The Wage Gap and the Perilous Future of the USA

As this series concludes, I want to take a second to look to the future. I am not here to doomsday predict or make unsupported, “Doomsday” allegations, but I want to illuminate certain changes that have recently been enacted and how they have the potential to truly set back women’s progress.

The first change that has recently occurred is the revocation of the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces on April 3. This act, signed into action by President Obama, had previously been a major victory for women in the struggle to obtain equal wages to men in law and practice.

An issue with revoking this law is that it gives more power to corporations to further commit acts of sexual harassment and cover them up under the guise of arbitration clauses, which essentially are private proceedings that can be about any number of topics, but are kept secret. The act placed a ban on forced arbitrations, which would essentially force the women into secrecy if they wanted to press charges against a perpetrator of sexual harassment.

The act also had a paycheck transparency section, which essentially had no purpose besides guaranteeing that all paycheck affairs were made public so no gender discrimination could be committed behind the guise of “privacy.” The bill essentially attempted to eliminate all possibility of wage gap in businesses, because it had come to the Obama administration’s attention that corrupt businesses were receiving millions of dollars while committing violations in payment.

Many sources have reported that Trump still has close ties to his multi-billion dollar industries, even though he claims to have severed all ties to running the companies and has left them in the hands of his children. However, rolling back this act demonstrates no practical purpose besides to protect businesses that are corrupt in terms of how they pay women versus men, which is concerning in addition.

In addition to this, Trump’s executive order that blocked travelers from 9 Muslim-majority countries miraculously did not include countries with which he had close business ties, sparked more beliefs that his business interests were conflicting with his duties as President. So, I believe there is clear evidence that Trump still has significant vested interests in his business ventures, so we must be wary going forward of where he may violate women’s progress to protect his businesses.

Taken from Forbes.com

Another area that merits concern going forward is the international relations status of the United States. As I mentioned in a previous post, the United States has withdrawn its funding for family planning in numerous other countries that we had previously had stakes in, which could have devastating effects going forward. However, as I write this, the story develops about the United States dropping a MOAB on an ISIS-affiliated network of caves and tunnels. This bomb is the first of its kind to be used and its effects appear to be drastic.

What I want to draw attention to is the combination of restrictions on immigration in the United States in addition to heightened aggression toward ISIS and eliminating the threats abroad and how this can have repercussions internationally on women’s progress.

I thoroughly believe that as tensions become increasingly stressed, there will be an issue as refugees who want to escape the cultures of terrorism and fear that ISIS and other radical Islam groups promote in the Middle East. Women, who are placed in extremely restrictive places and often kidnapped, raped, abused, and killed in these cultures, have lost a country that could have been a place of safety.

One part of the third wave of feminism that I have been well versed in is international feminism, so women in the United States need to band together with other nations to ensure that women’s rights are being protected in other nations. However, with the stricter restrictions on women entering the United States and the United States’ more aggressive, violent approach toward that region of the United States, women who want nothing more than to escape are the collateral damage.

So, going forward, we need to be careful about restricting women’s rights both domestically and internationally – because there can be devastating results if we are not conscientious of the overarching effects of the new administration.