The Cost of Career: A Woman’s Dilemma of Pay or Passion
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2018/11/28/pay-gap
Collegeceunsus.com recently posted a list of the highest paying jobs for women in 2019. Choosing a career path as a female is an already difficult task without taking into account the gap in pay from their male counterparts. Young boys are encouraged to work in business or construction or something “manly” whereas women are pushed towards the more caring fields such as nursing or teaching. However, in 2019 not all women yearn to nurture. We enjoy “getting our hands dirty” and we have ambitions of being the boss. Yet we are deterred from these fields because they are male dominated, require more work for a woman to come on top, and supply women a much smaller pay than men. The issue of gender pay gap is not simply an issue regarding pay. The gender pay gap grows from the sexist division of work in our country and the fields that have male dominance so ingrained in them that it is an enormous struggle for women to thrive. Women breaking into these male dominated fields and gaining power positions will undoubtedly shrink the gender pay gap.
Pay disparity greatly differs through the career paths chosen by women. From the very beginning of women in the work place, fields that women have flocked to, and been ushered toward, have received pay cuts. Women in counseling stand to make 99% of that made by a man while female physicians stand to make 71% of a male’s salary. However, male dominated fields that women happened to work in were not affected. These fields retain their high wages but put glass ceilings in place that restrict women from attaining growth. As of 2017, only 16% of financial advisers were made up by women. This lack of female representation in the career field has led it to hold the biggest pay disparity with women at a measly 58% of earnings of men. A career so completely dominated by men creates an environment with only men making decisions. The long standing “boys’ club” of the financial sector gravitate toward other male employees when considering raises and promotions. Inserting women into this dynamic leads to more opportunity for other women in these fields.
As a woman entering a traditionally male dominated field, I understand the trepidation that accompanies making this decision. I once took a calculus class where only six of the thirty students were female. I have witnessed in this small, insignificant setting how the majority flocks together. It is inevitable that most men lift each other up before considering a woman for the same position. Women in power positions have the potential to influence the fate of other women. The dynamic of women lifting women just as men traditionally do is dire for the shrinking of the gender pay gap.
Many say that a woman’s choice in career should not affect their expectant pay, and I would agree that it should not, but this is simply not the reality of the world. The options presented to women are join a field where there is potential to earn the same as a man or join a field where you must work three times as hard to earn half of your male coworker’s wage. While this is not fair and is frankly insulting, it is the reality of life. However, women putting in the extra work and gaining positions of power will make it possible to hire other women and raise them up and eventually leave the gender pay gap behind us. Should closing the gender pay gap fall solely on women? Obviously not, but as Isabel Allande once said, “a man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.”
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Newspaperlessness 
Your opinions are strong, but can be said in a much shorter editorial. Your words are informative and persuasive, yet a bit redundant. I think if you cut back the redundancy in attempt to try and make it more persuasive, you would actually come off as more influential. Also, you should add a thesis and add more opinion than fact. That being said, I think your editorial is really strong and you have a really great potential to make something very influential!
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This Writing had some very strong points within it, but when I first started reading it I noticed that I could not find a thesis in the writing. I believe that if MP personalizes her writing more and talks about personal instances since she is a women would greatly improve her writing. I would suggest that she specifically personalizes the first paragraph and connects some of her strong points to her life, or she can edit her third paragraph and move it to the beginning of her writing. This piece of writing is very strong but can be improved.
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This was a very strong piece of writing and I see what the author was trying to accomplish. They didn’t make their thesis bold so I couldn’t really see if they accomplished what they wanted to, but I can assume so. But the reader shouldn’t have to assume, the writer should guide them to the answer. I think the first paragraph could use some personalizing just to get the reader to a. know exactly why this makes you passionate about your writing and b. to add some character to the argument. Overall, this was a good piece but there is room for improvement.
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This is good but there is no thesis so it was difficult to understand where you were going with this. Stated more facts than your own opinion.
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I think MPSJ could benefit from personalizing her Op-Ed in the first paragraph. She mentions the majority of males in her calculus class later on but maybe another example early on can explore people’s emotions and make it more relatable. Being specific about her field of study would also help to make the Op-Ed more personal and feel for the author. I really enjoyed reading this article and gaining MPSJ’s perspective.
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MP, I’m doing a quick round of feedback this morning to get the revision ball rolling. Feel free to put your post back into Feedback Please if you want more reactions or a different sort of feedback.
MP, I read your introduction hoping to find your thesis and did not. Same story for the second paragraph. Interesting material, yes, but no thesis. The third paragraph gave me hope that your personal story might illuminate how your own decisions might mirror those of other women, or whether you had perhaps chosen to buck a trend. But I’m not sure still. And your conclusion didn’t clarify things for me either.
Maybe your classmates will offer feedback on this aspect of your work that will guide you to a stronger statement of the ethical imperative you wish to promote.
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I have shifted the focus of my Op-Ed and was wondering if I could have feedback on the structure of my feedback. Thank you in advance.
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