Feminism, a movement based around the idea that men and women are equal in all aspects of life, is a very controversial topic in today's society. There are a lot of supporters of this movement, while a lot who are against it. Feminism is also very prevalent in discussions about the workplace. Today in the United States, women still earn 78 cents to every man's dollar (White House). Some people believe that this inequality is due to discrimination against women, but others believe that sexism has nothing to do with it and that it's due to other factors, such as the choices that women make when entering the workforce, or that the wage gap between genders just simply does not exist. How could a wage gap exist purely on women's choices on what they want to do in the labor market and it not be sexist? I'm here to prove that there really is a gender wage gap and that there needs to be something done about fixing it.

Firstly, what exactly is feminism? According to an article by the Huffington Post, "Feminists are not angry lesbians who hate men. Feminists do not believe women are better than men, or that women deserve special privileges. They do not believe women are victims. In order to be considered a feminist, you only need to be on board with one idea: All humans, male and female, should have equal political, economic and social rights" (Cavanagh). She tries to eliminate the thoughts that some have about feminists, that they're just a bunch of man-haters and bra-burners (Murray Law) and explains the actual definition of feminism. This ties into the belief that women should earn the same amount of money as men when doing the same exact job because economic rights fall under that definition.

Secondly, why do we still need feminism? Some believe that women are already completely equal to men because we have gained many privileges that weren't known to women a couple hundred years ago. In Jennifer R. Rocha's article, she says, "Without the force of feminism, women would have no rights to property, voting, public opinion, education, careers and their own bodies and children." It is true that feminism has gotten very far so that women do have all of those rights, but there is much farther to go before we are all completely equal. Feminism is a matter of human rights though, not just political policies. As Cavanagh says, "If you are a feminist, you believe women should be treated the same as men, not because we're better, but because we're human." This still all ties into the fact that women are getting paid less than men because that is not equality. 

Onto the topic at hand, why is the gender wage gap a problem? In an article published by the White House, other sexist discriminations in the workplace are examined other than just wage gaps.

The wage gap is seen in jobs for teenagers. "The findings show there are no gender differences in wages for twelve- to thirteen-year-old youths. However, we see the emergence of the gender wage gap around fourteen, which widens with age" (Besen-Cassino).

Wage inequality is even prevalent in the medical fields. In 2004, "the U.S. Census Bureau released an analysis of the earnings of full-time workers that reported that female physicians' wages averaged 63 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues" (Laine and Turner). This statistic is so much lower than the national average of now 78 centers per every male dollar. In their conclusion, they Laine and Turner state, " ... no other profession in the United States exhibits greater salary disparities by sex" (Laine and Turner).

Some people don't think that the wage gap is based on discrimination. They believe that it is a woman's choices that determines what she is paid. In Denise Venable's article, she states, "Those who still cite women's 76 cents for every male dollar as evidence of sexism fail to take into account the underlying role of personal choice. The 'wage gap' is not so much about employers discriminating against women as about women making discriminating choices in the labor market." Factors that go into consideration when talking about the wage gap are: women choosing to leave the workforce to raise families, not going into higher paying science and mathematics positions, choosing to have part-time jobs instead of working full-time, and choosing more flexible jobs with more benefits over higher-paying ones (Venable). In Sarah Ketterer's article, she references a book written by June O'Neill, who was a director for the Congressional Budget Office, saying " ... that once all these factors are taken into account, very little of the pay differential between men and women is due to actual discrimination, which is 'unlikely to account for a differential of more than 5 percent but may not be present at all'" (Ketterer). She's trying to prove that there is hardly even a gap in wages if you consider all of these factors when trying to calculate how much on average men and women in the same field make per year.

Is there anything being done about this wage gap? Well, there have been some acts and laws passed to help prevent the wage gap from happening. In 2009, President Obama passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This law came about when a woman named Lilly, who worked at Goodyear Tires for over 20 years, learned that she was earning fifteen percent less than the lowest paid male in the company. She had won against Goodyear, but was unable to get her lost money back (Twarog). Ledbetter stated in a personal letter, "I may have lost my personal battle, but I haven't given up. I'm still fighting for all the other women and girls out there who deserve equal pay and equal treatment under the law. We owe it to our daughters, our granddaughters and ourselves" (Twarog). Ledbetter was trying to say that the law in her name will help more women in the future than it will now. In the state of California, the California Fair Pay Act is in motion. This law helps " ... make it harder for employers to pay men more than women for substantially similar work and prohibit them from retaliating against women who ask about the pay of male colleagues" (Renzulli). These are just the beginning of trying to make women's and men's pay equal.

There is still a gender wage gap in today's society and we need to do something about it. Feminism has gotten us really far when it comes to women's equality because 78 cents to a man's dollar (White House) is very good compared to the wages that women used to make, but there is still more to do. I propose a call to action in which I ask that feminists around the world to spread awareness on the topic of feminism and workplace inequality in order to help fix the problem at hand.

