Activity #10

Activity #10

Division in Labor

In an ideal world salaries would be based off a combination of working power, ability, experience, and education. There would be a mysterious but fair equation that evaluated workers assets and generated reasonable pay values. While many would like to believe that this system is already in place it only takes a brief analysis of the current job market to realize that women are far below on the pay scale. The difference on of the gender gap in salaries is not based on a difference in skills or abilities among the sexes, but wrath a cultural divide that promotes the inhibition of women gaining high salaries in the majority of the working industry. The division in the work force can be traced to the division in labor at the home. Over time, women have been expected to take care of the home while men have been in charge of the more worldly behaviors. Children play a huge role in where women will end up on the salary spectrum.

Children promote the inhibition of women receiving higher salaries because they can delay women from being active in the work force. Employers do not want to pay someone who will be needed frequent time off, reduced hours, or other special requirements the same as they would pay an employee that would be available full time all year round. Women are typically expected to the ones in a marriage to stay home and care for the children. If a woman decides to leave the work force the duration her children are at home then she faces a lower rate of return to the work field due to skills depreciation during her time off and the increase of knowledge needed to obtain that occupation. Men on the other hand usually do not take an absent of leave for their children, so they are able to keep up with their occupation, and thus earn a higher salary in the process. While this can been seen as choice made by women in order to have a family, it is a cultural default to assume that women are the caretakers of the home. Although the division of time and labor in the home may affect many women, it does not account for the pay differential between males and females that are single or without children.

The gender gap in salaries can partially be explained by the gender gap in occupational tracks. Women and men both tend to gain education and skills for jobs that are dominated by their own sex. For women, these jobs are typically are the lower on the pay scale for their education level, but they are more family friendly. These trends to stay in certain occupation fields based on gender are culturally produced.

The gender gap in the work force is a culturally prorogated system. Women fall behind men on the pay scale because of their expected family and home roles along with the gender expectations placed for them. There are three main ways to stop and attempt to fix the gender gap. The first is education and admittance that there is a gap. In order to close the gap there needs to be family friendly working environments so women and men do not have to choose between a career and a family.