User:AFDeem/sandbox

Goal of user sandbox:

To edit and expand the information on articles connected to the gender pay gap and how it adds to and comes from the oppression of women.

Articles of interest to connect to the gender pay gap:

Marxist Feminism

Gender Wage Gap

Title VII

The Gender Wage Gap and its Application to Feminist Theory

Gender Wage Gap:

On average, women receive 22-46% less pay than men for working equivalent jobs. Women are paid less not only on the basis of their gender but on the basis of their race. Reports from October 2016 reveal that while white women receive 77 cents to the male dollar, black women receive 63 cents to the male dollar, and on average Latina women receive 55 cents. Workers are protected against sex-based discrimination in the workplace by the Title VII equal pay clause.. Despite this measure of protection that exists to prevent discrimination and abuse in the workplace, most corporations and companies continue discriminatory practices due to the lenient scrutiny that sex-based discrimination cases receive in courts. Sex-based discrimination falls under lenient scrutiny in courts, which equates to the litigants having a 50:50 chance of winning or losing their discrimination case. Strict scrutiny, the evaluation of a law or action to determine if it is fundamentally unconstitutional, is a legal procedure that is practiced by courts in only specific cases of interest. Strict scrutiny is applied to cases of discrimination if and only if they apply to race, religion, national origin, alienage, and poverty and has not been applied to cases of sexual discrimination; instead, lenient scrutiny is the established mode of action. As a result of the practice of lenient scrutiny, larger corporations and companies gain more economically by continuing practices of discrimination than they do if they follow the regulations established by the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The levels of scrutiny were introduced in 1938 in a supreme court decision in the case United States v. Carolene Products co and continue to have an effect on the legal proceedings of discrimination cases.

Among recent cases of discrimination brought to court was the class action suit against Walmart in 2001. This class action suit faced eventual dismissal because it required the women who experienced discrimination to prove the intent of Walmart to discriminate on the basis of sex in each individual case. This set the precedence for discrimination cases to require women to prove their cases of discrimination as the deliberate intention of the companies for which they work. Proof of intent is required by litigants in order to bring a case of gender discrimination in the workplace forward to court and the lack of constitutional protection or legal defense practices for women allows for the dismissal and mishandling of such cases. The gender pay gap is thus shown to be supported by the same systems of state and federal regulations originally established for the purpose of preventing discrimination.

Equal protection under the law is the goal of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The Equal Rights Amendment has been brought to congress every congressional session since 1982, yet equal rights on the basis of sex  are not currently provided or protected in the United States .Women are not protected in cases of discrimination despite the presence of both Title VII, Title IX, and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Judicial decisions regarding cases that fall under application of protection provided by Title VII and Title IX have shown a history of dismissal which some argue is due to the lack of explicit protection of women written in the Constitution. The lack of equal protection in the domain of the workplace allows for the distinctive gender wage gap to exist between men and women.

The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed solution to the gender wage gap, a solution which has been received by different theories and theorists to varying levels of agreement and disagreement. The topic of the ender wage gap is understood differently by different feminist theories. Marxist, Radical, and Liberal feminisms, for example, propose different solutions to the gender wage gap.

Marxist Feminism and the Gender Wage Gap:

According to the Marxist feminist standpoint, the source of women's oppression is their unwaged labor in the household and the systematic use of gender as the basis for the division of labor. The current division of labor relies on the subjugation of women by associating women primarily with reproductive labor and other forms of labor secondary to this. Women's labor is considered reproductive labor, and any form of labor that falls under the category of household management, child reproduction, and childcare receives the label of reproductive labor. Women are associated with reproductive labor and men are associated with productive labor; by its very distinction men's work became understood at the advent of the twentieth century as productive labor while women's labor is not. By labeling women's work as meaningless or undeserving of male labor, women's labor is categorized as not being work and treated as such in laws and regulations; as a result of minimizing the importance of female labor, women are paid less. When employed in the same position as men and with the same number of years of experience, women receive less pay for the same jobs. A Marxist Feminist perspective argues this same process causes Women's oppression.

The ERA would not support the Marxist feminist ideal of re-working the way that society is structured to remove the centrality of capitalism and the distinction between the working class and the upper class; it would prevent the use of female labor as a basis for capitalist benefit. Equal rights under the constitution formulates a defense against the established principles in legal proceedings which propagate gender discrimination in the workforce and removes the groundwork for the use and abuse of female labor.

A possible solution to the gender wage gap that has been proposed by Marxist feminists includes the wages for housework movement which provides equal pay for the reproductive labor performed in the household. This proposal serves the purpose of minimizing the difference between productive and reproductive labor by categorizing reproductive labor as waged work. While wages for housework do not end the division of labor, they provide an opportunity for the basis of gendered work discrimination to be altered. Classifying reproductive labor as waged labor would therefore lead to all of women's labor and reproductive labor to be considered productive.

Radical Feminism and the Gender Wage Gap:

Radical feminist standpoints locate the source of women's oppression in the sex/gender system supported by the existence of the patriarchy. Sexuality and gender expression in a male-dominated society, according to radical feminists, perpetuates violence and oppression of women. Existing social norms and institutions rely on systems of supremacy and hierarchies which create an inherent oppressed class. The presence of a gender system that creates the male gender to be superior to the female gender therefore is the root cause of power structures that combine to cause economic, social, and political inequality between genders. In order to eliminate the gender wage gap, therefore, the radical feminist perspective requires the elimination of the system of gender and its related institutions.

Radical feminist responses hold the gender wage gap to be evidence of the problematic system of gender. The wage gap places men higher in status than women, decreasing the status of women through direct economic means. Lower net salaries of women place women in a different class than men and the arguments made to fight for a higher salary are shut down by this fabricated status difference. Compounding oppressions that occur due to the intersection of race and gender illuminate the process by which subordinate groups are used to support the systems of supremacy and create status differences among people. Women are paid unequally to varied degrees depending on their race, formulating an additional hierarchy among different races of women. Asian American women are paid 90% of what their white male colleagues are, white women 76%, African American women 62%, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander women 60%, American Indian and Alaskan Native women 58%, and Hispanic or Latina women 54%. Variations in the severity of the wage gap highlight how decreased pay for one group of women can be used by businesses and corporations to decrease the pay for other groups. By addressing the hierarchy in pay, Radical feminists therefore highlight the initial process of creating the hierarchy.

Addition of the ERA would serve the purpose of reducing the legal means by which the wage gap is allowed to exist. Current standards and limitations set by Title VII do not operate to prevent wage discrimination, and while radical feminists typically do not support systems which rely on the continuation of the gender binary, addition of the ERA would provide assistance to remove hierarchies created by the existent policies. An ERA edited to include equal protection regardless of gender or sex would address the issue of the binary and remove the essentialist language implicit in the Constitution and Title VII.

Liberal Feminism and the Gender Wage Gap:

Liberal feminists locate the source of women’s oppression in the restrictions that society places on women’s abilities to make their own choices. Women are discriminated against in the workplace, the academy, and in legal decisions and these discriminatory forces combine to remove their freedom of choice and action. Law supports the dominant male ideology that women and men have different roles in society and in the workplace, which gives legal justification for the existence of the gender wage gap. The solution to the oppression that women face therefore, lies in political and social reform that prevents the observed discrimination.

Social and legal reform are tools that are used to dismantle female oppression. Among the issues that liberal feminists have fought for include: the right for women to control their own wages, the right to custody in the case of a divorce, the equal rights to education and equal opportunities for higher education. Liberal feminists have additionally fought for issues including abortion and equal pay. The main focus of liberal feminists in attending to social reform and legal reform is to address regulations that control the ability of the individual to make their own choices about their bodies and actions.

The ERA is a proposed solution by liberal feminist for the discrimination that women face in the United States. Liberal feminists claim that by instituting a formal equality between men and women, discrimination cannot occur legally or institutionally. Regulations that would follow from the ERA would promote female autonomy and freedom through laws that allow for reproductive choice and sexual freedom. According to the liberal feminist standpoint, adoption of the ERA would therefore provide the legal measures required to remove the established inequality between the genders. Social and political reform measures have the potential to come from legal guidelines, which would therefore eliminate inequality in the sense of social, political, and judicial status.