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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Addis Ababa University

Institute of Technology
School of Civil and Environmental
Engineering

Gender Pay Gap – Myth or Reality?

Summited by:

Mariamawit woldegabrial

ID: - GSR/6995/09

Submitted to: Mr. Tewodros G.

Jan /2019
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

TABLE OF Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Statement of The Problem....................................................................................................................... 3
Research Questions ................................................................................................................................. 4
Methodology........................................................................................................................................... 4
Result and Discussion .............................................................................................................................. 4
Reference ................................................................................................................................................ 7
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Introduction

The number of women in the world labor force is growing. Nevertheless, in spite of
women's large share in the labor force, many gender inequities in the labor market, such
as gender specific jobs, pay inequities are observed. Women and men do not receive
equal pay for equal work and wage, inequality is reality. Women on average have lower
incomes, lower wages and less advantageous terms of employment than men. The
purpose of this research is to review main theoretical approaches to the basic economic
question about the gender pay gap: why do, women, on average earn less than men and
to have a clear understanding about the issue of gender pay and figure out if the gap
which exist between the genders for the same amount of job is only because of one’s
gender or not. The paper is going to be based on empirical data from America and other
European Union countries.

Statement of The Problem

The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between average hourly earnings for
men and women. Across the UK, men earned 18.4% more than women in April 2017,
according to the office of national statistics. On average American women earn about
80% of what men do although this number doesn’t control the number of hours worked,
the industry or position of the job, the worker’s education level and so on. It is just a flat
difference in earnings for a full time worker between the two Genders.

Since there a voluminous articles and journals which support both sides of arena this
research will try to Identify if the claim that the gender pay Gap exist because of a single
variant or other input should be considered which can affect the Gap. THEREFORE,
OUTPUT OF THIS RESEARCH IS TO IDENTIFY IF GENDER PAY GAP IS MYTH OR REALITY
in a Scientific frame work and also identify the reason why so many people think it exists
and others don’t.

The contextual frame work of this research is going to be done according to the feminist
movement and geographically, since this research is going to be a desk research, it will
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

focus on American and European countries because the gender pays gap of even the
most liberal and capitalist America and European countries which are social democrat
countries is very different.

Research Questions

The following basic questions should be asked in order to determine the Gender pay
gap.
1. Does Gender pay gap exist or not?
2. Does one’s gender play a major role in creating gender pay inequality?
3. Does the issue of gender pay gap related to feminism movement? If so, in
what way?
4. how does gender pay gap differ according to the conceptual framework,
such individual factors as pay expectations, gender role orientation,
perceived pay fairness, gender, age, marital status and education facilitate
the perceived gender pay gap.

Methodology

The research is going to be a desk research and it will try to answer the above questions
based on secondary data collected from different literatures.

Result and Discussion

First off, discussing pay gaps is highly controversial because we confuse pay gaps with
inequality in general. Claiming that the pay gap is exaggerated does not mean sexism is
not widespread in workplace. Many of the higher paying career paths are male dominated
and have subtle ways of shutting down female advancement. Even nonthreatening social
dynamics, like hanging out after work, have real benefits that women can find harder to
navigate.
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

In female dominated fields, men have the opposite effect of being the white whale and
are afforded greater mobility. Often times as a result of gender biases held by women
working in the field. There is a ton of gender inequality that affects the workplace. The
previous would be considered inequality of opportunity. But there's also inequality of
domestic partnerships, where women are still expected to take care of the home, even if
both work equal hours. There is inequality of motherhood vs fatherhood and the female
heavy burden of family planning. There is an inequality of childhood, where girls are still
taught to be "lady-like".

There is a gender gap, but it’s not as simple as it seems. if you take the average salary
of all the men and the average salary of all the women and compare them, then it’s about
20-30% less. (A woman makes 70 cents for every dollar a man makes) But it doesn’t take
into account things like different kinds of jobs, the amount of labor required on each, how
skilled they are, etc. So that part isn’t entirely true in its purest sense. Through that loop,
“men tend to choose higher paying jobs and that’s why” But even with the exact same
job, for example male and female nurses, they still get paid higher, even when female
nurses outnumber them 10:1. (Times, 2017)

The problem with that is that there aren’t any more “smoking guns” obvious red lights that
can immediately be deemed as illegal, which are things like “We only hire men here!”.
Once people leave college, there aren’t actually any differences between their pay.
However, as they get older it changes drastically. Companies don’t give women
promotions, or assign them harder/more work because they think the women will have
children and either quit the company or won’t put in as much effort anyway. They’re easier
for the company to lose. There are also other factors that simply cannot be documented
down as a statistic. There’s harmful mentalities of “Women think too much with their
emotions to properly hold a high position”, they get talked over/dominated in group
discussion.

There’s an enormous amount of different variables that contribute to the gender wage
gap. It’s not just someone deciding they don’t want to pay their female a fraction of what
she should earn.
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

BUT the is a discussion should be on why it exists, everything that contributes to it. It
could be that women choose lower jobs. Why? It could be that women don’t ask for raises
as often. Why? It could be that they don’t get promotions. Why? It could be that when a
couple needs someone at home, it’s almost always the woman that losses her job of
equal standing.

There are so many places of inequality but pay is not one I would agree with. Pay is merit
based and to claim inequality means people are paid differently for the "same work". Not
the same title, not the same job, but the same work. My problem with this is that "same
work" is extremely hard to lock down, even amongst men. People are not commodities
and bring a countless of talents not reflected in statistics. Take even a very bad scenario,
where a man and a women have exactly the same skills. But the team respects and
responds to the man. Is it plausible that promoting the man to manager would result in
noticeable extra productivity and profit? If so, then the man is worth more. But the problem
isn't the pay differential, but something much more difficult to address Which is why
people politicize the gender pay gap. Root changes are hard and impossible to address
via laws. Anyone who claims a gigantic 23 cent wage differential for the "same work" is
playing politics. You can't look at a very broad statistic that does not adjust for career
choice, hours worked, etc and use it with integrity. When you start adjusting for more
factors, the wage gap keeps closing to as little as 5%.

I'm going to use another bad example to illustrate a point. If women were not allowed to
learn math and reading, then there would be a broad pay gap that would be justified. It
would be impossible to do the same work. So once you adjusted for the lack of reading
and mathematics, the pay gap would disappear. A broad absolute pay gap isn't the same
as a discriminatory pay gap and I think the problem is that the most women are raised to
think that they are not good enough and won’t be able to compete in the man’s world
which makes them decide to join less demanding and paying jobs. There are real issues
that need addressing. But broad pay gaps are symptoms and not the problem.
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AAiT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Reference
[1] Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017

[2] 7 unique challenges homeless women face -- and what you can do to help

[3] Why Are There More Homeless Men Than Women? - Cultural Weekly

[4] Share of U.S. middle class population 2015, by gender and marital status | Statistic

[5] The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap – Freakonomics

[6] The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Spring 2017)