Gender Inequality: Employment

According to the 2004 United States Census, about 70 percent of women are employed in the labor force. This factor alone suggests that our country is moving towards egalitarian gender norms. However, much gender stratification still occurs.

Occupational stratification is a huge indicator of gender stratification. Women still hold a small portion of high prestige, high paying jobs. Women are still dominating nursing and teaching fields, while men continue to become engineers and physicians (United States Census, 2004.) And even if women do pursue careers in high prestige, high paying areas, they are likely to be paid less than men and have fewer promotional opportunities (Beeghley, Leonard. The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States.) Women make about 77 percent of what men make in similar positions (Beeghley.)

Of course, there are other factors to why women make less than men besides simple gender discrimination. Married women are more likely to follow their spouse, when opportunity arises for him to move up in his career. Traditional gender roles also reinforce the idea that women should be the main child-rearing parent. An option for many working mothers is to only work part-time, in positions that are not geared towards advancement.

At the University of South Carolina in Columbia, there are 11,245 female degree seeking undergraduates and 9,786 male degree seeking undergraduates (USC Office for Institutional Assessment and Compliance.) While I have been at student here, we have had three male student body presidents and one female student body president. Do we inadvertently correlate males with leadership? I hardly ever see males walking around in the red USC scrubs that signal nursing student. Are we just a modicum version of the labor force? Will females and males ever be relatively equal in the labor force?