The Wage Gap in America
The Wage Gap in America The wage gap is a serious problem that has consequences for women in America, our two parent families and our single mom households. The government tries to reduce the wage gap between men and women’s earnings and tries to make sure that women’s talents are properly used and rewarded. A lot has been done to relive the wage gap in the past fifty years, but it still is not enough. Women can do things on their own to help close the wage gap. They can get a non-traditional job or they can join a union. Women need to find out a company’s policy and discuss their salaries. The wage gap is a problem American women need to address, not wait on the government to fix it for us. The wage gap can be defined as the difference in pay between men and women. Even though just as many women work as men; they still do not take home as much of the money. The average male takes home 41,211 dollars a year, while women earn less coming in at around 31,169 dollars a year. This means a woman gets seventy six percent of what a man gets. The wage gap exists partly because the female dominated jobs such as sales, clerical and service jobs pay less. If women in the workforce earned the same as men who worked the same amounts of hours their families would earn 4,000 dollars more a year. Many women take time off to stay with the children. This means they missed out on raises, promotions, and work experience. In this country we have a growing number of households where women provide most or all of their families’ income. If the wage gap was closed the rate of single mom households below the poverty level would be cut in half. Women’s wages being increased would help women became more self sufficient. Decreasing the wage gap would result in a reduction of the amount of single mom households on government assistance. More government programs to help single moms with child care, education and job training into non-traditional jobs would decrease the
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