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The Gender Gap in Wages

Janet Ruth Heller is quoted in the article “Is the Gender Wage Gap a Myth or Reality? 27 Experts Debate the Wage Gap Issue,” an essay with interviews by Angela Stringfellow posted on May 23, 2018 on the website Wonolo at https://www.wonolo.com/blog/gender-wage-gap-myth-or-real/

I point out that women earn 80 cents for every dollar that men earn. Also, I make the following observations and other comments.

Women tend to go into pink-collar professions that do not have high salaries or opportunities for advancement, such as serving as teachers, librarians, nurses, secretaries, etc.

Women are raised to focus on care of others, so they are more likely to have to spend a lot of time caring for children and assisting elderly or sick relatives than men are. This focus on care of others may limit a woman’s working hours and hours and possibility for promotion.

 

women workers photoPhoto by The Library of Congress

Photos by The Library of Congress,

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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).