In this day in age, you’d think that men and woman are treated the same, as equal individuals, as human beings. But, unfortunately this is not the case, not even in the year 2016. The fact that there is a day called “Equal Pay Day” on April 12th just brings up the fact that this is an issue that we are still facing in the modern world. If every person on the planet was paid the exact same amount for putting in the same about of work, obviously there would not be a day to bring it up as an issue. In 2015, women still made 79 cents to every dollar made by a man. This is like saying these women would have to work over 3 months extra every year to make the same amount. The date of April 12th symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work in order to receive what a man received in the previous year, and this is the reason many are fighting for their right to equal pay.
Women around the world have been paving the way for women’s rights for centuries. We only got the right to vote less than a century ago, which to me is insane. Women and men are both human and are capable of doing anything and everything, so why is it that there is this huge gap? In a time where women are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, running for the position of President of the United States, winning Olympic medals, or even just being your every day working moms, it seems that unequal pay should be a thing of the past.
In the future, the only thing I think we can do is to keep pointing out the obvious. It is stupid for 2 human beings to do the exact same job, but yet one still gets paid more because they are considered a man. Employers need to be people who make decisions based on legitimate and nondiscriminatory factors such as skill and performance, and not on an employee’s gender. They need to be trained to avoid things such as wage discrimination, as not everyone is aware of it. Luckily with progress in education and an increase in workforce participation for females this gap has slowly narrowed. But, this won’t solve all the problems with this issue. Only once everyone is aware and trained properly can this issue start to truly be fixed.