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Tuesday, February 6th, 2018

Why Is the U.S. Lagging Way Behind Other Countries in Closing the Gender Pay Gap?

Author:     Liz Posner
Source:     Alternet
Publication Date:     February 5, 2018, 11:19 AM GMT
 Link: Why Is the U.S. Lagging Way Behind Other Countries in Closing the Gender Pay Gap?
Stephan:   Over the years in my lab, expeditions, and various businesses I have always as a matter of course paid men and women equally for equal jobs. To be honest it never occurred to me to do otherwise and I was in my late thirties before I realized this was not the usual practice. Apparently, however, it is the American norm to pay men and women differently for the same type of job and the U.S., as this report spells out, is not even in the top 10 countries for gender neutral pay, we're actually 49th. I think that is outrageous.

Credit: Shutterstock

Economists estimate that at the current rate of progress, American men and women will earn equal income in another 200 years. Considering the past century has already hosted three separate feminist movements that successfully granted women the right to vote, passed Roe v. Wade and established women’s right to work, today’s feminists will demand we work a little quicker than that. It’s hard to fathom waiting another two centuries for equal pay. Dozens of other countries are already beating us in the global race to financial equity, so it certainly is possible. The U.S. has crucial lessons to learn from these nations.

The gender pay gap is not just a problem in the U.S., where women make 76 cents to a man’s dollar (the pay gap is even wider for women of color). Globally, the problem is dire. As World Economic Forum writes, “At the current rate of change, and given the continued widening of the economic gender gap already observed last year, it will now not be closed for another 217 years.”

In its […]

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