gender gap

(noun)

A measurable difference between the behaviors of men and women.

Related Terms

Examples of gender gap in the following topics:

  • Women in the Workplace

    • Particular barriers to equal participation in the workplace included a lack of access to educational opportunities; prohibitions or restrictions on members of a particular gender entering a field or studying a field; discrimination within fields, including wage, management, and prestige hierarchies; and the expectation that mothers, rather than fathers, should be the primary childcare providers.
    • Challenges that remain for women in the workplace include the gender pay gap, the difference between women's and men's earnings due to lifestyle choices and explicit discrimination; the "glass ceiling", which prevents women from reaching the upper echelons within their companies; sexism and sexual harassment; and network discrimination, wherein recruiters for high-status jobs are generally men who hire other men.

  • Additional Factors: Gender, Age, Religion, Race, and Ethnicity

    • Certain factors like age, gender, race, and religion help describe why people vote and who is more likely to vote.
    • Political scientists and journalists often talk about the gender gap in participation, which assumes women lag behind men in their rates of political engagement .
    • However, the gender gap is closing for some forms of participation, such as voting.

  • Gender Discrimination

    • Gender discrimination refers to prejudice or discrimination based on gender, as well as conditions that foster stereotypes of gender roles.
    • Gender discrimination, also known as sexism, refers to prejudice or discrimination based on sex and/or gender, as well as conditions or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on gender.
    • Gender stereotypes are widely held beliefs about the characteristics and behavior of women and men.
    • There are several prominent ways in which gender discrimination continues to play a role in modern society.
    • A poster depicting gender stereotypes about women drivers from the 1950s

  • Tax Loopholes and Lowered Taxes

    • In the United States, the IRS estimate of the 2001 tax gap was $345 billion.
    • For 2006, the tax gap is estimated to be $450 billion.
    • A more recent study estimates the 2008 tax gap in the range of $450-500 billion, and unreported income to be approximately $2 trillion.
    • In the United States, the IRS estimate of the 2001 tax gap was $345 billion.
    • For 2006, the tax gap is estimated to be $450 billion.

  • The Women's Rights Movement

    • By the early 1980s, it was largely perceived that women had met their goals and succeeded in changing social attitudes towards gender roles, repealing oppressive laws that were based on sex, integrating "boys' clubs" such as military academies, the United States Armed Forces, NASA, single-sex colleges, men's clubs, and the Supreme Court, and by accomplishing the goal of making gender discrimination illegal.
    • Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (i.e. voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.
    • At the time some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, who defended democratic principles of equality and challenged notions that a privileged few should rule over the vast majority of the population, believed that these principles should be applied only to their own gender and their own race.
    • By the early 1980s, it was largely perceived that women had met their goals and succeeded in changing social attitudes towards gender roles, repealing oppressive laws that were based on sex, integrating "boys' clubs" such as military academies, the United States Armed Forces, NASA, single-sex colleges, men's clubs, and the Supreme Court, and by accomplishing the goal of making gender discrimination illegal.

  • Current Challenges for Education

    • Some challenges in education include curriculum unification, racial achievement gap, and controversy over sex education and affirmative action.
    • The Racial Achievement Gap in the United States refers to the educational disparities between minority students and Caucasian students.

  • Socioeconomic and Racial Demographics

    • Political socialization experiences differ depending on group membership, such as socioeconomic status, gender, or geography.
    • Political learning and socialization experiences can differ vastly for people depending on the groups with which they associate, such as those based on gender and racial and ethnic background.
    • Describe the ways in which race, gender, socioeconomic status, and geographical region influence how people are politically socialized.

  • Equality

    • For example, sex, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, origin, caste or class, income or property, language, religion, convictions, opinions, health or disability must not result in unequal treatment under the law and should not reduce opportunities unjustifiably.
    • Within the United States, racial and gender equality issues have been particularly prevalent and the catalyst for much social and political reform through the work of the feminist and civil rights movements.
    • Equality of opportunity - as an ideal - ensures that important jobs will go to those persons who are most qualified, rather than go to people for arbitrary or irrelevant reasons, such as circumstances of birth, upbringing, friendship ties to whoever is in power, religion, gender, ethnicity, race, caste, or "involuntary personal attributes" such as disability, age, or sexual preferences.

  • Privacy Rights and Sexuality

    • Twenty-one states plus Washington, D.C. outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and sixteen states plus Washington, D.C. outlaw discrimination based on gender identity or expression.
    • Hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity are also punishable by federal law under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr.

  • Health Care Reform

    • Part of this legislation included filling gaps in prescription-drug coverage left by the Medicare Secondary Payer Act that was enacted in 1980.
    • The Associated Press reported that, as a result of PPACA's provisions concerning the Medicare Part D coverage gap (between the initial coverage limit and the catastrophic coverage threshold in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program), individuals falling in this "donut hole" would save about 40 percent.