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Argumentative Essay

The thesis of Lester C. Thurow’s essay Why Women Are Paid Less Than Men is that women are paid less than men because during the critical period of promotion and skill acquisition (25-35), most women are preoccupied with childbearing and child-raising and men are not. Thurow’s position on this claim stems from his argument that biological differences, discrimination, and educational factors do not account for the fact that between 1939 and 1979 “white women who work full time have with monotonous regularity made slightly less than 60 percent as much as white men” (187).

If we analyze this essay from a Toulmin model, we find the following:

Claim: Earning differentials exist between men and women, with women earning on average 60% of what men earn for similar work.

Support: This deferential is not due to biological differences, discrimination, nor educational factors.

Warrant: The only way to narrow the wage-gap between men and women is to alter family planning, or restructure the existing promotion and skill acquisition system to cover a longer time-span.

The content of the essay begins with a discussion of the historical wage-gap between men and women in 20th century American society. This is followed by a discussion of the fact that minority women make more money than white women in comparison to their men. Thurow then gives us a biological argument to explain this phenomenon, but he calls the assertion that men make more than women due to biological differences, “an assertion with no evidence” (187).

Thurow then argues that discrimination against women by men remains an inadequate explanation for this wage-gap, because only a “monumentally stupid” male would wish to keep the earnings of his wife depressed (Thurow 188). Thurow does suggest in the next section that educational differences between men and women may have explained part of the wage-gap in the

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Argumentative Essay. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:28, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685025.html