It is common knowledge in America that the working-women make less money than men. Some people believe that the disparity in wages between men and women are caused by women choosing to take on more nurturing jobs that are less paying like teaching and social work, however according to Claire Cain Miller, a policy and economic writer of The New York Times, the pay gap is because of gender, not jobs. In the article titled “Pay Gap is Because of Gender, Not Jobs”, Claire Miller refutes the Republican National Committee’s statement that “the disparity exists because a female social worker makes less than a male engineer”, by arguing that the pay gap actually comes from within occupations. This means that women, who are working in the same occupation as men make less. This is truly a huge problem in America, impacting women of all ages in many professions. Claire’s argument that gender is the cause of the pay disparity in the country is agreeable but insufficient due to lack of support.

The first claim within the article is that rearranging women into higher paying jobs would lower the pay gap by only fifteen percent, thus proving it is “differences within occupations” that is truly affecting the pay gap. The author received this information from Claudia Goldin, a leading scholar on women and the economy from Harvard University, who has collected data over the years on this certain topic. Overall this claim is supported because Miller received this information from within a sufficient paper that was written by a credible expert on this topic. The claim alone refutes the Republican National Committee’s statement that it is women’s job descriptions that are affecting the wage gap, instead of them being wronged by being paid less for the same amount of work within the same occupation.

“On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns” according to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. This is a significant gap in wages. This is not only unfair to women but it has real life consequences on the families of full-time working mothers and retirement funds. According to Sarah Jane Glynn from the Center for American Process, “unknown drivers” like discrimination and stereotypes are influencing women’s pay, to whom of which have the same level of education as well as the same occupation as men. According to Miller, an outlet that could decrease the wage gap would be to have more flexible work locations and hours. Miller supports this claim with Goldin’s paper titled, “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter” that was recently published. The paper states “the gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours”. Through this quote Miller is trying to deduct that because men are working long and distinct hours of the day, while the women are at home nurturing children, they are being rewarded. For this reason, companies that fall into this category need to offer more flexible hours at the same rate to accommodate women. Goldin’s favorite example of this is the profession of Pharmacy. Pharmacy has the smallest disparity in wages because the professionals work on flexible hour schedules and are paid for the amount of hours they work. Miller again uses Goldin to support her claim instead of using other sources. Miller argument would be stronger if she were to use other sources that would agree with her statement.

As a woman intending to work in medicine, this topic is truly close to my heart. Because of this, I agree with Claire Miller’s argument that it is gender that is influencing the disparity of the wages between men and women, not jobs. However, Claire Miller’s argument within the article was not strong enough due to lack of evidence and overall content. In chapter three of the text, Dynamic Argument, the Chinese proverb, “How can one beam support a house?” depicted that it takes multiple sources of evidence to support an argument and since Miller only used Claudia Goldin’s paper as support, her argument was weak and somewhat blinded. Miller failed to mention that women with children get benefits such as maternity and family leave. She also failed to mention how the working male thought about this subject. She provided no opposing opinions and then refuted them, which would have made her argument more durable.

Miller’s use of rhetorical appeal in the article was very unbalanced. Her article lacked pathos and seemed very impersonal, which to me was a surprising because she herself is a woman. To improve upon this, she could have provided anecdotal evidence of how the disparities are affecting families and other aspects of a woman’s life. Ethos and logos are presented in this article by a way of Goldin, an expert on the gender subject, who provided many statistics about the pay gap. If Miller incorporated all three appeals in the article, instead of just the two, her argument would have been much more powerful.

Working-women in the country today are just as valuable to the job force as well as the economy. According the Center for American Progress and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, if women’s employment patterns had remained unchanged for the last three decades, the economy would be about 11 percent smaller, translating into $1.7 trillion in lost economic output in 2012. 1.7 trillion is a huge number and is equivalent to how much the government spends of social Security, Medicare and Medicare. Not only do women bear the responsibility of maintaining a healthy and happy family, they also excel in their professions, creating a larger economy that betters the country over-all; so why does these disparities exist, why are there not more solutions? To me this article only vaguely answered these questions because she lacked many aspects that would make her argument complete, like multiple sources of evidence and solutions that may fix the pay gap issue.