Really Rough Draft

One major part of history has been the uphill battle women have
faced in gaining just as many rights as men. One issue women still face
today is equal pay. Women are still getting paid less than men for
doing the exact same job. The sad thing is that some people are still
arguing this is the way it should be. Women receive wage penalties for
things such as the possibility of an unpredicted pregnancy or for
having children. Women can be just as, or even more, capable of doing
a job than a man but gender stereotypes still get in the way. Women
have recognized this problem and are working on ways to fix it. Equal
pay is something still highly discussed in todays society, as it should
be, though no one has fully fixed it.
Women have always had the stereotype as being too
emotional to hold leadership positions. The article Gender and
Leadership in Healthcare Administration says that women are more
likely to be charismatic leaders, meaning they are more motivating and
try to inspire as opposed to monitoring and correcting employees like
men would. For these reasons, women are put less in leadership
positions and when they are they still get paid less.
Another reason a company is less willing to pay women equal
pay is the family responsibilities women feel. Women with families are
less likely to spend extra time outside of the normal workweek to
engage in socializing, network building, and accumulating social
capital essential to successful career progression (Gender and
Leadership in Healthcare Administration).
Along with family responsibilities, childbearing is a penalty
companies use to pay women less. It is supported by the idea that
childbearing interrupts their career, possibly during critical times.
Another reason companies give women less is because it is said that
children will hinder their opportunity to take full advantage of all the
employer has to offer. A child will keep women from fully dedicating
herself to a job (The Timing of Childbearing and Womens Wages, 1008,
1009). While this argument may be somewhat valid, why do men not
receive the same wage penalty?
Women have made lots of progress in this department, even
though it remains an issue. From 1978-1998 womens pay went up by
$1.18 for full time hourly workers compared to mens only going up
$.74 (Gender Differences in Pay). While womens pay increased at a
more rapid pace than mens, the gap still remained. In 1978 men
averaged making $4.85 more than women, though this slowly
decreased going down to $3.26 in 1998 (Gender Differences in Pay).
One thing that women have done to help change this wage
difference is they received higher education and training. Jenifer HamilLuker did a study on womens wages, but instead of comparing women

to men, she compared women to each other. One big thing she looked
at was what kind of education and previous training each woman had
for their job. She found that women with higher levels of education in
young adulthood were the most likely to participate in training
opportunities over time and experienced the greatest average wage
growth (Womens Wages: Cohort Differences in Returns to Education
and Training Over Time).
In recent society, the salary gap in healthcare management has
not changed at all. In 1990 men earned 18 percent more than women
and that statistic remained the same in 2006. In that same year, 29
percent of women also said they did not receive fair compensation for
gender (Gender and Leadership in Healthcare Administration). In
2006, women in healthcare administration on average receive almost
forty thousand dollars less than men when both hold a CEO position.
While this is true, women have also said that they actually prefer men
in leadership positions and dont think they are under represented in
companies (Gender and Leadership in Healthcare Management).
Although some women think this, this does not mean that no women
should get involved
Women have had to work for their rights. Nothing was handed to
them, unlike men, and even today it is still an uphill battle. While
stereotypes contribute to this, women are working hard to break this
and become equal not only in pay but in leadership. Equal pay is still a
topic discussed in elections and everyday society and is a continuous
problem women are fighting for. Going into the healthcare
administration field, I would like to help break this stereotype for
women. I hope to one-day hold a leadership position, which may be an
uphill battle but one I am ready to face. Though I am not a super
feminist, I do think women deserve to have all the same rights as men,
including making the same salary for the same position.

References:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/354020?
Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=women&searchText=w
ages&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dwomen
%2Bwages%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp
%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bgroup
%3Dnone&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents
http://www.jstor.org/stable/42956035?
Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=women&searchText=w
ages&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dwomen
%2Bwages%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp
%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bgroup
%3Dnone&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7732.pdf
http://www.biomedsearch.com/article/Gender-leadership-in-healthcareadministration/186268972.html