Throughout time women have been mistreated in their workplace and been paid unfairly. For example, Lilly Ledbetter was sexually harassed and paid less than her coworkers. She worked at a Goodyear plant for about two decades and faced discrimination from her coworkers and her boss simply because she is a female working in a “manly” job. Her boss told her that “he didn’t think a woman should be working there” even though men and women are supposed to be equal, but is it his right to judge her for what career choice she made (“Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act”)? Through an anonymous tip, Ledbetter became aware of her fellow manager’s pay scales which the employer created and found she was making less than three of the male managers (“Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act”). Not only was she treated poorly by fellow employees, but then she finds out that because she is female, she does not earn as much as her coworkers. This is just one story that was taken to court, but there are other females in the United States who are held back strictly because of their gender. 

Throughout the United States and other countries, employers are paying women less than their male counterparts although they have similar levels of education and work similar hours. Women have invisible barriers that hold them back from being paid equally to men. Other countries have started pushing for women to be equal to men, but the United States is still falling behind since women earn about $0.84 per dollar that men make (Ledbetter). Some people even say that the wage gap is as low as $0.77 per dollar that men make, and it gets worse for women of color getting as low as $0.55 cents per dollar (“Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act”).  In an article written by Mohamad Alkadry (Florida International University) and Leslie Tower (West Virginia University), the authors show how West Virginia has one of the worst economies for women since women are paid 67% of what men are paid compared to the national average of 77% (218) which shows how women are paid less even though they have similar levels of education. This shows how the United States needs to start enforcing laws in order to help finally close the wage gap. Women in the United States are paid less than men even though they have similar educations; the government can help close the wage gap if they create new policies enforcing equal pay. 

Ever since women started working jobs in the 1960s that were similar to men, employers have paid them less because society sees women as lesser to their male counterparts. In the book, Discrimination at Work: Comparing European, French, and American Law, the author Marie Mercat-Bruns interviews different professionals on the ways racial and gender discrimination implicitly. Mercat-Bruns interviews multiple experts like Vickie Shultz, a sociology professor at Yale Law School, and Shultz shows how women are “seen as creatures of domesticity whose allegiance is primarily to home and heart for whom everything else is secondary” (165). This shows how society has shaped the ideal jobs of women: to be a mom and take care of the home. Since women are seen as this “motherly” role, authority figures assume that women cannot handle the top positions; they belong at home taking care of children and cooking dinner. Because women are child-bearers, they have to take time out of their jobs in order to start a family which can cause employers to believe that the woman would not be able to dedicate the same amounts of time as a man would. When a woman has a baby, she becomes the ideal person to take care of the baby since she was already being paid less and society views taking care of children as a feminine job (Waber). This then encourages men to take different jobs that work odd hours or are more dangerous in order to support the family. This can encourage men to not be able to be a stay at home dad, but in today’s society, more fathers have been staying home and taking care of the children leading to better chances for women to be treated equally. These odd/ more demanding jobs cause males to be given more opportunities to make more money. Businesses pay women with children less than men with children since employers assume that women will have to take off work often in order to take care of the children and not be as focused on the job. On the other hand, men are rewarded for having children since they are seen as a well-rounded family man (Waber). These stereotypes are holding women back from being paid fairly since they are judged based off their gender and family status as opposed to their levels of education or their experience. Although women are important in the family, men should be seen as equals and the pressure of taking care of children should not be fully on women. 

There are more invisible barriers that hold women back from being able to be equal to men than just having children. For example, society expects women to take care of children and elderly while men are the “bread-winners.” There is also the problem that there are jobs that are known to be typically “feminine” jobs such as teachers or nurses which are some of the lower paid positions that people with college degrees can have. Society has a stigma of what a man should do and what a woman should do which causes unfairness in pay scales since society assumes women do not need as much money or they can get money from their husbands. Communities frown upon men acting in any feminine way and taunt them into acting like what is socially acceptable which causes men to have to get the harder jobs and the more time consuming jobs. For example, there are phrases such as “you hit like a girl” or “stop crying like a baby” which most of society hears regularly which is offensive to girls and boys. These phrases emphasize the idea that women are weaker than men, and men should be tough and not show emotion even though it is normal for humans to show emotion which unintentionally affects the wage gap since it creates sexual discrimination. Some people believe in gender specific jobs, but if the jobs require similar levels of education and hours worked, then they should be paid equally and not affected by the stereotype of the job (Shen). Christina Hoff Sommers from Prager University believes that men and women have different levels of happiness, and women are not conditioned into certain jobs. This shows another example of how society has shaped the ways that males and females think when trying to pick a career path. 

There is also a problem of women gaining higher positions because there is an invisible “glass ceiling” which means that people assume that women cannot handle the top positions and will not make the best decisions for the company since they are female, but it can be broken (Smith 151). There is also another term called the glass escalator which stands for men being “escalated” into female-dominated jobs where they gain higher positions with more authority even if a female is more qualified (Smith 151). These both show examples of the social stigma of women holding higher positions since males are more wanted in higher positions. Although there are some women in powerful positions, the top jobs are male-dominated which can cause the companies to lack a female’s opinion when half of their customers are mostly likely female causing businesses to lose money. Society believes that women are incapable even though female workers may have worked just as hard or even harder than their male coworkers, but instead, top ranking official judge people based off of their gender causing discrimination and inequality. There was an experiment done by the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality which tested to see if the glass ceiling exists or not by looking at wages and employer-sponsored benefits compared to all different types of genders and races (Smith 155). This experiment found that the white man earns the most, but there were not enough females who held high positions to be compared fairly to men regarding pay differences and people respected the white males more than the females when reporting to them which supports the glass ceiling hypothesis (Smith 168). Through time and effort, the glass ceiling and escalator can be broken, but women need to push for higher positions. 

In order to show how women are seen as less than men, an article from Nature: a weekly science journal explains an experiment testing to see when employers are trying to hire someone what the pay difference would be when they have the male and female have the same qualifications (their CVs were identical except for the names) (Shen). The results showed that the employers offered the female $3,730 less per year than the male, and there was a greater willingness to mentor the male than the female (Shen). There is a bias towards women especially in roles that involve science or math that causes them to not be granted the same pay ranges as men. Although the article from the journal Nature focuses on women in science, there is still a gap where females earn 25% to 40% less than males (Shen). This shows how women are not granted the same respect as men because they are seen as unfit for the jobs even though they could have all the same levels of education and work history. 

Not only the United States struggles with this debate, but so do many other countries except some have started making changes to make men and women more equal. For example, in New Zealand, Kristine Bartlett knew that health care workers were/ are being paid less than people with the same education and hours of work, so she sued the companies to show that they should be paid more fairly (Hill). The article, "Equal Pay For Equal Value: The Case For Care Workers," shows how women should push for equal rights since they deserve to be paid equally. People who work hard in order to take care of other people’s loved ones are being paid less even though they work just as hard or even harder to help keep the elderly and the disabled comfortable and healthy. Thanks to Bartlett’s court case, women are able to start the process of fighting for equality by comparing jobs to males and working on compromises with their male counterparts in other industries (Hill 27). This court case also helps pave the way for jobs to stop being named a feminine job or a masculine job since they will all become equal. With this court case, other unions such as the Food Workers Union started gaining momentum in trying to show that they deserve to be paid more equally showing that there could be a domino effect in other companies joining together for equal pay (Hill 28). With this mindset, Americans can look at different jobs and compare them in order to make the pay scales more equal, but someone is going to have to take the step and not be afraid of being punished for wanting equality. 

Another country that is trying to close the gap between males and females is Bulgaria where they are focusing on trying to show men that it is socially acceptable to participate in feminine activities such as being a stay at home dad. The Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement (CBWM) encourages men to become more involved in their families so that women can have jobs and participate in their own activities without having to worry about taking care of their children or aging loved ones (Ghodsee). Instead of focusing family roles on women, they suggest men take time off to play a bigger role in the family causing men and women to be more equal and working the same amounts of hours. Men would have similar responsibilities as women such as picking the children up from school or staying home when the kids are sick. The CBWM is also trying to help females from being punished for having children, so they can have reasonable amounts of time off without losing their jobs (Ghodsee 553). This helps women have more equal chances to men to stop women from being punished for being the only ones who can give birth and keep the population growing.

There are policies already in place in order to close the wage gap which attempt to allow females to gain equality in the work place. For example, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act enacted by President Obama in 2013 gets employers to see the wage difference in order to close the gap (Malloy). This act requires companies with more than one hundred employees to send the information on the salaries of all of their employees in order to show the gap between males and females (Malloy). Obama has taken steps in the direction of finally closing the wage gap since he feels that, "We knew we had a lot more to do to close the pay gap between men and women and ensure that no women would ever face the kind of discrimination that Lilly faced on the job," but he knows that there is still work that needs to be done in order for no one else to be discriminated against (Malloy). There is also a bill going through the legislature in California that is trying to fight pay discrimination. In the article, “The World Should Follow California’s Lead in Ensuring Equal Pay,” Bernice Ledbetter focuses on the new bill Obama was trying to pass in order to close the wage gap in California called the SB 358 which “prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who inquire about pay differences at work.” This policy would help women challenge their pay scales without being punished in order to show their employers that they are not being paid equally compared to other employees. Ledbetter encourages women to stand up for equal pay, and she says that “employers must commit to embracing this new way of thinking and doing business” which would help create the most equality in the workplace. The rest of the United States should look into following the footsteps of California in order to help show employers that they are paying their workers unfairly, but the bills to allow women to inquire about their pay scales usually get split among party lines (Ledbetter). In order for the government to pass these policies throughout the entire United States, people need to be shown evidence of the wage gap and show the government that now is the time to finish closing the gap since there have already been policies created, but they are not widespread. 

In the YouTube video from Prager University, “The Myth of the Gender Wage Gap,” Sommers talks about how she believes there is no such thing as a wage gap. Sommers believes that the research is misleading because different organizations such as American Association of University Women omit data points. Unequal pay is illegal, but there are ways around it since women have invisible barriers that can show that it is reasonable to pay them less such as how they are too busy with their children. Some may say that there are different forms of happiness for women and men, but society has such strict roles for each gender leading women to certain degrees or programs (Sommers). Employers seen women as unfit to work high stress jobs, so they are not hired often. This then causes women to have to take lower positions and be paid less than they could have been although they could have held the higher position. The wage gap is real, and women are fighting to be paid equally because they are not given the same opportunities as men. 

In order to fix this problem, the United States needs to encourage males to start being a part of the family and take the stress off of their partners. Also there needs to be equal opportunities for women to gain higher positions in order to break the glass ceiling. There need to be more policies put in place in order to close the gap such as the Lily Ledbetter Act and the SB 358. The bill being passed in California needs to be spread across the United States, so all women can have the opportunity to inquire about their pay scales compared to their male counter parts. The hardest thing that needs to be changed is the social stigma of males and females, but now is the best time to act because there have been numerous debates on being transgender and being able to pick their own identity. This generation is about change and being able to choose what you want to be which can help change the stereotypes of men and women in order to make every one equal no matter the sex of the person. Instead of having gender specific toys, girls and boys could have gender neutral toys in order to show that one gender is not better than the other. They should be able to pick what they like instead of only choosing between Barbies and monster trucks. If there are targeted toys, then it should not be frowned upon for boys to pick “feminine” toys and vice versa. With these efforts, a new generation will grow up to see that everyone is equal and males/ females will not have stereotypes to hold them back from achieving their full potential. 

The United States still struggles with paying men and women equally even though there are laws in place to close the wage gap. By looking at other countries and different policies in the United States, Americans can gain a better understanding of how to close the wage gap. With the help of the government and major companies, women can become equal to men in the workplace by busting the glass ceiling and seeing women as more than just child-bearers. If gender discrimination is cut off as a child, the world can create a new generation of people who are equal to each other not having one gender having to work harder than another to gain equal pay scales. In the future, the United States may be able to close the wage gap from $0.84 per dollar that men make (Ledbetter) if people are willing to make changes in what was formally socially acceptable. Without the support of society, the United States will fall behind other countries are already making efforts to close their wage gaps causing America to lack the equality in order to create the best technology in order to stay ahead of other countries. 
