Social justice is defined as the fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons of any ethnicity, gender, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice. It exists when every person shares a common humanity and has equal rights and resources, but that is not the case within the United States in 2016. There are still many people facing discrimination because of their race, gender, religion, appearance, etc., and many of these cases take place in the workplace. Women who work at the same place with the same positions as men are not receiving equal pay compared to the male workers. According to the American Association of University Women, they released a new study that showed when men and women attended the same kind of college, picked the same major and accepted the same kind of job, on average, the woman would still earn 82 cents to every dollar that a man earned. Typically in a year, a woman will receive a salary $10,000 less than a man would working the same job because of their sex. Men and women are both equally capable of working a 40 hour work week or being a stay at home parent and caring for their children. It is unbelievably unjust that someone is penalized for being a certain gender and that a woman could be working as hard as or even harder than a man is and still make less than what he would be making. If people think that we are a country that believes we are ahead of our time, then how come we haven’t achieved the full equal wages?
According to Iris Young, marginalization is the act of relegating or confining a group of people to a lower social standing or outer limit or edge of society. Marginalization does not only mean the restricting of races, but it can also be used to define the inequality and wage gap between men and women. It is obvious how unequal women’s pay is compared to men and how marginalized they are when it comes to having powerful, important female roles and being an intimidation to men in the workplace. The U.S. Labor Market reported that it has recently experienced two dramatic trends: a falling male-female pay gap and a rising level of labor-market inequality. According to Huffpost Women, the time a college educated woman reaches the age of 59, she will have lost almost $800,000 due to the gender wage gap. It is clear that equal pay for both genders will not be seen during this lifetime, but there is somewhat of progress being made. Slowly women are making more than they’ve ever made, except now they are earning an income that men received a decade ago and “[i]n the U.S., the gap stands at 64%, meaning that women earn about two-thirds of what men make for similar work” (CNN Money). Compared to last year’s statistics, the wage gap ranking decreased and the U.S. went from being ranked 64th to 74th out of 145 countries in just a one year difference.
There are Laws and Amendments regarding equal pay, but the gender wage gap still continues to exist, but with updates and strengthening it, equal pay can be achieved faster. When I was younger, my parents worked at the same job, they had the same position, yet my dad made more than my mom did, which as a child I did not understand, and as a young adult I still have yet to understand why there is even a huge wage gap still in the 21st century. My mom brought me to her work a few times as a kid and I noticed how much of a hard worker she was and then I thought about how she was making less and basically being punished because of her gender. Both of my parents are extremely hard working, yet my mom receives a lower income compared to my dad and statistics have shown that if women wanted to ask for a raise from their boss they would be socially looked down upon for wanting equal treatment and pay. This is a form of powerlessness, which “…links to Marx’s theory of socialism: some people “have” power while others “have-not””(Young 2). For example, Harriet Tubman freed many African Americans and wrote that she “would have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves”(Young 2), which connects back to how some women just settle for the lower wages because they feel that they have a job and that is enough as it is, but it is not. Women, who feel that just having the same job as men and are receiving a lower income, are oppressing themselves and are just making it seem like it is perfectly reasonable to have a pay gap within our society.