The gender pay gap

In almost all countries, there is a culture of differentiating women from men; and based on the culture, women are considered to have different social responsibilities from men, and this has been critiqued by feminists. However, there is a gender discrimination in the labour market that even when doing the same job, men usually get paid higher than women, such gap is very significant in the developed world as well. Recent years, this issue has attracted much attention. One of the reasons that this problem has started to be mitigated is that the communication is faster. When people talk with each other more frequently, they are more likely to realise the pay gaps between them and their male coallegues. Moreover, when they are changing their jobs more frequently, they can feel different companies have different attitudes towards the existing gender gap. With more comparisons, the issue of the gender differentiation can be realised by more people. Secondly, the types of jobs have been changing over the past years. More and more jobs do not require labours to have physical strength to complete their jobs, this makes men and women equally productive when they have similar levels of experience and knowledge. Since the men and women are similarly productive, there is no reason that men and women should be paid differently. Thirdly, when more and more women become the leading groups of the society, they have more incentives to change the situation and close down the gender gap. Fourthly, the market force may close down the gender pay gap as well. In the labour market, as women are paid less even when they are as productive as men, women are more preferred by employers, so the demand for female workers will increase till the wage level for women is equal to the wage level for men. Of course, people can argue that women need pregnancy holidays and need to take care of their families; however, recent years, in some countries, men also take pregnancy holidays to be with their families, and some men have left their jobs to take care of their families.

To conclude, the gender gap in the labour market will be closed automatically by the market force as well as the social force, it is just a matter of time.