I find it both morally intolerable as well as incredibly interesting that society is never at a loss for systemic oppression. What I mean is that you don’t need to look very hard nor far to find a group of people being discriminated against for no justifiable reason outside of the classic “it’s always been this way.”
If you’re looking for inequities related to race, there’s always the fact that African-American men are statistically more likely to be incarcerated than enrolled in higher education. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, consider that 33% of the global population is without access to a toilet. If neither of those cut it for you, you, friend, are a true connoisseur of the plights of humankind, and might I recommend for you a chilled bowl of domestic gender wage gaps?
Women earn less than men. This cannot continue and the very notion that its lasted this far is downright disgusting. According to the United States Department of Labor, women who worked full-time, year-round in 2014 earned on average, 79% of men’s median annual earnings. Thought the gender wage gap is slowly closing, we have a long road ahead.
Statistically speaking, higher education is pegged to higher earnings, and historically, women have had lower levels of college education than men because the societal powers that were insisted women remain home and take care of children, or hold administrative roles, if anything. We’ve seen women advocate for increased representation in the workforce, and this has worked, but to a point, because we’ve also seen women paid significantly less while holding the same position as a man who would be paid more for the role.
Ironically enough, at one of the more progressive tech companies in the world, Google (GOOGL), a recent TechCrunch investigation found male-identified Level 4 Software Engineers received less money than women in the same role. I bring this up not to pity the men who were paid less than women, but to highlight the fact that Google (GOOGL) paid out $9.7 million to adjust pay for wage disparities occurring in the company. When it was found that men were being shorted, Google (GOOGL) executives reacted immediately, but where was this response time when women were being paid less?
“Our pay equity analysis ensures that compensation is fair for employees in the same job, at the same level, location and performance. But we know that’s only part of the story. Because leveling, performance ratings, and promotion impact pay, this year, we are undertaking a comprehensive review of these processes to make sure the outcomes are fair and equitable for all employees.”
–Lauren Barbato, Google Lead Analyst for Pay Equity and People Analytics
Even in the tech industry, where meritocratic hiring practices are known to be quite prevalent, women still manage to take home less dough than their male-counterparts. Female representation is a non-negotiable need for the workforce, as women are humans, and humans are invaluable specimens until proven otherwise. If anything, based on the train wreck of a situation facing domestic politics, its almost laughable that people aren’t insisting that women take a stab at running the federal government and/or the White House. Delving deeper into female representation in politics, women make up only 25% of the U.S. Senate, and 23% of the House, despite making up 51% of the population in America.
We are close to creating a well-regulated, equally representative democracy in the U.S., but we need to level the playing field for women across all racial and sociopolitical backgrounds. Believe it or not, the work starts with raising women to believe that they can be whomever they want to be, and by raising men to not put down women who try to do more than what their stereotypes suggest they’re capable of.
