Gender Differences in the Workplace

Introduction

Within the last thirty years, women have entered the workforce in record numbers. Today, it is more likely to meet a woman who works outside of the house than to meet a woman who does not. Females are now in management positions all over the nation also in professions that were previously reserved for men. As the number of females who enter the workplace increases, the gender differences are becoming more apparent.

Discussion

Many more women have been entering high-tech fields in the last two decades. By 1996, thirty-nine percent of all computer programmers were women. "Women are also making slow but steady progress in entering non-traditional fields such as engineering, professions such as medicine and law, and elected and appointed political positions" (Reardon 84-348).

In many non-western nations the discrimination of workers based on their gender is an accepted practice; however, in the U.S. and Canada it is illegal, though it still occurs. For example "in Canada women on average earn only eighty cents on every dollar males would make" (Hart and David 54-99). The common excuse is that males have a greater workload than women and at work are asked to apply themselves physically more so than a woman would.

The origin of sex discrimination in the workforce first came about because of physical differences between men and women. An example would be a fire-fighter. Women need physical endurance to perform tasks such as chopping wood, climbing ladders and carrying fire victims out of burning buildings in order to become a fire-fighter. If a woman is capable of doing what is asked of any fire-fighter, at a satisfactory level there is no reason for her not to be hired. Yet in the past Employers would not hire any women for jobs that demanded more physically.

As women's rights increased, so did their options. Women started going to college and were offered opportunities that they did not have in the past. Suddenly, they had options other than to marry and bear children, and they began to exercise those options by entering the workforce. They branched out from low-paying secretarial positions and began exploring more male dominated fields such as fire fighting, law enforcement, construction and other male dominated fields. "Women will still be models of flexibility, to work part time, out of normal hours and for lower pay" (Oren 215-348). As the years passed, females in the workplace became accepted, however, ...