Women Precarious Work

In the recent past women have had to face many issues within the society in recent past. One longstanding concern has always been the wage gap that exists between men and women. Women are undervalued in the workforce, time away from the workplace has negative consequences, a significant majority of women work for minimum wage, illustrating the prominence of wage discrimination and secrecy.

Work done by women is constantly undervalued. “Women are viewed as secondary laborers who do not have the responsibilities, and therefore the needs, of men. Consequently, society is not willing to pay as much for a product produced by a woman as it is a product produced by a man” (Williams & Register, 2001). This demonstrates the mindset of the overall job market, and consequently, influences the perspective that is held by managers and corporation. Since products made by men yield a higher value to society, men are paid a higher wage than women who do the exact same job. Minimum wage is another reality that the vast majority of North American women experience. Historically, “It has been found out that women have been generally accorded low wages” (Taussig, 1916) compared to men. This trend has continued into today’s economy and the wage gap is contributed to by the significant number of women working for minimum wage.  With the combination of undervalued work and a substantial number of women working for minimum wage, the conclusion has been reached that “women have significantly higher rates of minimum wage and overtime violations than men and also lose more of their earnings to wage theft than men” (Prahova & Spiller, 2016). This study shows that more women have minimum wage violations, proving not only that they are working for minimum wage, but also that their work is undervalued and as a result the meagre minimum wage that they are working for is not experienced at full value.

Another common issue women face is time taken away from work for childbirth and childrearing. This negatively impacts their wages earned. Despite this, more “highly educated women are increasingly choosing not to sacrifice their families for careers” (Shang & Weinberg, 2009). As the job market becomes increasingly hostile, women who choose to have children are doing so at a significant cost to their own wage expectancy. While it can be argued that women having children are contributing to society and should be compensated, the reality is that taking time off for reasons pertaining to children results in the loss of experience that could assist in closing the wage gap. Lastly women face a wage discrimination due to the wage secrecy policies. This common practice of “pay secrecy perpetuates the gender wage gap and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) should be amended to outlaw these practices.” (Kim, 2016). The wage gap between men and women is a result of the undervaluing of women’s work, the minimum wage disparity, the time away from work, and the wage secrecy policy.