There is a big conflict in our modern world, concerning women and whether they are being treated equally in the financial world. Feminists and anti feminists have been actively going on about it for nearly two hundred years. Some people say that they choose jobs that have lower pay anyways, and that they just can’t do the same jobs as men. Others argue that sex should have no factor in how you get paid or what job you get, for only level of experience and knowledge should affect the pay of everyone. When looking closely at this conflict, you can see that many things could change the way you look at this composite subject. Even though some people think that women deserve the jobs and pay that they get, it is evident that they should have equal pay and career opportunities for the following reasons: women are still being short-changed with their money, even though they have fought for it tirelessly, they can do just as good of a job as a man, and the US bill of equal rights shows they have every possible chance to be paid and treated as an equal.

One of the most compelling reasons to why women should be treated as equals in the workplace, is that they have been, and still are, fighting for this right far back into history. As stated in americancivilwar.com, a women’s rights leader, Lucy Burns was “arrested and imprisoned six times... she was among those in the Occoquan Workhouse who instigated hunger strikes in October 1917 and were subsequently placed in solitary confinement… Burns was in Occoquan for what became known as the “Night of Terror” on November 15, 1917, during which she was beaten and her arms were handcuffed above her head in her cell. Particularly brutal force-feeding soon followed.” This website has the history of American citizens earning their freedom and rights, getting their information from numerous government sites. Many other women took part in these strikes, as they were determined that women would eventually get their fully proper rights to work and vote. Another article from www.whitehouse.gov, says that “Looking back over the last 40 years, the wage gap narrowed from around 60% in the 1970s to above 70% in the 1990s, but progress stalled in the mid-2000s. For much of the last decade, women consistently earned 77% of what their male counterparts earned.” This shows that even now women can’t get what they have been trying to get for centuries. Does it really seem fair to keep them from equality?

A second reason is that women are capable of achieving the same work levels as men can. In fact, an article found on www.bloomberg.com, a global business that gives people a dynamic network of information, says “High-achieving women are paid less than men even when they have similar levels of experience and are in the same fields… Women graduating business school this year reported an average of $14,548 less in expected annual pay than men, graduating MBAs said in a survey of 9,965 students at 112 schools” This means that if 100 men got $10,000,000 yearly pay altogether, 100 women would only get $8,545,200 altogether. That’s almost 2 million dollars that women aren’t receiving helpful pay that they could easily have gotten if no wage gap existed. Also, women and men need both of each other in the workplace, since the two minds work so differently. Many more ideas could come up, and more problems would be solved if women can be given the same opportunities as men. For example, www.asme.org, a  nonprofit organization that serves the technical community, published a helpful article on women in the engineering world. “This is especially important now, when unemployment is high and our economy is weak… We cannot afford to lose anyone with the technical skills to create a sustainable future, improve health, build our cyber and physical infrastructure, and enhance personal and societal security. A diverse set of minds needs to tackle those problems. But we are largely missing out on women's intelligence, creativity, and values in solving the problems we all face.” If we give women the chance to succeed and the drive to become great, they could end up helping us with amazing things.

Another reason to why this is so frustrating for women, is that the bill of equal rights says that they can’t be discriminated because of their gender in essentially everything. On www.ushistory.org, a website that educates the public about the Colonial and Revolutionary eras of the US history, there is a section that talks about the equal rights amendment and what it states. "Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. This simple sentence comprised Section 1 of the EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT (ERA)”. This basically means that women have equal rights in the United States and every place under the USA’s law. Also, that they will be heard out if there is discrimination going on that is related to their careers. As an example of someone being denied this right, an article on www.aauw.org (American Association of University Women, an organization that empowers women) shared stories of women experiencing this in their daily lives. “Aileen Rizo works as a math consultant at a California county office that supports dozens of school districts. After three years on the job, she said she learned over lunch that a man just hired as a math consultant had started at a much higher salary. After trying unsuccessfully to work out the disparity with human resources, Rizo filed a lawsuit”. She didn’t want her daughters to get the same unjust treatment that she received, along with many other girls that would if she hadn't done something. Would you want to feel like you were worth less than the person sitting next to you?

After looking at this prosperous amount of information about how the financial world is for women, we see that it is incredibly unfair since no matter what they do to change this career gap themselves, they need our help to really make a difference. If people don’t assess this problem now, it could affect each and every one of us in the future. What if certain women who could potentially revolutionize the whole world were rejected the idea of becoming engineers, scientists and politicians? This could easily happen everyday since women aren’t being treated like their male colleagues. You can help by encouraging women to take a stand and call out people on their discrimination. Also, think about writing a letter of consideration to big companies out in the financial world. You never know, one simple reminder could give everyone the physical and mental boost to job equality everywhere.