Rihla #2

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The article "Equal pay and Gender Gap: Men still Out earn Women" relates to what we're learning in class because over the course of history, women have been discriminated against, and this proves that there is still discrimination against women through how much they earn in comparison to men who have the same job. The essay written by Jared Diamond on how agriculture was one of the worst mistakes of humanity mentions this gender inequality. The roles that women have played in the developing societies have evolved and changed over time. The gender inequality has definitely improved, at least in the USA, but there are still traces of it. Learning how women have been discriminated against and their roles helps us understand the inequality right now.

I learned that even to this day, women are still aren't being considered equal on an economic level with men. Even if they're doing the same job, women still get paid less just because of their sex.

 The part of the article that surprised me the most was when it was mentioned how when a male had a sex change to a woman, he earned  less after his sex change, and when a woman changed to a man, she earned more after her sex change, "even when controlling for factors like education, men who transitioned to women earned, on average, 32% less after the surgery. Women who became men, on the other hand, earned 1.5% more". Another statistic that surprised me and really stuck out to me was, "And despite the earnings premium that comes with greater education, women with bachelor's degrees earn less over 15 years than men with a high school diploma or less, according to the IWPR study". The question that popped up in my head after reading this was: How would this even motivate a women to reach the highest level of education when she isn't even able to get a reasonable and equal pay for that career that she's pursuing? This gender discrimination is definitely doesn't motivate a woman or encourage her in the work place or to get an education because it doesn't seem to matter.

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