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. Everyone's talking about it. Famous activists like Beyonce, Emma Watson, and Jennifer Lawrence are all making speeches to the masses about female empowerment and equality. There are a lot of supporters of this movement, while there are a lot who are against it. Feminism is also very prevalent in discussions about the workplace, especially because of the fact that 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 awareness about this problem needs to be spread so that we can all go 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). The author 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 does everyone 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" (Rocha). It is true that feminism has gotten us 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" (Cavanagh). 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? You might be saying, well women make 78 percent of what men make, so that's close enough to being equal. What's the problem? Well, it's not 78 percent in every job field. When it comes to higher education and more experience, the wage gap actually widens to women earning 67 cents to every man's dollar (White House). That's 11 cents less than the national average of women's earnings. There's also other discrimination against women in the workplace. When it comes to worker's compensation, women are less likely than men to receive health insurance from their employer, a retirement savings plan, or access to paid leave (White House). Overall, women just aren't completely equal to men in the labor market.

So, why does the gender wage gap exist? Well, blatant sexism and discrimination is one reason. Another sexist reason why the gap exists is the marital asymmetry hypothesis. The marital asymmetry hypothesis is that men and women's jobs are affected differently by marriage. In an article by Rachel C. Sayers, she explores the reasons why the wage gap is affected by this. She examines an essay by Dr. Walter Block who claims that when women get married, their workload will increase at home because women tend to do more of the domestic tasks in a household. This, in turn, will make them less productive at work, so they will make lower wages (Sayer). If that's not sexist, I don't know what is. 

There are other reasons to why there is a gender wage gap that aren't exactly sexist. Women, more often than men, tend to take part time jobs to care for their children and often settle for more flexible jobs than high paying ones. They also enter and leave the job market more often than men do (Venable). These factors all go into why women generally make less income than men. Well put by Dr. Christine Lane and Dr. Barbara J. Turner, "To balance family and career demands, women often make career choices, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes out of necessity, that sacrifice their earning power for greater work flexibility" (Laine and Turner). Women are also less likely to go into higher paying math and science related careers than men (Venable). Two economists, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, have mentioned in an article published by the White House that they have "concluded that differences in occupation and industry explain about 49 percent of the wage gap, but 41 percent of the wage gap is not explained by differences in educational attainment, experience, demographic characteristics, job type, or union status ... " (White House). This means that almost half of the wage gap is because of women's choices in what jobs they want to take. It also means that the other 41 percent of the wage gap cannot be explained by what kind of careers that women go into or what kind of experience that they have and are open to other reasons, like sexism and discrimination, that could contribute to the wage gap.

The wage gap is even seen in jobs for teenagers, not just working-class adults. "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). It's sad to believe that the wage gap starts at such a young age. For teenagers aged 16-19, it's been found that males make around $950 a year on average, while females make about $750 a year (Besen-Cassino). This isn't a huge difference in pay, but it would be enough to make anyone mad if they realized that they were being paid $200 less than their coworker doing the same job. The only explanation of why this gap happens in these age groups is that males tend to work more hours than females and the types of jobs that they have; girls tend to have more free-lance jobs like babysitting, while guys tend to have more traditional minimum wage paying jobs (Besen-Cassino). The fact that there is a wage gap even within the youth shows that there needs to be something done to keep this from happening, especially so young.

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, 15 cents less to be exact, than the national average of now 78 centers per every male dollar. In their conclusion, Laine and Turner state, " ... no other profession in the United States exhibits greater salary disparities by sex" (Laine and Turner). This means that the medical fields have the largest width of a wage gap than any other career field in America. This is so sad because these women go through the same amount of school as men wanting to go into the same field as them and they make an average of 37 percent less than the men make.

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" (Venable). 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). The implementation of these acts 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. The wage gap starts young, around 13-14 and only widens from there. The gap becomes even larger when higher education and more experience are taken into account, like in the medical field. It's sad to think that women who go through all that schooling to start a profession in the medical field are making even less than the national average of 78 to man's dollar; they're making only a mere 67 cents to a man's dollar. There is something that must be done to help improve the level of equality between men and women. 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. Only then will we all be able to live in almost total equality. 

