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Equal Pay Inequality In America

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Right now, the unfortunate truth in America is that men and women are not receiving equal pay. An issue since the 1960’s, pay inequality based on gender still seems to an issue running rampant in today’s business world. While many people believe that equal pay is a must for men and women, there are many reasons why bridging the pay gap would hurt the economy, thus actually reeking more havoc than gender pay inequality ever has.
Pay inequality is a major issue for many that remains in the forefront of the news. Pay inequality, otherwise known as the pay gap was brought to light in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act of 1963 labor law was amended to abolish wage disparity based on sex (“The Equal Pay Act: Equal Pay for Women”). While this amended law …show more content…
For example, if a male employee makes $20/hour then a female employee is only averaging $16/hour. For a 40-hour work week, the average American woman is losing $160 and that translates into a copious amount of lost wages per year. One negative impact of this is that part of this has to do with women making up two-thirds of the employee pool for minimum wage jobs (“Gender Pay Gap, 2012”). Therefore, for years there has been legislative measures taken to investigate why the pay gap even exists. One aspect that has been looked at over time is the unanswerable question of why this a difference in pay cannot be explained and what we can do to wage war against the wage …show more content…
However, there is a bigger picture. Imagine corporate America suffering because of the tax hike caused by raising females’ wages across the board. Not only is this bad for business, it causes the companies’ employees to also suffer. For corporate America to survive, pay would need to stay on the same merit-based scale is already adheres to. In an article by The Department for Professional Employees, the author states “So, who wins? There is only one answer: corporate America wins, and wins big. By suppressing working women’s wages, they maximize their profits and pay less to the government in taxes and pay less in employer contributions to pension plans for all women”. (9) A clear-cut reason why equal pay is bad for the American population. While corporations would take a big hit in the bridge to end equal pay, they aren’t the only ones who would suffer. As I briefly mentioned before, there is a merit-based pay scale in almost every business across the United States. If companies were to increase the pay rates for female employees, while leaving male employees pay stagnant, until they were equal would reduce company profits. Rising wages without an increase in employee productivity could also result in lay-offs and cause a competitive disadvantage for the employers who makes changes to accommodate comparable worth, according to Blizfluent.

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