Gender issues and development: Gender Discrimination at work place

Gender issues and development: Gender Discrimination at work place

Introduction

For long women feminists have paid a lot of importance on gender discrimination towards women at their work places. Through recent studies, it is shown that discrimination at workplace still continues to be an obstacle to achieve gender equality. People relate gender discrimination with old cultural beliefs about women and men. Gender discrimination is also due to practices and policies at work place. Some scholars believe that the sex composition at the work place may lead to gender discrimination (Isaacs, 1995).

Over the years, women have made tremendous improvement towards their aim, to achieve respect and equality at their work places. Yet many women in America still face an environment where they are paid unequally, have uneven growth opportunities, they feel unsecured and are frightened because of sexual harassment. Women face discrimination and conflicts which are there due to competing environment at work place and their family responsibilities.

Gender discrimination is a conduct. It usually takes place when the decisions of employers are based on gender or when an individual is treated in a different manner due to his gender. For example, a supervisor always requests the male staff to move the boxes or a supervisor always requests the woman to arrange office parties. People generally consider sexual harassment as the only aspect of sexual harassment; it may be the most painful one, but there are other severe problems also impacting women at their workplace. Gender discrimination plays a vital impact on life of victims and hence need to be reported to authorities (www.un.org). Gender discrimination can result in less productivity of employees effecting organizational revenues.

Literature Review

Gender discrimination covers (Anonymous, 2008)

•Direct discrimination: it deals with behaving with an individual less kindly due to his/her gender

•Indirect discrimination: it includes practices which are discriminatory for employees for example, 6 feet height requirement would hardly be met by women workers

•Harassment: it includes unwanted behavior linked to sex. It violates an employee's dignity and self respect

•Victimization: An unjustified conduct with an individual who has lodged a complaint of discrimination

Discrimination on a job hunt

Hiring

Advertisements also reflect gender discrimination, if an advertisement refers that women are encouraged to apply or seeking men it shows discrimination. Both women and men should be allowed to get an equal chance to be considered. Words such as salesman should be avoided in ads instead of it salesperson should be used to indicate equal opportunity provider company. There are laws also to forbid agencies from gender discriminations. Agencies help employers to discriminate between candidates on the basis of gender (Welle, 2005).

An individual may file a charge if an agency discourages you for certain jobs. Individuals even face discrimination when employers rely on word of mouth recruitment through employee referral programs. Mostly male staff refers to males for a new job opening. Female individuals even face discrimination when interview sessions are conducted. Personal questions should not be asked in interviews. Only job related questions should be ...