Human Rights Protection and Gender Pay Gap Analysis

This report investigates the issue of gender inequality, focusing on the gender pay gap as a crucial aspect of human rights violations in Europe. It begins by defining human rights and gender equality, emphasizing that these rights are confirmed internationally through treaties and nationally through legislation. The report establishes the gender pay gap as a significant form of gender inequality, analyzing its causes such as undervalued skills, job selection, and gender stereotypes in promotions. It further explores related issues like domestic violence, sexual harassment, and cyberstalking, highlighting the underrepresentation of women in various sectors. The methodology involves primary sources like treaties and conventions, alongside secondary sources such as academic books and web news, to present the current situation and legal aspects of gender inequality. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the gender pay gap and its adverse effects on women, making them more vulnerable to domestic violence and harassment. The research question focuses on the contribution of the gender pay gap to gender inequality and its legal prohibitions as human rights violations.

Running Head: BUSINESS AND CORPORATION LAW 0
Human Right Protection
2/24/2020
Student’s Name

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Abstract
Human rights can be referred to standard or norms which describe the certain standard of
human behavior. These rights ensure that every human is being treated in an equal manner.
These rights are developed on different subject and gender equality is one of them. Further, the
same ensures that every citizen of the state has access to the same opportunities and rights
irrespective of gender. Human rights are confirmed on the international level through treaties and
at the national level through legislation or conventions. Charter of fundamental rights is an
important document that confirms the human right of gender equality through article 23. The
objective of this report is to provide an understanding of the human rights of gender equality in
Europe in historical as well as current context and related aspects. The lead focus of the report
will be centered around one of the specific aspects of gender inequality that is the gender pay gap
as it is highly relevant and crucial to study.
Gender inequality contains many further issues such as domestic violence, hate speech,
harassment, gender pay gap, and others. Even after many efforts made at the international and
council level, gender equality as human rights seems to be missing in a real context.
Research questione
How gender pay gap contributes to gender inequality and what is the status of the same at
present. In Europe Further how law prohibits the issue confirming it as a violation of human
rights.

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Research Methodology
To address the research objective, primary as well as secondary resources along have
been used with qualitative and quantitative data. The primary data included direct sources of
information i.e the related documents such as treaties and conventions and academic books.
These have more relied on comparison to secondary sources. Under secondary sources, data
presented by others in study and web news have been used. To present the current situation of
gender inequality and to find the importance of the issue analytical data shall be review and
stated.
Gender inequality and its forms
Law treats every person equal but it is the society that sets different standards and norms
for different social groups. Gender inequality is an emerging issue of the present era which
acknowledges that women and men and not equal and gender of people affects their living
experiences. It is a horrible situation where women are treating in a discriminatory manner. The
one important thing to mention here is that gender inequality is not always about the poor
situation of women in comparison to men but many times, men also face discrimination.
However, it is all about equal treatment of both of them in a particular situation. A variety of
reasons are there that contribute to the issue of gender inequality and these factors include, rigid
culture, illiteracy, lack of enough empowerment and other similar issues. Gender inequality
against women comes in many forms such as discrimination, domestic violence, sexual
harassment and hate speech. The gender pay gap is another important factor that contributes to
gender inequality and will be discussed further in detail. The seriousness of the issue can be
understood by the fact that out of 19000 direct disclosures, a total of 16946 disclosures has found
related to domestic violence against women, an analysis (womensaid.ie, 2020).

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Further, another survey has been conducted in Poland where 451 women have
participated and out of that 88 % agreed to the fact that they have experienced sexual harassment
since they attained the age of 15. As European commission notes, women have always been
underrepresented in Europe especially in the sector of business and politics across Europe. Cyber
harassment is another area where women are facing gender inequality, as most of the victims of
such crime are women. 18% of women found as a victim of cyberstalking and stalking as per the
data presented in FRA’s EU survey (fra.europa.eu, 2017). These are only a few of the
highlighted areas where the situation of women is not up to the standard of men but apart from
this, employment is the whole another area where women do not get equal treatment to their
male colleagues. Discrimination at the workplace based on gender consists of many attributes
such as working time quality, social environment, physical environment, work intensity, earning
and skills and discretion. Inequality in the workplace can be done using one or more of these
attributes.
Gender Pay Gap: Important form of gender inequality
Before moving to the current situation of the gender pay gap and rights related thereto,
the first meaning of the same is necessary to understand. The gender pay gap refers to the
average of the difference between the remuneration of men and women. The difference used to
be represented in the form of a percentage of men's earnings. This is the most persistent gap
between women and men in their work. It reflects that some of the employees of the organization
are not being paid fairly. Many factors cause the gender pay gap. The very first reason is that the
skills and competence are undervalued and therefore that even for the same job, women earn less
many times. Here the issue of unequal pay does also arise which represents a form of

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discrimination. Getting less payout of a job in comparison to male colleagues widened the gap of
gender pay significantly. Secondly, women often tend to choose those jobs, which are low paid,
and the reason behind the same is the easy availability of these roles and jobs. In conjunction
with this, these jobs are more flexible in comparison to other jobs (Gascoigne, 2020)
Third, how skills of the women remain undervalued could reflect in the promotion rates
where gender stereotypes feel that women are not competent for a higher position in the entity.
This is the reason even after having the required skills and experience, women often hold the
junior position and receive less remuneration than the male employee of the organization. The
issue of the gender pay gap sometimes seems to be associated with other aspects such as race and
ethnicity. It means many times; women also get less pay as they belong to a particular race or
social group. For instance earnings of black women are so far behind than the earnings of white
men working in the same position. The issue of the gender pay gap proves adverse to the
situation of women and contributes to another type of inequality. It makes women more
dependent on the male members of society where they became further likely to be a victim of
domestic violence and harassment.
Gender pay gap in Europe

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References
fra.europa.eu. (2017) Challenges to women’s human rights in the EU. Retrieved From:
https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2017-challenges-to-women-human-
rights_en.pdf
Gascoigne, C. (2020) The real reasons behind the gender pay gap. Retrieved From:
https://timewise.co.uk/article/article-real-reasons-behind-gender-pay-gap/
womensaid.ie. (2020) National and International Statistics. Retrieved From:
womensaid.ie/about/policy/natintstats.html