The Effect of a Double Glass Ceiling on Minority Women

Throughout time women have been the backbone of society, but their work has been always being overlooked. In earlier times men were the ones who did most of the labor work in society, while a woman’s work consisted of raising their family and home-making, which is also a lot of work and still deserves to be valued but is not. As a result, society has become one that praises patriarchy.

Overtime, women became outraged at the treatment they receive in a society that is geared toward valuing men over woman. Woman rights movements such as women’s suffrage in 1800s and other labor movements have fought for the equality of women and there is still a long way to go. Regardless of how much society has progressed with women now having the power to make their own choices in politics, education, and occupation, they are still oppressed by society. Women are paid less than men, they do not receive paid maternity leave at most jobs, and many jobs that mostly women occupy such as teaching or domestic work are not paid well. Women today strive just as much men, yet they are expected to be okay with not being rewarded in the same way, it is apparent that this causes uprisings and it will continue to do so. Society as a whole must work together and open their minds to unfair conditions that women experience.

Minority women are not only paid less than men but also paid less then caucasion women. Minority women have to break more than ceiling to have equal wages. According to the article ‘Pay Equity and discrimination’, Hispanic women will have to wait until year 2233 and black women will wait until 2124. Women are progressing in the boardrooms and in the domestic fields, yet there are large gaps in the salaries of men and women. “Among women across all races and ethnicities, hourly earnings lag behind those of white men and men in their own racial or ethnic group.” Men are seen as the innovators in society while there are women striving just as much and are not paid on the same levels. The earnings of white men are more than any other race. Unfair wages for women.

It is unjust that a woman has obtained just as much if not more education than a man and still she is rewarded with less than him. It is also unjust the minority women are paid less the caucasion man and woman. According to Patten article there is “Large racial and gender wage gaps in the U.S. remain, even as they have narrowed in some cases over the years. Among full- and part-time workers in the U.S., blacks in 2015 earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings and women earned 83% as much as men.”

Black women have been in the domestic industry for years. They have taken care of the master’s family at home by cooking, cleaning, and watching and caring for their kids. If anyone should stand up for a higher wage it should be the minority woman, they have endured so much to come this far and still not feel equal to the Caucasian man and woman. Women who work in the domestic field experience even more disadvantages in the employment compensations. Jobs that are considered to be positions that women occupy the most such as teachers and care-givers are undervalued and under compensated. Most people who work in the domestic workforce get paid minimum wage and they are expected to work on their feet at the service of others for many hours.

“Female-dominated sectors such as retail sales, food service, and home-health care are some of the fastest-growing fields in the new economy, and even in those fields, women earn less; women in the restaurant field earn 83 cents to a mans dollar.” People who work in these service fields already do not make a lot of money, but to add to this the women are still paid less than the men. This is unjust and it clearly outlines how invaluable women are in society. People in these jobs are providing services to others and go home to provide the same efforts to care for their own families, yet that goes unnoticed. It mostly certainly should cause workers in these fields to rally together to bring these issues to the light. Women should be paid the same amount as men, there are more single moms in the world that have to take care of the household all alone. Single moms have to pay for child care, health care, and pay to keep a roof over the children head and clothes on his/her back. Most single moms are divorced moms who depended on the man to bring home the bacon. These women have been out of work; to find a job and to be paid less than the man is not going to cut it. These moms do get assistance from child support, but Dawn Lee says, “Only one third of single mothers received any child support,14 and the average amount these mothers received was only about $430 a month.”

The child support only helps with so much. Most poverty families are headed by single mothers. Lee point this out with the fact “Among all homeless families nationwide, about two thirds (60%) were headed by single women with children — representing 21% of the total homeless population; nearly half were African Americans (49%)”.

Men should not stand to see women living in poverty especially the men that come from the single mother families. Single mothers should have these equal wages to provide like the man can, so the single mother will not have to depend on the man. Glass ceiling was first used by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt in the 1986, edition of the Wall Street Journal to describe the limits of advancement that women face in the workplace. When the term is being used , it brought up a world wide criticism because it said that women did not get the promotions are wages that men did because they were more concerned about family life or did not achieve the desired education and/or the experience. After the term came out in the world, the fuss about the term surrounding it has developed to encompass all minorities in the workplace. According to many research, the glass ceiling is a very great term to define the U.S. corporate atmosphere.

A study by the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission found that “97 percent of the senior managers of the Fortune 1000 Industrial and Fortune 500 were white, and 95–97 percent were men. This is not demographically representative, considering that 57 percent of the workforce consists of ethnic minorities, women, or both. In 1990, Jaclyn Fierman (1990) found that less than 0.5 percent of the 4,012 highest-paid managers in top companies in the United States were women, while fewer than 5 percent of senior management in the Fortune 500 corporations were minorities. More recent figures show that gains have been made in some areas—for example, among Fortune 500 company boards of directors, women now make up 15 percent of the total” clearly its enough room for fixing.

The ending result concluded from studies such as these is that there are invisible fences, barriers, or these invisible forcefields that put women and minority women from getting these upper management positions. Anyone who works to the best of their ability deserves to be equally well-compensated in order to make a good living regardless of their gender. Gender should not be the way we earn our pay. We should be paid based on how well we work and our ability to work. Women work as hard as men do or better at the job than the man so why not pay them equal. The glass ceiling term for women of color is vigorously contested. There are those who argue that it does not exist for women they say that women are not represented in upper management that’s because women put their husbands and children before any job. The argument against the glass ceiling concept as it concerns ethnic and racial minorities basically hinges on racial stereotypes. The people that oppose this claim that the minority woman are incompetent and these races are not willing to do what it takes to get to the top. Well never judge a book by its cover cause women are as capable as men no matter the stereotype, skin color, or circumstance.