Hello and welcome to my blog.

I’m 19 year old male that is currently a junior in college at a major state university in the US. I’m also white, straight, and a Democrat.

Let me explain a little bit about what this blog is and what I hope to accomplish with it. I’m currently taking a women’s studies class at my university and one of the assignments for the class is to complete some form of activism project that focuses on feminism, equality, and women’s rights. For my project, I decided to a 3-part blog analysis that is complimented by periodical posts to links of other relevant articles and videos.

As for the subject of my blog, this 3-part blog series will focus primarily on the issue of income inequality between men and women. In particular, the fact that women on average tend to make less money than men. This post actually represents the first of the 3 major blogs. Through these blogs I hope to raise awareness about the issue, get people thinking about their own experiences with gender inequality in the workforce, and, if I do this right, you’ll disagree with some of the points I’ve made and start thinking about your own opinion on the issue.

Before getting into the analysis I have planned for this post, I feel I should take a minute and thank you for simply reading this blog. To those that have been brought here by my spamming on reddit, tumblr, digg, and bloggster, I apologize for the spam and appreciate that you actually clicked on the link. In order for this blog series to have the desired effect of spreading awareness about the gender income gap I have to spread the word however I can.

With all of that out of the way, it’s time to get into the depth of my analysis. To start off, I figure I ought to simply introduce the basic statistics that demonstrate the income gap between men and women. The most common statistic that most of us hear when we are talking about the income gap is that women earn only 78% to each dollar a man earns. What exactly does that mean? Well it means that the average salary of women in the US is 78% of the average salary men receive. The average salary for women in the US is $37,791. The average salary for men in the US is $49,398. The income gap can be broken down more specifically by certain career-related categories as well.

Here’s a breakdown of expected salary for men and women based on education level. For those in the middle of the pack in terms of education (high school, some college, bachelors degree) we see the greatest pay disparity between pay for women and men. And we see a slight increase in pay equality amongst those with higher levels of education (masters, doctorate). It’s not surprising that, amongst those with the most education, we see the greatest equality achieved.

There is also significant variation in pay disparity in different industries. If you’re interested in learning a little more about the specific numbers you can find them here: expected wages of men and women by industry. Overall, we, surprisingly, see the greatest pay equality in the construction industry, an industry that is historically considered male-dominated. If I had to guess why the construction industry had 92% pay equality, it would have to be the domination of unions in that industry. Union tends to ensure greater pay equality across both gender and race.

So how is it that the average salary for men and women came to differ so much? It’s really not that hard to figure out. Anyone that has studied history in the slightest knows that women have played a subservient role to men in nearly every culture throughout history. There are, of course, examples of current and former cultures in which men and women were nearly or completely equal but throughout history most women in western cultures have been expected to remain at home, care for the children, and tend to the domestic responsibilities. (Random side note: in the 1800’s the second leading cause of death amongst women in the US, behind child birth, was burning to death. Women often wore long, heavy petticoats during the time period and the only form of heating was fire places in each room. As women would work throughout their homes, their dresses would often get caught in the coals of the fires. The petticoats were so intricate that it would take too long for women to get the dress off and they would burn to death. Just an interesting fact that I learned in my US History class back in high school) Most of the responsibilities historically relegated to women have rarely put women in a position to earn a salary. Unless you were a maid, no one would pay you to do work around the house.

All that said, substantial improvements have been made in the economic position of women over the last 150 years. Not surprisingly, that advancement in the economic position of women has corresponded to the development of the modern feminist movement.

The greatest advancements in job opportunities for women have come since the 1960’s when the Feminist movement really started to gain national popularity amongst middle and working class women. Through litigation, legislation, and literature, the Feminist movement became one of, if not the, driving force that helped achieve the greatest improvements in workforce and wage equality in the US. Pay equality represents a uniquely important issue for the Feminist movement because of the important role money plays in allowing one to achieve independence. Income equals power which subsequently equals independence. If women wish to be truly equal with men in society, they must first have access to their own equal resources so they can support themselves. As long as women make less than men, they will often be reliant on men in some way and thus won’t be able to achieve true independence.

I’m not talking about some unattainable utopian (Random side note: in its original Latin, the term “utopia” means “world that cannot exist”. Make of that what you will.) future that many skeptics of feminism think feminist are trying to achieve. Critics picture feminists as wanting a world in which women never get married, never have kids, hate all men, and everyone is a penis- loathing lesbian.

No. The sort of improvements I’m talking about are the kind of changes brought about in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed in 2009. The ultimate goal for the Feminist movement, in terms of wage inequality, is for women and men to have equal opportunities to participate in the workface and earn an equal and fair wage. I personally think true equality will have been achieved when women have an average salary within 5% of the average male salary and all superficial barriers to male-dominated industries removed. (I also support the removal of entry barriers to female-dominate industries) The ultimate goal for feminism is that women receive equal pay for equal work.

And I have to agree that that sounds like a great idea.

If you’ve read this far then I applaud and thank you. I’ll be posting a new blog each Friday for the next 2 weeks in which I’ll expand on this issue. I’ll also be posting links to related articles and videos periodically so look out for those posts as well.

My next blog in particular will focus on specific policy options that I believe could help make progress in achieving pay equality. (I’m a double major with a degree in Political Science and Economics so I figured focusing on policy and economic analysis would play to my strengths) I’ll also provide a rather controversial analysis about how difference in average pay for men and women is attributed to other equally-problematic factors aside from different base wages. But I’ll touch on that more next week.

Thanks for reading. This is my first ever blog so I apologize for any mistakes. Have a nice day.