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The Pervasive Gender Pay Gap

By: CHONG Jun Wei, Benedict

The recent google memo controversy was apt in unveiling the underlying inequalities
between men and women. Cases as such, are not isolated and manifests itself in
many different forms through our daily activities, and in this short write up, I would
like to focus on one of the many inequalities that was emphasized through the
controversial memo, the gender pay gap.

With the enactment of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 in the United States labor law, it
seems to sufficiently establish equality in pay as a civil right for both men and
women. However, Gender pay gap remains one of the most controversial topics
within the arena of Feminism and its pervasiveness within and between societies has
been well established. It matters not how developed the nation or how patriarchal the
society is, the idea that men would yield higher salaries than his female counterparts
seem to be deeply entrenched within individuals, and could almost be regarded
almost as a form of expectation. For example, in this recent article that follows up
with the google memo controversy, we see that female employees in Google (one of
Americas biggest technology firms) making allegations of systemic and pervasive
pay and promotion discrimination (Segell, 2017). Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, the
existence of such pay discrimination practices in a developed society, such as the
US, speaks volume about the severity of such inequality, and perhaps even the
banality of it in lesser developed societies such as Yemen or Iran. Evidently, in a
separate article from Forbes, it shows that gender pay gap was relatively narrower in
the US, compared to the other nations (Kauflin, 2017). Such statistics fortifies the
argument of the banality of gender pay gap in lesser developed nations.

It would be, however, premature for anyone to profess to have a solution for such an
inequality. Recall that in the google memo, the author addresses such ineffective
solutions to close gender gaps. However, in my previous write up, I took the stand
that such solutions were simply merely attempts to artificially close the gender gap,
and that they are still inherent within society. To reinforce this argument, Ive
stumbled upon another article titled Oxford takeaway exam to help women get
firsts. Essentially this article highlights the reactionary measure that Oxford
Universities, one of the worlds leading universities, took to narrow the gap between
the performance of Male and female students (Griffiths & Henry, 2017). Such an
attempt was akin to Googles ineffective solutions, highlighted by Damore, and to
me, was merely another one of such artificial attempts.

Similarly, I dont profess to have the answer to this controversial issue, but I maintain
that such reactionary measures, whose intent are seemingly innocuous, could
exacerbate such inequalities. Rather, it may be more prudent to have established
and open systems which attempts to minimize such inherent inequalities. For one,
having clear guidelines on how employees are accessed to determine their salaries
would provide greater means of justification, should one employee ever feel
underpaid. Rather than leaving it to open interpretation, clear communication and
guidelines would undoubtedly steer the discussion away from why is he paid more
than me, to what did I do wrong, and how can I perform better.

References:

Griffiths, S., & Henry, J. (2017, June 11). Oxford takeaway exam to help women get
firsts. Retrieved from The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/oxford-
takeaway-exam-to-help-women-get-firsts-0v0056k8l

Segell, L. (2017, September 15). 3 former Google employees claim 'pervasive' pay
inequities against women. Retrieved from CNN:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/14/technology/business/google-lawsuit-
pay/index.html

Kauflin, J. (2017, January 11). Forbes. Retrieved from The Countries With The Best
And Worst Gender Pay Gap Expectations -- And How The U.S. Stacks Up:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2017/01/11/the-countries-with-the-best-and-
worst-gender-pay-gap-expectations-and-how-the-u-s-stacks-up/#510e66f3cb11

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