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Disparity of Wages Between Men and Women Before & After War Paper

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The Disparity of Minimum Wages between Men and Women before the War, after the War and
Within the Past Few Years
Introduction
Marc Linder (54), a professor of law at the University of Iowa and a strong proponent of
migrants’ workers argue strongly that “Doubling the minimum wage would help farm workers
enormously”. His argument is based on several indicators which show that despite the
agricultural sector experiencing a tremendous growth in output and sales particularly due to the
rise of mega-groceries like Wal-Mart and Amazon, farmworkers are the poorest workers in
America. This is because they are among the lowly paid and highly exploited laborers. The
challenge is that compensation is often based on a piece rate system rather than the clock, hence,
since one is paid by the number of buckets they pick or package, chances of being paid less than
that particular state minimum wage is quite high (Bo, Rask, and Stenberg 607). As a result, more
than half of documented worker earn below $7,500 each year such that half of the families
survive on not more than $10,000 per year (U.S. Department of Labor 4). Furthermore, many
farm-workers are day laborers; hence their rate of earning is dependent on variable conditions
like seasonal demand, natural disasters and weather. They often have to relocate in pursuit of the
latest planting or harvesting opportunity. However, the real challenge is the high discrepancy in
the wage gap between male and females. It is estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau that women
still earn around 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn (Chenevert and Hoffman
6). This gap is wider within the immigrant and minority groups whereby African-American
women earn only 69 cents for every dollar their male counterpart earns, and Latino women get
only 58 cents (Chenevert and Hoffman 6). This implies that having a decent home, meal or
sustaining kids is a challenge as most of them end up living in shared trailers.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the disparity between minimum wages between
men and women. The paper will examine the disparity before and during World War 1 and 2,
after the two wars and within the past few years.
Discussion

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Before The World War 1 And 2
The gender pay disparity can be traced back to the US civil war whereby despite women
taking up similar positions that were held by men before the war, they were paid less. For
instance, between the civil war years and 1912, states that were better off economically like
Massachusetts had industries that paid women between 5-7 dollars a week but only on the
condition that they work for at least 50 hours a week (Costa 102). This was quite low and
exploitative since the cost of living was around $10 per week for just a single woman and $8 for
married women. The rate of remuneration was so bad that 36 % of workers specifically those
working in the mills died before reaching age 25 (Magazine and Kreiser 1). Hence, in 1912
Massachusetts became the first state to initiate a minimum wage legal provision. The problem
with such a provision is that it was created not to necessarily help women economically and
career-wise but was some sort of reaction by the establishment regarding the increasing social
impact of low wages on young girls like prostitution (Costa 1289). Such provisions did not have
enforcement organs or a standard wage. Instead, they created panels whose task was to study
complaints with the only penalty being the publishing of guilty employers’ names on local
newspapers. In what is referred to as glass ceiling minimum wage inequality, the wage gap
between men and women was not due to job-relevant characteristics of the then organizations but
due to open discrimination against women, especially since they replaced the men that fought
and died during the civil war and were thus doing similar functions (Mutari et al 10 ). Secondly,
the gap represented a gender difference that was greater at higher levels of result than at lower
points of the job outcomes. The assumption was that women made a good source of cheap labor
and that it was not beneficial to invest in them much like in men since women would always
agree to labor for less and would halt working once they are married or have kids. Women could
not even get promotions and those that were in positions similar to other men got much lower
wages (Nash et al 673).
During WWI, there was an unprecedented recruitment of women into the workforce. In
particular, the use of conscription from 1916 increased the number of women workforce from the
factories to munitions plants to farms to financial services. Nevertheless, they received lower
minimum wages as compared to their male counterparts. While men earned at least 40 cents per
hour, females earned only 25 cents per hour (Sagert 54). Hence, even though women comprised
over 45% of labor-force, they represented over 90% of workers earning below the then average

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Surname 1 Name: Course: Tutor: Date: The Disparity of Minimum Wages between Men and Women before the War, after the War and Within the Past Few Years Introduction Marc Linder (54), a professor of law at the University of Iowa and a strong proponent of migrants’ workers argue strongly that “Doubling the minimum wage would help farm workers enormously”. His argument is based on several indicators which show that despite the agricultural sector experiencing a tremendous growth in output and sales particularly due to the rise of mega-groceries like Wal-Mart and Amazon, farmworkers are the poorest workers in America. This is because they are among the lowly paid and highly exploited laborers. The challenge is that compensation is often based on a piece rate system rather than the clock, hence, since one is paid by the number of buckets they pick or package, chances of being paid less than that particular state minimum wage is quite high (Bo, Rask, and Stenberg 607). As a result, more than half of documented worker earn below $7,500 each year such that half of the families survive on not more than $10,000 per year (U.S. Department of Labor 4). Furthermore, many farm-workers are day laborers; hence their rate of earning is dependent on variable conditions like seasonal demand, natural disasters and weather. They often have to relocate in pursuit of the latest planting or harvesting opportunity. However, the real challenge is the high discrepancy in the wage gap between male a ...
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