This 5-page paper examines the concept of disparity of wages between men and women, based on the case study "Is discrimination responsible for earnings differences between men and women?" which was written by Francine Siau and Lawrence Kahn.
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for the children, preparing the family meals, cleaning and providing other services for her family. At that time fewer than one in four married women worked outside the home.
That demographic has shifted drastically during the past half-century. For one thing, the labor population of women in the workforce rose from 37.6 percent
in 1960 to 60.9 percent in 2000, according to the case study "Is discrimination responsible for the earning differences between men and women?" written by Francine Siau and Lawrence Kahn.
At the same time, the female/male (F/M) earnings ratio for full-time workers was about 60 percent between 1960 and 1980, although beginning during
the 1980s, womens earnings have increased. Yet women working full-time in 2000 earned only 73.3 as much as their male counterparts did. In
this paper, well examine why the earnings of women tend to be low compared to those of men, based on the above-mentioned case study. Although discrimination seems to be the
most likely source, well examine other options as well. Case Overview According to this case, there is evidence that discrimination is the main
reason for the huge disparity in earnings between men and women. One reason behind this assumption is that women tend to take the lower-paying jobs; until the past two decades
or so, more than half of all women were employed in the occupations of clerical worker, teacher, nurses and food service workers. Yet
Siau and Kahn point out that the idea of discrimination is "less than airtight" when it comes to wages. For one thing, the authors point out, if employers really could