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Equal Rights Issue Analysis Paper

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The target of this analysis is to explore the troubling condition of pay inequities between men and women in the Unites States, using the liberal ideology, constructionist approach and basic framework of the social problem process by Joel Best. Accordingly, this paper organizes this exploration into the six sections correlating with each stage of the Best framework. The first section is Stage 1: Claimsmakers which introduces the source(s) making claims about the troubling condition of economic inequality specifically as it relates to the gap in pay between genders. In addition, this area specifies the ideological perspective of this analysis and provides the grounds, warrants and conclusions used to evaluate the claims. Furthermore, this …show more content…

Winifred Stanley (R-NY) proposed a bill in 1944 to amend the National Labor Relations Act with no success. Then in 1950, Rep. Katharine St. George (R-NY) attempted to pass the Equal Rights Amendment though again, with no success. Notably, Katharine St. George is credited with coining the phrase “equal pay for equal work” (Cho 2013). During the second wave of feminism which began in the early 1960’s and lasted through 1990’s, emphasis was focused on passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights and social equality (Rampton 2015). Subsequently, in 1963 President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law. Although momentum stalled between signage of the EPA and the early decade of the millennium and we have yet to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, this could change if Hilary Clinton is elected President of the United States and continues the work that Obama started. President Obama has been committed to equal rights from the beginning of his presidency; in fact, the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pair Act of 2009. This act is an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and changed the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay claim for pay discrimination. Prior to this law, anyone claiming discrimination was required to file within 180 days of the alleged offense, the alleged offense was formerly the first paycheck received where discrimination was claimed. Clearly this …show more content…

Its strength is that it offers a clear method of identifying the issue by creating a foundation through establishing the grounds, warrants and conclusions. Additionally, when analyzing the Resources and Rhetoric as they relate to each stage of the process, the delineation can be seen in the ideological perspectives. This was helpful in identifying the subjective and objective parts of the issue. I feel an area of weakness in this model is its stages. Perhaps instead of having the grounds, warrants and conclusions in a separate model (which is titled “structure”), the addition of a “structure” stage at the beginning of the social problems process model, e.g. Stage 1: Structure, which describes society/events, culture/situation then leads to Stage 2: Claimsmakers may be beneficial. Another way to analyze might be to use a framework which illustrates the stages vertically with the metadata displayed horizontally. I used an analytical framework to map out the legislation for the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 in Political Science which captured the troubling conditions from the structural level to the point of legislation. This framework makes a clear delineation between the actors (claimsmakers) and the structural level of the troubling condition, from using both models I feel it could also be useful for analyzing social problems. I’ve attached an example in “Appendix

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