However, women have yet to achieve equality in the workplace as the gap in wages continues. Nationally, women earn 74 cents for every dollar earned by men. A National Academy of Science Report found that a significant proportion of these wage gaps could not be explained by factors such as education or work experience. Affirmative Action promotes the hiring of qualified people. It does not mean people should be hired just because they are minorities. It helps to broaden the range of people to be considered for employment in hopes of creating a more diverse applicant pool from which to choose. Groups of people are often stereotyped. In the case of sex stereotypes, these are attributes that are imparted to individual men and women simply by virtue of their sex. The impact of affirmative action on women may cause them to suffer the stigma of second-class citizenship as a result of preferential treatment, because they will be subjected to the presumption that they were hired not because of their qualifications but because of their gender. Affirmative action may therefore lead to the conclusion that the women hired under affirmative action are incompetent. If someone is thought to be hired or placed as a result of affirmative action efforts, then that supplies onlookers with a plausible and compelling explanation for the selection decision independent of the job incumbent's qualifications for the position. Then the individual may be assumed to have been hired only because of her sex, with qualifications irrelevant to the selection process. Sex bias also has been demonstrated in decisions about pay raises, promotions, and employee utilization and training opportunities. Although sex may only be taken into consideration after hiring a person for their qualifications, it may only be assumed that they received their position because of affirmative action.

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