Academics

Gender Pay Gap: No Place for Academic Women?

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The debates on 'ideal cheerleader poster' are getting real; but let's not forget about the war in academia that has been going on like an iceberg phenomenon, still undiscovered but significant.

A qualitative research with 80 female respondents from faculties, finds that these women are devastated by the fact that many working opportunities do not come to them the way it does to men. There are many reasons on why these women feel that they have been undervalued. Albeit discrimination in forms of sexism and harassment, many of the facts lead to deeper means of inequities. In a research on gender and academic employment, it is stated that there is a gap between men and women workforce in faculty. Only 42 percent of the members are women.

Late professor Barbara Johnson from Harvard University explained how the sexual politics has created a 'belief' that women have more power in humanities than in sciences. Her statement is supported by a research in 2013, as published by Humanities Indicators, where humanities disciplines are heavily represented by women.

Women are not properly compensated when they are handling what is perceived as man's responsibility. Cornel University gender pay gap study reveals that even for the same job where men have done before, the pay is said to drop when a woman takes the position. This includes evidences on discrimination against women in field experiment research. Moreover, the National Education Association study reported that salaries across faculty have declined, given the fact that the number of woman put in the workforce is showing an increase.

The profession itself lends to the wage gap. Women are more in service employments whereas production jobs are dominated by men. This specification, according to the research, is a modern-day male domination in academic especially after noting that the word "teaching" is given a meaning of 'non college-related jobs'.

Looking beyond the academia issue, the shift and gap have eventually reached other sectors such as law and media. Now this leaves a question, have all qualified workers been fairly compensated?

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