Gender, Race, and Class Myths About the Wage Gap

Something that was brought to my attention on Tuesday was when Dr. Whitson was talking about the wage gap between her husband and herself. Does a person's wages really depend on gender, race, class, etc.? According to Felice Yeskel's article, Opening Pandora's Box: Adding Classism to the Agenda, the income and wealth gap is disproportional between races and classes. Below I will draw your attention to other reasons as to why a wage gap exists between genders, and these reasons very well so could relate to race and class wage gaps also.

This topic interested me because of a recent article I read from the book "Women Don't Ask," written by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. These two women, Professors from Carnegie Mellon University, concluded other reasons than gender as to why women don't make as much as men do, even when performing the same job. Babcock and Laschever do several studies and conclude that women don't negotiate as much as men do. They say that if a woman was offered a job with, lets say, a starting salary of $50,000, she would accept it, while a man on the other hand would negotiate his starting salary to be $54,000. Maybe if women started to ask more like their male counterparts, they would get more of the things they want in life? And not just women, maybe other people from other races and classes should do the same. Think of it this way: If a person doesn't negotiate with their employer, the employer isn't going to just give them that extra $4000, would they? No. It must be asked for and that is something that I do firmly believe as to why there is a wage gap between genders regarding the same job. I encourage you all to read this article (I hope it works since it came from a PDF file on BlackBoard, but if not, here is another article), it really made me think outside the "gender box."

Another article from The Washington Post, says that one of the other main reasons for this difference is kids! Yes, this does have to relate to gender roles between men and women because women are the primary caretakers of children, but again, it doesn't show that men and women get paid solely based on gender, but rather their actions. Women without kids actually get paid more then men with or without kids do. It says that more women have college degree's than men do, but it is up to them on how they decide to go forth and use it.

Below is a link to a youtube video. This video makes a good point. The wage gap is not based on discrimination between genders or races. It also states that the .77 cents to a man's $1 is not a downhearted fact. When they make those numbers, they do not compare men and women in the same occupation, but rather as a whole workforce in general. There is a misleading when statistics on wage gaps between races, genders, classes, etc. are computed. They can not compare a white male working for a government agency to a Hispanic male working in a factory. There will clearly be a difference! If a Hispanic man and a white man were both working in a factory for the same amount of time, they will be getting paid equally. The video reinforces this fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa3pKN3XUKM