Women`s Economic Roles

In the new age of feminism and women empowerment , the question of why men on average still make more money than women has become a pressing societal issue . In to clarify this situation the GAO or General Accounting Office conducted a long term study to find out the statistical answer of why and how women earn less money then men . There conclusions are three fold . They first concluded that once taking into account for factors such as education , place of resident , on the job training , women earned an average of 80 percent of

what men earn Second , that work patterns among women such as part-year work , part-time work , and fewer years in the labor market than men are important factors in wages even after adjusting for education and experience . Finally they conclude that even after taking into account for different work patterns and differences in education and training , their model could not explain all of the earnings difference and thus other things occurring in the labor market must account for the differences . These three conclusions surprisingly correlate to studies and theories conducted by other well establish sociologists . They attempt to analyze why women have less job presence than men and how this gap has hurt women empowerment in the short term and the long term . The following attempts to analyze these three theories in conjunction with the conclusions of the GAO

The conclusion that after accounting for education , place of residence and on-the-job training women still earned an average of 80 percent of what men do is effected by a theory of occupation segregation . This theory contends that within the same jobs that women and men perform earnings are almost identical . In fact , paying men and women different wages for the same job became explicitly illegal in 1963 Equal Pay Act However , the problem exists that while women and men are paid equally for the same jobs , they do not in fact perform the same jobs . Women are segregated to female dominated occupations , while males have the mobility to take on other male dominated occupations . Since in general male dominated occupations such as unionized manufacturing jobs pay more than women , a gap exists between women and men income ratios . This implies that the problem is much more of a structural one than a discriminatory one . The cases of gender discrimination in earnings has become less and less frequent since the 80s , however since women are being limited to certain roles there still exists a large income gap Daphne Spain 's book , Balancing Act explains that "On average , female dominated occupations pay less well than male dominated ones (Spain 123 . There is hope however , as the gap between women with higher education as opposed to men are significantly lower than women without education . This implies that occupational segregation is on the decline as more women become career oriented and take on the same jobs as men do . Therefore sustaining the push to decrease occupational segregation is one of the key...