I believe that women and men should have equal pay. With men and women getting payed an unequal wage, it is unfair for independent women to struggle by themselves trying to pay for essentials while men have it easy by earning at least $10,000 more than women. With men and women getting unequal pay, it makes it harder on women to survive in this economy. With equal pay, men and women would not be discriminated in subtle ways. We know that women are not payed in equal wage for at least another two or three generations or less. 

Idea of Gender Roles

Throughout history, men and women have not been put on a scale where they are seen eye to eye. Men have always been above women and have kept women beneath men. Women are rarely seen as a sign of power who have a strong influence on other women. Especially in the workplace, men and women are not placed on an equal level. For example, men are thought of as a higher authority compared to women, which concludes that men should make more than women. Through the media involving men and women, men are always taller than the women and do not pay attention to the women in order to show that they have the higher authority. In Cynthia J. Crawford's, Gendered Projects of Solidarity: Workplace Organizing among Immigrant Women and Men, "Workers' forms of resistance also shaped work organization" (Crawford). At the time Crawford mentioned this, she was saying how a union was formed to go against the gender inequality and results showed where supervisors were open to mixing up gender labor.

Gender Inequality in the Workplace

By International Labour Organization
http://www.ilo.org/washington/areas/gender-equality-in-the-workplace/WCMS_159496/lang--en/index.htm

This article gives a general break down of where women are employed, low wage household, and Women & Corporations. 

According to ILO, "In 2010, there were approximately 65 million women in the labor force and 53 percent of these women were concentrated in three industries: (1) education and health services,(2) trade, transportation and utilities and (3) local government (BLS 2011a)."
It was very interesting to see this statistic because it does follow a gender role of women who do not take participate in work where it requires physical labor.


Next, according to ILO, "the low-wage single mother households would be well below the poverty level of $22,314 (or $10.73 per hour, full-time) for a family of four (GAO 2011).."
The income of the $22,314 is extremely low. Normally, an average income is nearly $100,00 or more with a family of two adults and two children. With only $22,314, it is amazing to see someone survive with such little money seeing that a person who works full-time at $10.73 per hour is earning about $860. With that much money per month, most of it goes towards to housing, food, and gas if a car is involved.

Lastly, according to ILO, "In terms of women in leadership positions, in 2009 only 24 percent of CEOs in the US were women and they earned 74.5 percent as much as male CEOs (BLS 2010 p.9)."
The statement clearly states that women are making their way up the branch and are earning more and more money every year. 

According to the Student Newspaper of The University of Northern Iowa

By Madion McKone
http://www.northern-iowan.org/women-face-bias-and-inequality-in-the-workplace-1.2844875#.Up9Ly8RDuSp

Louisa May Alcott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are activists who work around the clock to ensure that women are equally treated to men. According to McKone, the latest date from Eurostat determined that in places such as Germany, Austria, and Estonia, male employees were making as much as 27.3 percent per hour more than female employees.

I believe that if a factor of skill level or experience are added into the equation, it would make sense why there would be a different. On the other hand, if men and women have a background nearly exact, the pay should not be different. By having an unequal pay grade, it forces one gender, in this case women, to struggle with everyday life troubles such as paying bills, paying for rent, food, phone bill, and other things that one would need. With an equal pay grade, it allows couples who live together to be more successful  with the life style. 

Is it that bad if women get paid a little more to become equal to men?
What do you think should happen for pay grade between men and women?

"How Can We Jump-Start the Struggle for Gender Equality?"

By Philip N. Cohen
The New York Times - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/how-can-we-jump-start-the-struggle-for-gender-equality/?_r=1

The equality difference between men and women have increasingly become almost "fair". As you can see from the image presented, every decade, the lines on the graph are slowly coming towards the center. The article from the link above supports equality between men and women. It points out all of the gender rolls that were followed during the 1960s and 1970s, but it also points out what has changed during the last decade.