Our world revolves around money. You can claim that you don’t care about money or that you’re happy with what you have, but that doesn’t change the fact that our world does revolve around money. The amount of money you have determines what you can and can’t eat, what you can and can’t wear, what you can and can’t do. The amount of money you have determines whether or not you’re getting dinner tonight. The amount of money you have determines whether or not you get to continue your education after high school. The amount of money you have determines how you’re viewed in society.
To state the obvious, richer people seem to be valued more. People prefer to be around rich people, rich people’s opinions are more likely to be listened to and rich people are typically more respected. How does one become rich? Unfortunately, hard work is not the only contributing factor. In America, when a white man makes a dollar, a white woman makes roughly 77 cents for doing the same job. When a white man makes a dollar, a black woman makes roughly 64 cents for doing the same job. When a white man makes a dollar, a Latina or Hispanic woman makes roughly 54 cents for doing the same job. Am I the only one who sees the frightening pattern here? The population of the world is roughly equal, with men claiming a little over 50% of the population and women claiming a little less than 50%. In the United States, women make up 47% of the workforce. According to dpeaflcio.org, this is a significant improvement from the previous generation of women, who only made up 38%.
It seems that as more and more women began working fulltime, the wage gap began to steadily close. In an interview with IWPR President Heidi Hartmann, thinkprogress.org tells us that the wage gap (for white women) has closed remarkably since 1960, when women only made 60 cents for a man’s dollar. This statement began to feel a little less remarkable as the article continued, “…there has been ‘a virtual standstill in women’s real wages for the past ten years.’” What does this mean? The wage gap isn’t continuing to close. If the wage gap continues to close at the snail-slow pace it’s currently moving at, we might not achieve equal pay until the next century. For the time being, we have to raise awareness to the problem at hand. By advocating for equal pay, we could help to raise minimum wage and eliminate rules that don’t allow employees to discuss their salaries with each other.
These are both strategies listed in many articles about how to close the wage gap. Achieving equal pay between all races and genders won’t happen in the blink of an eye. The process is slow, but we cannot give up on it. Oxford Dictionaries defines feminism as, “The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” Though economic equality is listed last, that certainly doesn’t make it the least important. (Not that any form of equality is the least important, I’m gonna wrap this article up before I make a fool of myself.) In our world, money is important, but women are not even given the opportunity to make as much money as men. This is one of the many obstacles we must overcome to attain complete and perfect equality.
