companies and was shocked by some of the realities that you never learn about in school. … … … As part of this study, I had to interview many department heads and also ask them for their annual compensation - which is generally a carefully guarded secret in private company employment. I ran across one gentleman who was literally being paid half of what other department heads were, did not know this but was still a happily employed productive employee. I concluded that, for myself, I would never fear asking for an equitable pay if I truly felt I was worth it - because no employer without a published pay scale would pay me more if I was happy otherwise- this served me well in the early stages of my career. … … … I think that example explains some of the reason for wage disparity. Employers want to save money and the more qualified people available to them that are willing to accept lower pay and/or benefits, the more they will take advantage. In the past, there have been females from second income families willing to accept lower pay or benefits to supplement family income - and this unfairly drives down the pay offerings to single women or single parent head-of-household women to inequitable levels because other qualified females are willing to do the same job for less. … … … I am not at all endorsing any pay inequities - I am just trying to explain some of the reasons that they can come about. These issues need to be addressed instead of taking the Republican view that ‘That’s just the natural order, it is God’s will that women remain barefoot and pregnant to keep filling the ranks of the working class’. … … … The only real solution that I can see is to have increased transparency into wages and benefits associated with different categories of work and methods that allow inequities to be challenged without reprisal. This is already the case in most federal jobs as salary levels can generally be pretty well guessed by GS level and published salary steps. There still are inequities that arise from the good old boys who discuss business and make decisions in evening events at the bar or playing cards without their female colleagues present, but statistical data can be used to show where these glass-ceiling inequities exist and federal agencies are tasked to correct these inequities. As far as general employment, female employees need access to some statistically comparative data and protection from retribution for simply asking for pay increases because the statistics show that it is warranted, … … … Needed: Statistical, pertinent and understandable publicly accessible data perhaps from the BLS (I do not know what data they publish in this regard or how to make it useful for an employee to make their case); Ability to ask for salary increases based on available data without fear of reprisal; and a reluctance of second income wage earners to accept less than fair wages, since this reduces their income and unfairly lowers the bar for single income people. … … … Of course, a healthy expanding economy would fix much of these issues without having to rely on ‘rules’. Competition for needed skills and qualified people would tend to level the playing field for all the players, with less gender-specific impediments.

No but discrimination against white people seems to be quite common.

You just need only to look at the statistics. 82 cents to every man’s dollar & it gets worse if you’re a woman of color. For all of you who don’t think it’s a problem, google can help you. You do read? Can do simple math? Most women here have their own stories...I sure do!!!

The gap is either gone or almost gone but women are still the primary care givers of the children. Just the fact they are more likely to care for family give the difference in pay gap. Get men to take on some of those duties and it should be more even.

The data continues to show that it is and therefore I believe the data. Even if it was a situation where the jobs that women are going for happened to be lower-paying jobs the idea that a woman is only incentivized to work in certain Fields because of social norms still contributes to the same problem

Wages need to be same for both men and women period

There is only one reason that Teachers in the USA are so lowly paid, and that is because we are mostly women. It is so sad that I worked for 49 years and must rely on a food bank to eat, now that I am retired, In a typical year, when I had signed a contract to earn $26,000 I spent $14,000 on supplies to teach. With as many degrees as I had earned, I would have been paid much more if I had worked in Industry. We punish our Educators.

In 2001, I took a position as a Reading Facilitator at a school. I was a single mother raising a five year old with special needs on my own. No family within 2000 miles, no child support, and a drug addicted, violent ex-husband causing drama in my life. My boss was well aware of my situation. I put in long hours and made sure the reading program was a success. I was also in charge of the reading budget and noted that there were two facilitators in the document. I went to my boss to clear up this mistake, only to find that it wasn’t a mistake. She had designated a male teacher to be the other “facilitator”. I directly asked my boss how she could do that, as he was not doing any of the work, held no responsibilities for the program, nor did he put in any of the extra hours to manage tutoring or family programs? Her answer: because he has a family to support. This my friends is how it goes down. There are a million stories out there just like this one. It’s real and it’s not okay.