This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Why do women make less money than men?

According to the United States Department of Labor's earnings-by-sex statistics, the median annual earnings of men averaged $50,000 per year, while women made only $39,000 per year. This wage gap seems obvious, but to say that women get paid less for doing the same jobs is a misconception.

Author Sheryl Sandberg, in her book "Lean In," said, "When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching." Sandberg's mother's experience is still relevant to this day. The U.S. Department of Labor statistics showed that the majority of employed women are in secretarial, teaching or nursing positions. Nearly 70 percent of men over the age of 16 are in the workforce, while only 57 percent of women are. Women tend to pursue jobs less often and choose jobs of a lower caliber than men. This, not inequality of payment itself, is the cause of the wage gap.

In her September 2014 United Nations speech on feminism, actress Emma Watson said she belonged to a group of women dismissed as, "too argumentative" and "too bossy." Women, as Watson explains, are often socially conditioned to behave and think "like a girl." In order to understand what this stereotype is, I walked around the University of Utah campus and asked everyone I encountered what they thought of when I said "behave like a girl." The most common responses were, "respectful, submissive, and modest." The ideal "girl" shouldn't try and take control of situations, they should let other people — men — be in charge.

When a young girl wants to play football and finds herself ostracized, or a boy wants to play with Barbie dolls and is targeted for abuse by his peers, we can see the beginnings of gender norms socially conditioning our nation's children. That is to say, that boys should be assertive, emotionless and should always be taking control of situations, and girls should be submissive, respectful and unambitious.

This, I believe, is why women are more likely to strive to be nurses rather than doctors, or assistants and receptionists rather than executives. These gender norms also explain why women tend to take homemaking jobs more often than men do.

Stereotypes about what men and women should and should not do are deeply rooted in our society, and these assumptions run rampant in an attempt to condition young men and women in America to do what is "socially acceptable." As a result, women end up aiming low, and wage gaps between sexes become increasingly prominent.

How can we fix a problem that is the result of social conditioning?

Massive improvements are made towards destroying gender-based norms and stereotypes every day, and the movement is growing. Emma Watson described the current definition of feminism as being, "The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men." The definition has evolved from a force for women's rights to a force for complete equality between men and women.

Watson, Sandberg, and the many other strong voices pushing for an end to workplace inequality have urged people to fight against the stereotypes and strive to be the best they can be, regardless of whether they are a man or a woman. Once we stop socially conditioning women to be yielding and unambitious, and men to being macho-masculine machines, we will see change in this world.

Cara MacDonald is a full-time student at the University of Utah studying writing and environmental sustainability.