Feminism Essay Example: Hiring Discrimination and Gender Pay Gap

Question 1.

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Before the rise of capitalism and industry, women were responsible for determining what the family will eat and the amount of food they will eat. They controlled several of the issues related to household including intricate matters such as the clothes the children will wear by knitting clothes using their hands. A woman would plant vegetables, tend to the animals on the farm to ensure that her family lived well (Gottfried, 2013). The introduction of industry meant that the one who went to work in the factory or company played the most important role because the world moved away from subsistence farming to depending on mass production. Women continued with some of the functions but they carried little weight in terms of the value they added to the economy. As a result, women became confined to the home, a private space as the husband moved to a public space. The rise of capitalism, industry and cities therefore defined public space as a man's domain and private space as a woman's domain by confining women to households. Specifcally, women had less rights on work and civility thus leading to their reduced roles (Cudd, 2016). Families, moved to cities there were no farms on which women could till. So they moved from provider to homemaker. The men went to look for employment in the public sphere such as industries. As for the needs of the family, the rise of industry meant it became cheaper to buy than to make your own food hence further reducing the role of a woman and confining her in the private sphere.

Question 2.

According to Gottfried (2017), the generation of value happens on the exchange of goods and services in for money at the market. In contemporary society, a role or an action is only valuable at the time of exchange for money. Such a notion is a problem because many functions go into the production of a good or a service. These roles usually that go unpaid. These roles enhance the conditions necessary for the productions of the goods and services (Cudd, 2016). Women fulfill most of these functions. Functions such as emotional and physical care, feeding, clothing, teaching are all absent at the point of reward. As a result, the roles fulfilled by women in ensuring the value production, go unrewarded in the contemporary economy. As the introduction, of industry and capitalism entered the modern world, women became sidelined to accomplishing background roles. Gottfried (2017) argues that these subsets of reproductive are necessary for the productivity of workers in the labor market. The workers need effective relations, nurturance, and healing to enhance their labor capabilities. Therefore, these background roles are an important part of the economy. The current system of generating value in the economy places women in a difficult position because their counterparts control the political economy and social economy which limits their participation in the labor market. Therefore, they had to take up the background roles to contribute to the economy. However, the mode of value generation in the modern economy does not allow them to be rewarded or gain value for their work.

Question 3.

The social geographical framework utilizes four main concepts: space, territory, place and scale. The framework unpacks the dynamics of the global economy using the four concepts. Gottfried (2017) explains, this concept using some example. The dynamics of the global economy demands families to have domestic workers. Within these families there is some intimate geography of power such as the relationship between the mistress and domestic worker. There are also some power relations enacted in a single place such as the dining room is the place where the family seat and eats. Such areas exclude domestic workers to other areas of the house such as the kitchen. The kitchen by power relations becomes a place of work or site of production. On the other hand, the servant quarters is detached from the house. The servant quarters even has a different entrance and exit separate from the one used by the rest of the family. On a city scale, a new geography of power emerges because of loss of space to separate domestic quarters hence crowding people into dense cityscapes. The dynamics of power relations change as fewer domestic workers live with their employers. The domestic sphere is feminized and devalued. The spaces associated with women lose their value and become isolated from the rest of the spaces. The same value that the society accords to these spaces, they also give to the people that occupy them. Therefore the dynamics of the global economy have influenced the dynamics of power in the homestead through the domestic worker.

Question 4.

Segregation is certainly to blame for the pay difference that exists between men and women. However segregation is just one of the factors that cause the pay gap. Gottfried (2017) proposes two explanations to make sense of the pay gap that exists between men and women. There are the supply side arguments and the demand side arguments. The supply side arguments propose the human capital theory which looks at the skills and characteristics that dictate the productivity of workers. One argument for the pay gap is that women tend to occupy jobs that require fewer qualifications than their male counterparts (Cudd, 2016). Most women will have a lower human capital because they left the labor market to take care of their children or reduced their working hours to tend to the children. However, the human capital theory does not give a full explanation for the pay gap. For example, the theory does not explain the reason why women with the same qualification as men, earn less than their male counterpart. It does not say the reason why women with the same labor attachment as men still earn less than their male counterparts. The theory also doesn't acknowledge domestic value. According to the theory, the domestic value does not contribute to the value of a person's human capital. By default, the theory discredits the economic invisibility of domestic value; such that the functions that women accomplish do not contribute to the overall building of the economy. As a result, the demand-side arguments proposed that the reason for the pay gap is the discrimination that women face while applying for traditional male occupations. The hiring discrimination causes them to crowd in female-typed jobs which lower the wages for such type of jobs (Cudd, 2016). Men who occupy such roles suffer wage penalties because employers would often lower the wage for such kind of jobs. The same scenario plays out in the economic structure which is divided into primary and secondary labor structures. For the primary segment, it has jobs that have high wages and has greater demands while the secondary segment has low paying jobs. Jobs in the secondary segment have few demands which cause many people to apply for them. Therefore the employers lower the wages for these types of jobs hence causing the gap between rich and poor (Gottfried, 2013).

References

Cudd. E. A. (2016). Is Capitalism good for Women? Kansas: University of Kansas Print.

Gottfried, H. (2013). An Integrative Framework for the Study of Gender, Work and Economy. In H. Gottfried, Gender, Work, and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy (1st ed., pp. 44-49). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity.