Pay Discrimination against Women Today

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST FEMALE EMPLOYEES IN TERMS OF PAY By Course Name Professor’s Name University City, State Date of Submission Discrimination against Female Employees in Terms of Pay Introduction Throughout the world history, discrimination has occurred in different forms, including racial, religious, gender, appearance or any other way that makes an individual feel different from others. Different types of discrimination happen daily, be it in public places, workplace or in sports ( HYPERLINK "/aleksandra-wisniewska" Wisniewska, Ehrenberg and  HYPERLINK "/sarah-gordon" Gordon 2018). One of the types of discrimination that world population is battling with is pay gap observed between men and women in workplaces. Although in some instances women are equally educated and trained and have the same experience as men, they do not get equal pay. Women attend the same colleges as men, take the same, majors, pursue the same careers, but on average, they earn approximately 81% of what males get (Palumbo and Guibourg, 2018). Some scholars believe that pay discrimination against women is a long-standing issue that stems from a general belief that men are the ones who take care of their families and must get more salary than their women counterparts. Pay discrimination against women is also referred to as income gender gap or disparity of income between sexes. There has been a heated debate on this issue ever since the start of globalization. As far as economic inequality is concerned, the gender wage gap usually refers to discrepancies between male and female wages. It is expressed as the percentage ratio of women to men's wages (Johnson 2014, p. 7). The issue of wage disparity has been surfacing almost in every country in the world. Nonetheless, in the modern era, people are more aware that both males and females have the abilities to produce the same results, can attain the same levels of education and have equal abilities to accomplish the same overall tasks (O’Reilly et al. 2010, p. 300). The common belief that women are not as valuable as men when it comes to job performance is slowly and constantly being proven wrong. Although various governments are trying to eliminate this problem, they have not been able to fully resolve it because most companies in different countries are still experiencing the issue of gender pay discrimination (Gyngell, 2018). Studies show that there is an increased likelihood of employers to empower men with potential occupation tracks that usually lead to males having remarkable careers. Nevertheless, this is not the case for women. Moreover, companies tend to entrust females with job positions that are considered to be dead-end or have very little chances for advancement (Grey-Bowen, and McFarlane 2010, p. 65). The main reason why this is the case is a perception that women are more likely to leave their job positions at some point, particularly when they get married or during pregnancy. Pay Discrimination against Women Today According to report by the  HYPERLINK "/aleksandra-wisniewska" Wisniewska et al. (2018), the problem of pay inequality is common in most of the companies in Britain, whereby about eight in every ten firms pay their male employees more than females, with an average pay gap of 14%, which is higher than OECD average. A law was enacted in 2010 that required all companies with more than 250 employees across the United Kingdom to submit their reports about the wage gaps between males and females. The data of approximately 3,010 companies revealed that the median hourly rate for women was 9.7% lower than that of their male counterparts. The reports also indicated that the pay gap was far above the national median, which is 18.4% ( HYPERLINK "/aleksandra-wisniewska" Wisniewska, Ehrenberg and  HYPERLINK "/sarah-gordon" Gordon, 2018). It is worth to note that the gender pay gap differs by sector, whereby some sectors recorded bigger wage gap than others. For instance, the finance industry recorded the highest wage gap with an average woman earning approximately 35.6% less than what an average male earns ( HYPERLINK "https://work.qz.com/author/lbrindedqz/" Brinded, 2018). On the other hand, an analysis presented by the Guardian indicates that construction sector recorded the wage gap of approximately 25%, whereas education sector had pay gap of around 20%. On the other hand, accommodation and food industry represented the sector with the lowest pay gap, having recorded an overall median income gap of approximately 1% ( HYPERLINK "/aleksandra-wisniewska" Wisniewska, Ehrenberg and  HYPERLINK "/sarah-gordon" Gordon, 2018). When individual companies are put into consideration, Apple UK submitted a report with 24% gender pay gap in favor of men, but indicated that when all the United Kingdom workers were considered the gap reduced to 2% in favor of women. In the banking industry, Macquarie Corporate Holdings and Macquarie Bank reported a wage gap of 60% and 53% respectively. Other large banks, including Citigroup and Goldman Sachs presented mean hourly rates of 48.4% and 55.5% of the wage gap between males and female ( HYPERLINK "https://work.qz.com/author/lbrindedqz/" Brinded, 2018). The same data indicated that the United Kingdom banks such as Barclays and HSBC reported that females earned a mean hourly rate of 48% and 59% respectively less than their male colleagues did. In addition, The Sports Millwall Holdings submitted a pay gap of 80%, just some hours before report submission deadline (Butler, 2018). In the fashion sector, most companies also presented reports where male wages were far higher than female ones. For example, report from Karen Millen, one of the fashion companies, indicated that men earned 51% more than women on a median hourly basis, showing that the males’ median pay doubled that of women (Butler, 2018). While women occupied over 85% of the top positions in Karen Millen and same percentage of women as men received bonuses, the median bonus pay for females was 96% lower than that of males. Some of the companies who presented their reports in the last 24 hours of deadline included John Sisk, with wage gap of 45% in favor of men (Butler, 2018). Another notable example of the companies that submitted their reports on gender pay gap include Victoria’s Secret, French Connection and Benefit Cosmetics with gaps of 19%, 1.6% and 30.7% respectively. In the airline industry, similar trends were observed. Ryanair airline operating in Ireland submitted a reported that indicated that there was a 67% difference in hourly wages between men and women (Butler, 2018). Other companies such as EasyJet also recorded huge gap between male and female salaries. The above and several other firms submitted gender pay gap where males dominated, which is a clear indication that the pay discrimination against women is still a prevalent problem in most companies in the United Kingdom. Further, May Bulman (2018) indicates that women in the United Kingdom lose approximately Ј140 billion per year in salaries because of the existence of a huge pay gap. This amount translates to Ј 9,112 per woman every year. On average, each employed woman earns nearly Ј29,891 annually, which is almost Ј10,000 less than what men get. Report by the Young Women Trust revealed that the wage gap between males and females differed by region in Britain. The largest wage gap is seen in London, where men earn an average annual salary of Ј53,521, which is Ј15,054 more than the average annual pay of Ј38,467 for women, representing a 28% difference (Bulman, 2018). The eastern and southeastern regions follow closely with salary gap of Ј11,362 and Ј11,905 respectively. Wales and North East parts of Britain have lowest pay gaps, which stand at Ј5,600 and Ј5,961 respectively. Although the figures in these two regions are considered lowest, they are still significant considering the recommended national salary gap. Using the above data, it is apparent that women in Britain work for free more than two months every year. The 18.4 wage gap between men and women means that women have to wait for more than two months per every calendar year before they start earning the same amount as men. While the salary difference has been falling every year, it has not been doing so at a significant rate (O’Reilly et al. 2010, p. 300). For instance, since 2011, the gap has been reducing at the rate of 0.2% every year, meaning that it will take nearly 40 years to attain parity between men and women wages. Moreover, there is a huge gender pay disparity in senior positions in the United Kingdom. A survey carried out by CMI (Chartered Management Institute) on salaries across 432 firms indicate that males in executive positions will likely earn an average salary that is Ј11,606 more than females in the same positions ( HYPERLINK "/author/ben-chu" \o "Ben Chu" Chu, 2018). This is a wage gap of around 26.8%, taking into consideration perks such as commissions and allowances as well as bonuses ( HYPERLINK "/author/shafi-musaddique" \o "Shafi Musaddique" Musaddique, 2017). In addition, figures of this survey indicate that the wage disparity further widens at board-level, where the male CEOs earn an average bonus of approximately Ј89,230, which is far higher than the Ј14,945 earned by female chief executives. In another report by High Pay Center, top ten FTSE 100 CEO earners are all males with Martin Sorrell of the conglomerate WPP taking home Ј48 million in 2016 and Beurden of Shell who occupied the tenth position getting Ј6....