Problem Statement
“Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, its an embarrassment.”
-2014 State of the Union Address, President Obama The problem in the field of Human Resource Management that will be addressed in the paper is the impact of compensation discrimination between men and women. Throughout history, discrimination has been a constant battle, whether its race, gender, or religion. (Blau & Kahn, 2007) In the United States, only 20 percent of all women worked for pay in the 1900s. (Costa, 2002) Women consider that their intellectual inferiority is generated by their lack of education, and men keeping them in ignorance …show more content…
(Blau & Kahn, 2007) The gender wage gap refers to differences in pay between men and women to discrimination. (Petersen & Morgan, 1995) The glass ceiling is an organizational boundary that prevents women above middle management levels in organizations on the basis of their gender rather than the lack of ability to handle a higher level job. ( Frankforter, 1996) Women have historically earned less than men for similar work creating a gender pay gap and significantly lower percentages of women are found in higher level positions due to the glass ceiling. (Cattalyst, 2011; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010) This can be explained by women who were outgrowing men in the workforce by gaining experiencing they would begin to move into upper management positions and higher pay. ( Forbes, Piercy, & Hayes, …show more content…
Bureau of the Census data, the median earnings for women were $30,599 while men’s median earnings were considerably higher at $40,556 (U.S. Census Bureau Data 2003). A recent Congressional Research Service Report concerning pay equality legislation in the 109th Congress, such wage disparities among the sexes may even be noted with similar groups in the workforce. For example, in 2003 women with a bachelor’s degree employed year-round full time earned $47, 910, while men with similar education earned $69, 913 (Dale and Levine 2005). This also showed similar for male and female graduadtes from high school who had similar wage gaps with men earning $38,000 and women who earned $27,956. (Dale and Levine