In many fields of work life, it is obvious that a woman earns less than a man even though both has similar maybe even same skills and experiences. Having said that they share same attributes in work, what causes such difference between women and men? Is it reasonable or only a result of gender discrimination? I want to start with the reason for me to choose this topic. Short time ago, about a week, a girl named Pınar Gültekin is being murdered brutally by her ex boyfriend in Turkey. This upsetting event triggered many Turkish people to strive for equal rights, unite against discrimination and abuse and of course to reprobate physical and mental violance against women. Being devastatingly affected by the murder of Pınar Gültekin, I started to think about the root causes of such violance against women and from my research I ended up with that:
In general, men feel superior to women and this feeling of superiority provoke men to “do whatever they want against women” including violance or abuse without questioning or emphatsizing.
I call this situation “slavery effect” since in many situations women are pushed to serve as a slave of men. Think stereotype Turkish family for a second; a mother doing housework, raising child, maybe going to work and a father who has only purpose of going to work. In such cases, many man starts to see her wife as a servant since he perceives the money he earns for his family as a salary for his servant, who is his wife in reality. For unmarried couples, again men generally behave instinctly willing to foot the bill, do you ever think what is the reason for that? I have theories but I want to share them in my next post and for this post I will just say men, in general, trying to practice their superiority by hindering women’s economic independence or simply by having more economic power in relationship. This brings me to a conclusion that men’s feeling of superiority against women can be one of the reasons for the violance against women. So what should we do? Find the roots of this superiority and get rid of them immediately. Of course this topic is really broad so to narrow it down i think it is good to focus on salaries where equally qualified woman is paid less than man since i believe it illustrates why men tend to feel “superior” against women.
Difference in educational attainment: Although educational difference between women and men has been decreasing among young generation, in developing countries the gap is still far from filling and this plays an important role in gender earning differences. From my point of view, this means whenever a girl dropped out school, another woman loses her life due to vioalence or abuse.
Wage penalty for motherhood: In Turkey working mothers have common vision of “I will have a child and career both”, apparently this does not mean that they do not take break during their careers or switch to lower paid positions since it is more flexible. This situation results for women with children to earn less then a women without a children or men, regarded as motherhood penalty.
The year is 2020 and we are STILL talking about discrimination: Even though we exclude mother-hood effect or education and so on , we can still observe a gap, so called controlled pay gap which i believe caused by sexism, stereotyping and implicit biases in both earning and promotion opportunities. One example can be that as a succesful and newlywed woman in your 30’s you might waiting for a promotion from your boss, however, your boss might think it is not strategical to promote you since you will become pregnant soon and take a break.
Taking those points into consideration, I can say that being woman is not easy both in work place or in relationships and it is not likely that it will be in a near future. However, it is crucial to understand that all of this points, violance to woman and unfair gender pay gap is related with each other. Actually they are not only related with each other but also go round in circles. Imaine a family in which male children are given priority and supported through their education but female ones are motivated for being housewife or stay-at-home mom, the difference between education level is increased and leads difference in future salaries. When these children grow up, and female ones become economically dependent to their husbands or boyfriends, they become the victims of the murders or abuses that we see everyday in the news. Therefore,
Families should know that the next time they discriminate against their female children by not supporting their education and career, they become one of the murderers of the women who are killed by men.
Firms should know that, the next time they pay less to their female workers, they too become responsible for the deaths of women
Of course, Governments should know that it is their responsibility to provide gender equity by policies and legal protections when both families and firms failed to do so.
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