What are some social/historical reasons women's work and low wages connect?

Question

last essay question for this assignment!

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In a book written in 1998-2000, a women comes across low-income workers, most of which are women. What are the social/historical reasons for this?

Answer 1

in america, one reason is that women are usually not as dedicated to their job or career as men are.

in america anyway, if women did the same work as men did but received less money for doing it, then it would be very hard for a man to get a job.

Answer 2

Most of the women workers are paid less compared to their male counterpart. some of the reasons are the qualification , women tend to choose service jobs even if they are qualified. once they choose the job which does not fit to the qualification they are paid less as it is considered that they will contribute less than the other qualified and experienced ones. which again lead to deteroration of their skills.

most of the waged jobs demand much more productivity levels than other salaried jobs. so most women tend to be less productive and they take much more time to do a certain work than the male. so that shows in the over all productivity .

important factor for low paid women work force is s*x discrimination. they are not promoted as the males.

women have to take breakes very often for family and kids, which is considered as a liability. they often wont get promoted , and the cost of the company to hire temprary workers in place of them will cost much more. and they have to pay for maternity leave too. so most of the firms consider younger women more as a liability than an asset.

women also tend to choose lower paying jobs as they get enough time for their family and kids. and they often choose to have part time jobs .

Answer 3

Women tend to choose professions that are lower paying to begin with although this is changing as more women are entering what were once male dominated careers.  Also, women tend to value money less than men.  When men make career choices they tend to look at how it will affect them financially whereas women look more into how it will affect their social and family lives.  Also, women generally undervalue the nature of their work, which means they are less likely to demand raises.  Sexism does have a part, but not nearly as large a part as everyone would lead you to believe.

P.S. this is a general question, so i gave a general answer, i'm not talking about every individual woman out there

Answer 4

If one goes back far enough in history, to the hunting/gathering societies, they will see that it was women who held the most important jobs and the most important positions in society.  Men hunted, but this was not the primary source of food; women tended the fields, bringing in what was considered the primary source of food.  A bad hunt, or a bad hunting season would yield little food, and in these cases when men were not hunting, they would look after the children and do chores around the house, all of which is today considered "woman's work."  In fact, women were so important that family lines were traced through the mother's lineage, not the father's.    

So what happened?  As societies changed and developed, with the domestication of animals and new developments in agriculture, men began to move away from hunting and began to take on what were once considered women's roles working in the fields.  Private property began to develop for the first time, as more people began to acquire goods, such as cattle.  Since the men were now the ones working in the fields, they owned this proper and they wanted to ensure that this property would stay within their family.  This required a change in the method of tracing a child's lineage; with the development of private property, children now inherited goods or property, not from the mother, but from the father.  The father also needed to make sure that his children were in fact his.  In the past, this was not an important issue.  In many societies, every child looked at every man as father and every woman as mother.  The monogamous marriage developed, to ensure that a woman was faithful to the man.  However, this monogamy has always been monogamy for the woman only, as even today a man who sleeps with many women is considered something of a hero, while a woman who sleeps with many men is considered a w***e.  This change in the role of the genders and this change in the relationship of marriage, turned women into servants.  Their role became that of someone whose importance was kept in the home, not to be seen or heard in public.  This is partly due to the ability to have children as well.  Instead of being revered for this, men have turned childbirth into a liability, often forcing women to stay home or forcing women out of work if they become pregnant.    

Of course, this should and must be changed, but it has been very slow to achieve.  The ultimate reason is private property.  If women can become bread winners, without the aid of men, this takes private property and money out of the hands of the wealthy men who control society.  That is why women's wages are kept lower then men's, in order to maintain man's dominance over woman so that private property can be held by a few, instead of enjoyed and shared by all who have a hand in producing it and using it.      

Ryan G's extremely sexist answer proves what I have just described.  Somehow, women are not allowed to have careers because family is a liability.  It is pure drivel.

Robert G's answer is equally stupid and sexist.  Women are often caught in a catch 22, they must work hard to balance a family and a career, but when they must focus on the family, for whatever reason, they are told they don't work as hard as men.  It is a simple trick to prevent women from even entering the work place.  It does not take a genius to figure that out.  

Jeff in dallas' answer is not only incredibly stupid, but lacks any historical support whatsoever.