Equal pay
Disclaimer: I don't own the TMNT... yet.
A house somewhere in England (My P.O.V)
'Wow, this is harder than I thought' I was sat at my laptop ready to get on with the coolest homework I'd ever gotten. To write a fanfiction! Okay, that wasn't my homework exactly, for my Citizenship GCSE we have to do a campaign in groups. My group decided to do equal pay for men and women (doing the same job) in the UK, and also to have footballers and soldiers payed an equal amount since footballers are paid more that soldiers (which I'm sure you'll agree is not right), so we had to find a way to raise awareness of the situation and I offered to write a fanfic!
Yeah... turns out it was harder than I first anticipated. I'd already started 3 and scraped them, finished one and decided it was horrible and so deleted it and lost the sheet which I'd bullet pointed the ideas I liked. Overall, not going well so far. At least I was home alone; otherwise my sister would be annoying me so I find it even harder to work.
The next thing I knew, there was the sound of a teleporter and four turtles stood in front of me.
"Hi guys." I said, hoping to not sound too depressed.
"Hey Em, you O.K? You sound kind of depressed." Well, that failed, especially if Mikey can notice.
"I'm fine. I'm just having trouble with this stupid homework."
"Maybe Don can help ya; he is a genius ya know."
"Thanks for offering your brother to help Raph, but it's not the kind of homework someone can help with too much."
"Maybe if you told us what you have to do then we could give you some ideas."
"Well, its simple really, I need to write a fic on equal pay." Then Mikey's hand shot into the air. "Um, yes Mike?"
"What's equal pay?"
"Seriously Shell-for-brains? The clue's in the name!"
"It is?"
"YES! It's obviously making everyone gat paid the same amount of cash."
"Oh, that sounds like a hard thing to write a fanfiction story for."
"Believe me, it is."
"It does sound difficult, have you got any research to help you?"
"As a matter of fact Leo, I do, guess I forgot about that."
"Why don't you read it to us, then we can help you come up with some ideas. Besides, five people working on the same thing must be easier than figuring it out on your own."
"Alright Don:
Women, on average, earn 18% less than a man doing the same job. For example, a female doing the same job as a man who gets paid £60,000 would only earn £49,200. To add to this, men earn more than women in 370 occupations, where the opposite happens in only 53. There is only equal pay in 3 jobs. Plus the average working male salary including overtime is £28,091, which is 19.9% more than the equivalent female's. This gap falls to 10.2% if overtime is removed. Not only that, but 6 in 10 women between the ages of 15 and 30 say that they've experienced sexist remarks/behaviour and 47% don't think they're treated equally to men in the workplace. What do you think?"
"One word. Yawn."
"Raphael! This is important for Emily. Sorry about him Em, I think the facts that you have are good."
"Thanks Leo."
"I say it's unfair! Why are you paid less just for being a girl?"
"Thank you Mike! Someone who finally sees the point!"
"I agree, it is rather sexist."
"Not only that Donny, but it's illegal. In 1970 the equal pay act was created, which was one of the landmark successes of the women's movement in the 1960's. It practically says MEN AND WOMEN HAVE TO BE TREATED EQUALY!"
"I rephrase my question. Why are you paid less for being a girl if it's illegal?"
"My point exactly Mike."
"I hate to break it to ya all, but ya still don't have no ides for ya little story."
"Way to be a downer Raph. Have you got anything else Em?"
"I've got some statistics from the survey my group took. We gave it to 61 people at school, students and teachers. 98.4% agreed that women should be paid the same amount as men and the other 1.6% said they weren't sure. Only 29.5% said they'd heard an equal pay story in the news, which just goes to show how little attention the media pay the issue. Just 8.2% knew of an equal pay charity. The last question we asked was if they thought more attention should be given to equal pay. 41% strongly agreed, a staggering 50.8% agreed and the remaining 8.2% were not sure. Overall, if people are so strongly determined to give more attention to this important matter, why do only 8.2% of them know of a charity to support the cause? Any ideas?"
"Sorry Em, I haven't a clue."
"I don't care, do whatever ya want."
"I've tried to think of a situation this could come up in, and I'm getting nothing."
"Sorry dudette, I can't think of anything."
"Never mind. Thanks for tying to help guys. I'll have another go at this later. By the way, what did you guys come for anyway?"
"Actualy, Mike why did you want to come?"
"Oh yeah! Em, what is better, chicken or pizza? I can't decide what to make for dinner!"
"You made us come all the way to England, and help her with stupid homework to ask a dumb question that ya could 'a asked any of us!"
"SHUT UP RAPH YOU'VE BEEN ACTING LIKE A HUGE JERK THIS ENTIRE TIME AND ITS STARTING TO GET ON MY NERVES!"
The guys then all looked at me quite shocked. "Umm, anyway Mike, why don't you just make a chicken pizza?"
"Why didn't I think of that? Thanks Em, see ya later!"
"Yeah, later, maybe next time we come you can shout at Raph some more. You've actualy made him shut up."
"Anything to help Leo, see you guys next time." And they left the same way they came. With that, I decided to take a break from my Citizenship homework. Now for my English...
Hey, I hope you guys like it, I know its a little bit lame and weird, but isn't all homework? I'll get back to writing random funny stuff again soon, bye!