America has gotten sneaky. Sexism is not as blatantly deliberate in modern society as it was in the 20th century. There aren’t any ridiculous, oppressing advertisements like Van Heusen’s “Show her it’s a man’s world!” or ‘educational’ booklets like the Co-le Sales Company’s “Why You Should Beat Your Wife!” (“35 Extremely Sexist Ads”) but that doesn’t mean sexism has disappeared. These days sexism breeds within our minds; it has become an almost unspoken, traditional way of thinking. Women have been subjected to both internalized and unintentionally flagrant sexism throughout history. And by constantly hurting one gender, society hurts everyone. Internalized sexism affects men and women, subconsciously enforcing gender roles that create economic,
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Not to mention, that exception resulted in only a two-dollar difference for employees in accounting (2), so it’s not much of an exception at all. So why are women being paid less? Many Republicans like the RNC Women would have the public believe that women just choose lower paying jobs, saying “the disparity exists because a female social worker makes less than a male engineer—just as a female engineer would out-earn a male social worker. The difference isn’t because of their genders; it’s because of their jobs” (¶9). But according to Harvard University labor economist, Claudia Goldin, simply sticking women into the higher-paying occupations would only remove 16 percent of the wage gap for all workers (cited in Miller ¶4). Sometimes women are paid less because they aren’t able to work the same hours as men; they’re expected to be the homemakers and nurturers, too. Men don’t have this issue; they’ve been assigned as the breadwinners. Goldin even suggests, “the gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might even vanish if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who worked long hours and who worked particular hours” (Goldin ¶1). Economically, it is fairly obvious that there is a prejudice against women in the work place, and it’s not just centered on wage gap. Equal pay is one of the more obvious forms of sexism that society faces, but the disproportion of men and women in the workplace is more complex and seems to fly under the radar. According to Vanessa Harbin, Ariane Hegewisch, and Claudia Williams from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “only 5.8 percent of women work in traditionally male occupations and only 4.6 percent of men in traditionally female occupations” (1). Why? The answer can only be found in the gender roles created by internalized sexism in society. Robert Winters, a kindergarten teacher at Dennis Elementary School, is quite aware of
Not to mention, that exception resulted in only a two-dollar difference for employees in accounting (2), so it’s not much of an exception at all. So why are women being paid less? Many Republicans like the RNC Women would have the public believe that women just choose lower paying jobs, saying “the disparity exists because a female social worker makes less than a male engineer—just as a female engineer would out-earn a male social worker. The difference isn’t because of their genders; it’s because of their jobs” (¶9). But according to Harvard University labor economist, Claudia Goldin, simply sticking women into the higher-paying occupations would only remove 16 percent of the wage gap for all workers (cited in Miller ¶4). Sometimes women are paid less because they aren’t able to work the same hours as men; they’re expected to be the homemakers and nurturers, too. Men don’t have this issue; they’ve been assigned as the breadwinners. Goldin even suggests, “the gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might even vanish if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who worked long hours and who worked particular hours” (Goldin ¶1). Economically, it is fairly obvious that there is a prejudice against women in the work place, and it’s not just centered on wage gap. Equal pay is one of the more obvious forms of sexism that society faces, but the disproportion of men and women in the workplace is more complex and seems to fly under the radar. According to Vanessa Harbin, Ariane Hegewisch, and Claudia Williams from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “only 5.8 percent of women work in traditionally male occupations and only 4.6 percent of men in traditionally female occupations” (1). Why? The answer can only be found in the gender roles created by internalized sexism in society. Robert Winters, a kindergarten teacher at Dennis Elementary School, is quite aware of