Common Assignment Podcast

The speaker discusses the gender wage gap and its impact on women in the workplace. They mention the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and how it aims to address wage discrimination based on gender. They also talk about discrimination against pregnant women and the stigmatization of paternity leave. The main stakeholders in this issue are identified as women employees and the heads of firms and businesses. The speaker believes that transparency in reporting wages can help reduce the wage gap and hold companies accountable. They acknowledge concerns about privacy but emphasize the importance of addressing gender inequality. Overall, they argue for equal pay for equal work and the need to address this issue globally. Hi, my name is Anjali, and I decided that for the common assignment, I wanted to focus on the disparities between the genders in the workplace, and specifically, the gender wage gap. So, starting off with the introduction and the definitions of the key terms, I wanted to begin by discussing what the gender wage gap really is. So, the gender wage gap is a hugely large ethical and moral area in corporations that focus on the differences in wages between men and women. Throughout history, men have typically been paid more than women, with the average woman earning $0.82 for every dollar a man earns, through research reported in 2022. Now, although this may sound like not a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, this essentially equates to women losing out on almost 20% on what men receive for a reason they cannot necessarily control their gender. So, for some relevant background information, I wanted to first discuss the Equal Pay Act. The Equal Pay Act, also known as the EPA, was an act formed in 1963 in order to fight against the wage differences based on gender discrimination. It was an attempt to retaliate against businesses and companies that refused to pay women the same amount as men. Now, the act specifically states that all forms and types of compensation are included. For example, vacation time, overtime, and life insurance are all included in the act, along with several other forms of compensation. However, even though it has been around for several years, again since 1963, there are still huge equality issues between genders and workplace settings that need to be addressed. The EPA act also outlines that the jobs should not have to be the identical for women to be paid the same as men, rather that it is anything substantially equal. Substantially equal in this case can mean several similar skill factors, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. All of these qualities would lead to women and men being required to be paid the same. One major example, besides the gender wage gap, that describes the discrimination against women in the workplace is discrimination based on pregnancy. Women that are pregnant face a large amount of discrimination in the workplace. In fact, some companies and businesses won't hire women that are pregnant due to the fact that they will most likely have to leave in the future and take some sort of maternity leave. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act works hard, however, to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, and national origin. Under this, pregnancy is also included, along with childbirth itself and maternity leave, and any other conditions that may arise due to a woman's pregnancy. However, this is still something that needs to be addressed. I do want to recognize here that under this specific example, pregnancy in a workplace setting, men do face stigmatization surrounding paternity leave. Paternity leave, similar to maternity leave, allows a father to take several weeks or months off of their job in order to adjust and attend to their newborn. This concept does have a large stigma around it, and I think it is important that this is addressed. However, I don't think it's comparable to the amount of stigmatization and distress women go through in this similar situation. However, again, I don't want to discredit that men do have issues in this area as well, which shouldn't be ignored. So moving on to the stakeholders in the dilemma of the gender wage gap. The main stakeholder, in my opinion, are the women employees. I truly believe that they are being affected the most by the gender wage gap, as they are the people that are losing out on money for the same amount of work or the same quality of work as their male counterparts. This simply goes against the unspoken rules of equality and the entirety of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Considering this is a huge violation of civil rights and gender equality, ethics and moral values are challenged here strongly. Now, as I have mentioned several times, the gender wage gap does explicitly violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which not only goes for pregnancy, but also gender in general and sex discrimination. Personally, I don't see a justification for this entirely unfair and unethical form of business. However, the other stakeholders in the issue are the heads of firms and businesses themselves, who most likely share opposing views. So, to delve into their opposing views and justifications, I believe that they may be able to justify this wage gap to themselves by stating that there is a possibility of women leaving the workforce either permanently or indefinitely due to maternal reasons, which may be a better reason not to hire them at all or pay them less, as they believe women will overall be less committed to the business. Along with this, considering that they may believe that men have more experience due to the lack of interoptions that women may take, they are more experienced and will do better in the workplace, meaning that they should be receiving a higher salary. Personally, I believe that people who think with this mindset are looking through a more misogynistic lens, whether internalized or not. So, now I'm going to transition into discussing my own view and what changes I believe should be made. First of all, concerning a proposal or change in law, I think there should be a mandated requirement of all companies, businesses, and firms to report annual wages of all their employees. There are several pros and cons to this, which I am going to address now. So, the obvious pro is that having business report wages would overall increase the amount of transparency concerning gender inequality in the workplace. Every day, people would be able to see and recognize the disparities between the salaries men receive and women receive, along with all the other forms of compensation. This overall level of transparency and awareness would allow more people to become involved in the issue and overpower the people imposing this gap, again, the business leaders and firm heads. I also believe that as a result of this, more women would be able to be hired in fields typically dominated by men, again, overall helping women reach their full potential, similar to what opportunities men have always been given. Along with these pros, companies would also be held more accountable as their obvious biases would be more transparent, leading business holders that do act in these ways to be penalized accordingly. Again, being aware of the issues and holding businesses and companies accountable for these violations would primarily lead to positive effects in decreasing the wage gap between genders. For cons, one of the main ones is that most likely the leaders of the businesses and companies, again, stakeholder number two, would be opposed to this kind of solution. Considering it does put their inconsistencies and civil rights violations on blast in lack of another term, I can only imagine that they would be opposed to it. However, they are acting in violation of several women's rights, so I believe that this is something that needs to be compromised on, regardless of the oppositional forces. For intended effects, as I've mentioned previously, the transparency and accountability over time will lead to less of a wage gap between the genders as the awareness of the issue will only continue to grow. I also believe that with this awareness occurring, women would most likely be able to take maternity leave when necessary or get hired for more positions due to the lack of stigmatization surrounding women in the workplace, which obviously is at a forefront. There are a couple limitations, however, to this policy I want to impose. Firstly, I understand and recognize that with this policy, there would be concerns of privacy and confidentiality, depending on their workplace environment. With employees reporting their annual wages, there is an obvious concern that people may feel uncomfortable with this and uncomfortable with risking their privacy in this way. I think this can also go both ways, with employers also feeling this uncomfortability with that loss of privacy on their employers' wages. However, although I can understand the discomfort, I still believe that it is necessary to bridge the divide between wages, regardless of the backlash and resistance. Overall, I think that gender inequality in the workplace, and simply society in general, is a huge issue and has been for several, several decades. Generally, I feel as though if an individual is performing the same job, responsibilities, or quality of work as another individual, they should be receiving the same salary. To put it in more broad terms, two men performing the same or substantially equal job would be receiving the same salary, so there is no reason to create a disparity once women become involved. In society in general, we have made large strides towards equality between the genders. However, this is still an issue worldwide that needs to be addressed further and resolved. Thank you.