Should men and women be paid equally?

No. I don’t think women should be paid as much as males. Now that I have your attention, please read this post to learn the reasons why men and women should be paid equally. UN Women statistics show that on average, women are paid only 84 cents for work that males are paid $1 to undertake the same work. It’s embarrassing that we still have a margin of error, which is not a small one. Women get paid less than men for doing the same job even when it requires the same level of skill, aptitude, concentration, and attention on their part.

This article aims to dissect and respond to typical arguments put out to argue why men and women shouldn’t be paid the same for the same job, rather than providing an explanation of “why” the pay gap should not exist.

“Women must care for the home as well as their jobs”

It is a well-known claim that women must take care of their families and homes, which causes them to arrive at work late or with too much on their minds, making it difficult for them to focus on their work. Good point; now consider it a little further to understand the issue; if you’re clever enough, you might also be able to find the solution.

Why should women have to take care of their houses and children while working in offices like men do? The patriarchy, indeed. It seems ludicrous that the woman is responsible for maintaining the home when both the man and woman of the family must work to earn a living. One of the reasons why women must struggle to balance work and life while earning significantly less than males who perform the same work is the unequal distribution of household duties.
If men and women share equal amounts of household chores between them, it’d certainly help women to take at least some load off their backs.

“Senior roles are mostly handled by men.”

This is true. But why do male employees get more senior positions than female employees? Senior jobs require undivided attention and good leadership qualities, and people often believe that women, since they have a lot on their plates, can’t fulfill the requirements as perfectly as men.
Why do women have more on their plates than men? You guessed it, the patriarchy. It’s quite sad that even after decades of progress, we stick to the belief that men should go out to work and women should tend the house, even after women started taking jobs outside. Quite many times, men with toxic male egos, refuse to take orders from a woman, although she’s a senior at work.

Revising working conditions of women and taking away baseless norms from the workplace can be of great help to close the gender pay gap.

“Women choose easy jobs that pay less.”

There are a few jobs around the world that pay less than other jobs, like an engineer’s pay is very high compared to that of a teacher. Most of the jobs that pay less are considered to have “feminine” traits. Teaching, nursing, child-care are a few examples of jobs that are “easy” and “feminine”. Even though the aforementioned jobs require a lot of patience, focus and care, they, very unfortunately, do not pay much. Preschool and kindergarten teaching is one of the female-dominated jobs in the world. It is also a job that requires constant care and attention, however, most teachers are underpaid and overworked.
Women choose to work in these jobs because it helps them prioritize taking care of children over work, as most of these jobs are theoretically routine jobs which do not need you to work after the stated work hours.
If the responsibility of taking care of children is equally shared between both the parents, this trend could be decreased, and more women can work in a broader variety of roles.

Gender wage gap is an embarrassing reality which should have been tackled by now, but unfortunately, it’s still in place. While women receive a pay less than what men do in almost all sectors, women of color and other marginalized communities get paid even less. We should take advantage of the advanced technology, and various other sources of aid we have now, to close the gender gap, and to ensure a better, safer and fair work environment for women.