December 9, 2012
Dianne Feinstein
1234 Capital Street
Sacramento, CA 95060
Dear Ms. Feinstein:
Sex discrimination is alive and well in the U.S. and women continue to battle the gender pay gap.
Sex discrimination is alive and well in the U.S. and women continue to battle the gender pay gap.
Even though in 1963 the Equal Pay
for Equal Work Act was passed into law, mandating equal pay for equal work no
matter the person’s sex, color, race, religion, national origin, or disability.
Nevertheless, our female college graduates are plagued with lower salaries upon
entering the workforce, when compared to their male counterparts. The U.S.
needs to further its pursuit of equal wage enforcement in the work place.
Over the last several years the
United States Supreme Court has heard numerous class action lawsuits regarding
gender wage discrimination issues. In 2011, the largest class action law suit
to ever be filed and heard by Supreme Court included 1.5 million female
employees of Wal-Mart alleging gender wage discrimination. Betty Dukes, the
main plaintiff in this case claimed she was paid less than her male coworkers
who had less experience and seniority, repeatedly passed over for managerial
promotions. According to Lila Shapiro, a reporter with the Huffington Post,
“One victim described the discrimination saying, she confronted a district
manager back in 2003, when she learned that a less experienced male colleague
was earning more than her. The manager told her, "That's just the way it
is. Men always get paid more." Other female workers, including a Navy
veteran, were told they could not be promoted to management because it was a
“man’s job,” attorneys said. A manager at a Franklin, Tenn., store told a
female worker that “women should be seen and not heard,” the lawsuit alleged.”
(Shapiro 2011). This seems to be typical
Wal-Mart management practice and is just a few of the millions of women who
experienced gender discrimination and a few of the thousands that were
interviewed by the attorneys representing the class action lawsuit case. Alarmingly, this case was thrown out by the
Supreme Court, reasoning that the women’s jobs were too varied to be considered
a class. This left the option of
reassembling as similar and smaller class actions. It’s obvious these minimum wage employees
would not have the means to go toe to toe in court against Wal-Mart, a large
class action suit was their only means for resolution and equality. Yet seeking justice for the equal rights of
women continues to be denied.
One more high profile Supreme Court
gender wage discrimination case in 2007, was filed by Lilly Ledbetter, an
employee of nineteen years with Goodyear Tire and Rubber. She discovered that she was paid less than
her male peers after retiring, when an anonymous note was left in her mailbox
outlining her co-workers salaries. The
two men who were referenced in the note performed the same job description as
Lilly, one was paid $5,727 per month, the other $4,236 per month, while Lilly
was paid $3,286 per month. Being that
Goodyear employees were asked to sign an employment contract which prohibited them
from sharing their salary information, this salary inequality was news to Lilly. It was then that Lilly filed a lawsuit
against Goodyear, which ultimately ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court where she
lost. Unfortunately, the statute of
limitations had expired and eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the
complaint she filed needed to be filed within 180 days of the first discrimination
of pay incident, even if the employee didn’t know about it until a later
date. Therefore her complaint had no
legal standing. With that, I now
understand why wage discrimination continues to be gainfully swept under the
rug. This law allowed for further discrimination by employers as long as they
could keep their employees in the dark about co-workers salaries for a short
period of time.
With that set back Lilly Ledbetter
created the Pay Check Act to give employees the right to talk about their
salaries and wages with other employees.
This Act was also denied, this time by the Senate Republicans. This was another attempt to keep employees
powerless in the fight for pay equality.
Although I can see the view point of the Senate Republicans, being that
they are supported by large businesses who could endure multiple lawsuits if
the Paycheck Act was made into law. I
can’t justify further discrimination.
There are several theories and mixed
opinions about this issue. Researchers
have proven the problem exists, while other people deny it’s an issue to be
changed. Moreover, numbers don’t lie,
the data from the 2009 U.S. Department of Educational statistics, published by
Tiffany Lieu in the San Francisco Chronicle, shows that women earn 82 cents for
every dollar a man earns, during the first year after graduating from
college. With further studies and
comparing “apples to apples”; when women are in identical occupations they earn
7% less than their male counterparts.
And furthermore, African American women earn only 72 cents for every
dollar white men earn and Latinas earn 60 cents for every dollar that white men
earn. (Lieu 2012)
During the past 50 years, the ratios
for women’s employment education and equal rights have greatly improved, but
still fall short from equal. The gender
pay gap has been thrown around by the media since women started working. The opinion that the pay gap is largely
exaggerated is simply not true. There
are numerous factors that create the consistent problem, such as pay expectations,
which tend to be lower for women.
According to a Kent State University research, “Women view their own
worth as less than men view their worth, when they negotiate pay during the
hiring process.”(Hogue, DuBois, Fox-Cardamone 2010). The reality is that stereotyping of men
being worth more, working more efficiently, having greater competence,
deserving more pay because of their head of household status or wealth status,
has been happening since women began working.
These perceptions perpetuate themselves and result in men and women both
valuing men’s labor at a higher pay.
Though neither men nor women would admit to these opinions of value
because risk of being outside the social norm or being labeled sexist. As a matter of fact, it has been studied
extensively by psychologists at universities such as Stanford, Princeton,
University of California Santa Barbara, Southern Illinois University of
Edwardsville and Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, and Kent State
University, to name a few. As pointed out in a scientific study by
Stanford, Princeton, and University of California Santa Barbara, called The
Masculinity of Money: Automatic Stereotypes Predict Gender Differences in
Estimated Salaries, published in Psychology of Women Quarterly, “Women have
been devalued for thousands of years as suggested from the Old Testament
passage and shows how far we have come.
The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to
the Israelites and say to them, If anyone makes a special vow to dedicate
persons to the Lord by giving equivalent values, set the value of male between
the ages of 20 and 60 at 50 shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary
shekel; and if it is a female, set her value at 30 shekels.
-Leviticus 27:1-4”
(Williams, Paluck, Spencer-Rodgers
2010)
Our modern society has come a long
way since these words were written and our female predecessors have fought long
and hard for our rights. As an American
citizen, I pride myself on being part of the land of opportunity and a country
built on equality. So why should I work
longer and harder than a man, to make the same wages, to earn the same Social
Security, to contribute the same amount to retirement, to pay back the same
debt and to support my family? The
consequences of gender wage gap are detrimental to the women and men in our
society. With the recent recession, many
households depend on one women’s salary, whether it’s a single women, mother,
wife or caregiver. I believe employers should be kept under a microscope when
it comes to gender wage discrimination.
As I look forward to completing my
college education, it is clear to me that I will need to do my due diligence in
researching my career’s salary data and be confident in my skills, what I have
to offer to a company and in my pursuit to negotiate a fair salary.
I hope you can see the importance of
pushing for the equal rights of employees by supporting The Pay Check Act. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Kelly Finneran
1234 Mary Way
Soquel, CA 95073
Kelly Finneran
Section: English 1A
Instructor: Knapp, S
Topic: Gender Wage Gap
Annotated Bibliography
Goldin, Claudia Dale. Understanding
the Gender Gap. Oxford: Oxford City
University Press, 1992. Print.
Women have entered the labor market
in unprecedented numbers, yet these critically needed
workers still earn less than men and have fewer opportunities for advancement. This book studies the
evolution of the female labor force in America, looking at the issue of gender distinction in the workplace
and challenging the idea that women's employment advances were a response to social revolution rather than long-run
economic progress. Employing history
methods and new data on employment, earnings, work experience, discrimination,
and hours of work, it establishes that the present economic status of women
has evolved gradually over the last two centuries and that the past conceptions
of women workers persist.
Madden, Janice. “Penn News.” Penn
University of Pennsylvania. U of Pennsylvania, 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.
Sanders, Joseph and Hamilton, Lee V.. Handbook of Justice Research In Law.
New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. EBSCOHost eBook collection. Web. 12 Nov.
2012. This handbook provides a
comprehensive cross-disciplinary perspective on the role of justice research in studies of the legal system. Authorities
from sociology, political science, criminology,
psychology, and law analyze justice research, including the various dimensions
of justice, the interaction among these
dimensions, and the relationship between law and culture.
Spetz, Joanne, Ash, Michael, Konstantinidis, Charalampos and
Herrera, Carolina. “The Effect of Unions
on the Distribution of Wages of Hospital-Employed Registered Nurses in the United States.”
Journal of Clinical Nursing 20 (2011): 60-67. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 12
Nov. 2012.
Nadler, Joel T. and Stockdale,
Margaret S.. “Workplace Gender Bias: Not Just Between Stangers.” North American Journal of Psychology. 14.2 (2012): 281-91. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.
This journal supplies great research
and statistics about women in the North American workforce, from pro-male bias in workplace evaluations, gender
based harassment, gender differences in
career choices, and workplace gender wage differences. Women in North
America face major challenges in career advancement and are expected to feel
the anxiety of having to make
the choice between work and family.
Kelly Finneran
Section: English 1A
Instructor: Knapp, Stacey
Topic: Gender Wage Gap
Works
Cited
Hogue, Mary, DuBois, Cathy and Fox-Cardamone, Lee.
“Gender Differences in Pay Expectations:
The Roles of Job Intention and Self-View.” Psychology
of Women Quarterly. 34 (2010): 215-227.
Web. 15 Nov. 2012. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2010.01563.x/abstract>
Williams, Melissa, Paluck, Elizabeth and
Spencer-Rodgers, Julie. “The Masculinity of Money: Automatic Stereotypes Predict Gender Differences in Estimated
Salaries.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 34 (2010): 7-20. Web. 15 Nov. 2012. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01537.x/abstract>
Shapiro, Betty. “Women’s Pay Gap Starts Right After
College, Exacerbates Student Debt: Study.”
Huffington Post. American Association
of University Women. 2 Jan. 2009. Web. 12
Nov. 2012.
Lieu, Tiffany. “College Educated Women Face Pay
Gap.” The San Francisco Chronicle. American Association of University Women, 12
Nov. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.
