Effects of Gender Pay Gap on the Workplace
Lennart Zeugner 2.13.2018
Managing Diversity
Topic of Interest Statement
Effects of Gender Pay Gap on the Workplace
- Introduction
Although women shape around half of the entire workforce, they, however, earn 78 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work across a variety of professions (Dubner). Among the most pervasive factors have visibly contributed to the disparity in pay between genders in the past and continue to affect women in the workplace such as fertility patterns, availability of contraception, occupational preferences, child-care, and maternal disability, Freakonomics’ podcast “The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap,” discusses the implication that discrimination accounts for the residual gap in pay, ceteris parabis (Goldin; Dubner). Claudia Goldin, a professor of Economics at Harvard University, reveals that for recently graduated men and women, whether it be from undergraduate or graduate studies, the wage gap is the narrowest (Goldin). Be that as it may, ten to fifteen years post-graduation, Goldin observed the earnings gap between men and women widen as well as differences in job titles largely suggesting parallels to the average child-bearing time period (Goldin).
This paper attempts to discuss the ongoing questions surrounding gender pay gap, but more specifically how gender pay gap can result in problems in the workforce and how corporations can cope with the arising issues relating gender pay gap. Economic data demonstrates that the wage gap has stagnated since 2007, which indicates that corporations have failed to take initiatives to resolve the existing gender pay gap (NWLC). It appears to be both shocking and fascinating at the same time that even though factual data is available to society no action steps have been taken by corporations yet to successfully close gender pay gap. The crucial question becomes whether corporations neglect to act upon the gender pay gap or if it is simply an unsolvable issue for reasons such as the human biological makeup. Questions like that are not only interesting in nature but also extremely valuable when analyzing the effects of gender pay on the diversity of a workplace.
- Influence of Gender Pay Gap on Workplace
Concerning the gender-pay gap, it is important to consider the lengths at which it can negatively influence the workplace. Firstly, while it may be the most obvious consequence, it leads to the underrepresentation of women in the workplace. As data proves, the gender pay gap is a real problem that affects and harms women across industries by restraining their earnings, making it much more difficult for them to balance work and family. Profound attempts to understand the gender pay gap have to investigate where the U.S. economy provides unequal opportunities for women in order to eliminate the gender pay gap. Gender pay discrimination is by no means effective for an economy as corporations obtain greater benefits when they not only have more women, but particularly more women in management roles employed. A Catalyst survey emphasizes that when a companies’ board consists of 19 to 44 percent women it achieved 26 percent more return on invested capital than those firms with no women board members (Catalyst).The survey clearly shows that representation of women in executive positions is extremely important and beneficial for the overall performance of a corporation. Because women are paid significantly less than men it is extremely difficult for companies to recruit and keep qualified women in management roles when they know they will be paid less than their male counterpart will. The underrepresentation of women not only influences the workplace in the present but also will continue to affect the workplace negatively years on as women entering the workforce have fewer female role models and sense the injustice at play. Secondly, for women that are in the workforce, and aware of and suffering from the gender pay gap, it naturally spawns a hostile work environment and causes issues of inclusion. If a female is aware that she is making 80% to every dollar as her male counterpart, it naturally generates negative feelings of resentment, disappointment, and anger that all work to contaminate what could be a healthy, productive work environment. More specifically, if a woman is a member of a team of employees that altogether work towards the same day-to-day goals-it is more likely that she will have negative feelings towards her male teammates and not necessarily be as inclined to work alongside them in a cooperative, cohesive way. For example, if both a male manager and female manager are assigned a project involving their cooperation, the underpaid female may be less motivated to put her best efforts forward than the male—due to her awareness of their salary differences and, most importantly, the misalignment of interests at play here. Therefore, it is most clear that the gender pay gap works to contaminate the workplace in an extremely unproductive fashion by ways of not only underrepresenting women but by naturally creating feelings of injustice and negativity.