Most thought it was just the way the world worked. Women were housewives who took care of the children, housekeeping and their husbands. Well, that was then and this is now.
 
Women aren’t just housewives anymore. They are expanding their horizons and putting down their dish towels, irons and oven mitts to come out into the work place where the men are, in order to do the same work that all men do. According to a recent Fact Sheet from the Department from Professional Employees (DPE), within the past 50 years, more than 50 million women all around the world have began working and almost 50 percent of the workforce these days is women. So why is it that women are still being paid less?

Some argue that women are still housewives and should stay in the home strictly to take care of the children because they can’t keep a solid job. Many companies use a few women, which have left their job in the past three to four years, as an example that all women can’t keep a steady job going enough to get the higher pay they are looking for. I say that perhaps the woman left in the first place because within an all men’s workforce, they don’t feel they were treated equally, not just payment wise, but as far as general care goes, as well.

The woman probably felt as if she was looked down upon because she wasn’t a man and didn’t feel like she fit in with the rest of the workforce or was forced out of her position. Other companies like to try and say that women only go for the lower paying jobs because they don’t to do the dirty job that a lot of men try to do and that’s wrong as well. A lot of women actually state that they have tried for jobs that men do but they are turned down because they are a woman and with the children at home, are forced to settle for a lower paying job to keep the money flowing. They don’t have time to search for the high paying jobs if their children are at home hungry and if she’s a single mother of two.

Another excuse that anti-feminists try to pitch is that women aren’t working as hard or don’t know how to persuade as well as men do. They settle for the amount of money they make while men push for a higher pay that they know they can get. Women, who believe that they are at the highest pay they can possibly receive for being a woman, don’t push for higher pay because they believe it’s alright to let their boss pay them less because they aren’t male. Even with a degree that’s just as good as any man’s, they are still making less for doing the same job with the same amount of effort that a man can do.

It was shown, by recent statistics from an Afl-Cio Now Blog, that for every dollar that a man makes, women make 30 cents less than him even if they are doing the same job. But with the other races, it only seems to get a little worse. AFL-CIO Blog reported that Latinas make only 60 cents of what a man makes in the workforce and even Asian and Pacific American Islanders make less. Within a lifetime of working, women could be making $1 million dollars less than a man even within high paying jobs such as professors and accountants.

Even the with Equal Pay Act still in effect, women are paid less because of their sex, not because they don’t work hard enough. Maybe our system will finally take notice that this act has had no effect on the way women are treated today in the workforce and maybe they’ll see that women aren’t paid equally. Maybe not.

So why is it that women, who could be single moms with deadbeat husbands or boyfriends, get paid less when they have children to care for at home? Because they weren’t born with the same parts as a man or because they aren’t as ‘hard working or ambitious’ as some men are? I think the answer clearly speaks for itself.