Essay Example: Gender Inequality in Workplace

Gender inequality is a common phenomenon among many organizations. It is most common in organizational processes, practices, and processes around the world. The most victims of gender inequality are women (Proudfoot, Zhou, & Kay, 2013). Women are the victims of inequalities in the human resource practices. This includes decision making and policy enactment. Women are mostly segregated against in these practices which affects them during recruitment, hiring, pay, training, and promotion. This paper is focused on highlighting the severity of gender inequality in the workplace and how to address it as a social problem.

Organizational discrimination against women occurs during the performance evaluation exercises. These processes help in developing organization rewards, opportunities, and punishment. This practice has been formalized into the human resource policies in that the institutional policymakers favor men in evaluating their job performance. For instance, the evaluations can be based on the facetime metric which in a way is subjective. This is because women are the basic caregivers in their home. Therefore, they face unnecessary punishments and penalties because of the less time dedicated to the job. This aspect of the human resource policy is a form of gender inequality.

Furthermore, the human resource decisions governing the aspect of opportunities and promotions in career advancement in the organization is another source of gender inequality. For instance, most organizations tend to use formalized job ladders which are used to regulate the aspect of promotions and availability of opportunities. However, in the system, women are subjected to minimal chances of job advancement. This is because the job ladders are mostly subdivided based on gender. Therefore, the gender segregation witnessed at the entry point in the job market are propelled up in the job scale with no chances of crossing other job lines for career advancement and development. This aspect has an overall effect of making women short of the expected experiences which are absent in their available job ladder system. Therefore, they are literarily unqualified for advancement.

Female employees receive fewer chances of opportunities for jobs compared to their, male counterparts. This makes them underrepresented in the advanced levels of the organizational leadership and management. This means that the policies made in the organization are male-dominated and therefore do not bear the opinions of all genders. Therefore, the women ii organizations are subjects to policies that are enhanced by their male counterparts without having their say in the same policies. This is inconsiderate bearing in mind that the global business community is moving to the age of equal representation in organizational policymaking. Besides, even when the women are given the required opportunities in the management and leadership positions, they are given less controversial and challenging work which make them underutilized as compared to men. For example, female workers are usually assigned limited access to topnotch challenges and responsibilities which are usually used in the promotion system. This aspect is harmful to organizational development given that the challenging responsibilities also help in equipping the workers the skills that are important in career development.

Moreover, most managers around the world think that female workers have less promotion to warrant their promotion. Therefore, given a male and female worker with the same qualification, most managers will undoubtedly opt for a male worker as compared to the female worker (Carnahan & Greenwood, 2016). This gives the male workers an edge over the female worker about ascension in the organizational hierarchy. This is detrimental to the organization since it is now clear that with even little sings of inequality in decisions for promotion, the effect is usually adverse and cumulative. Indeed, the inequality of women by most organizations usually leads to fewer women securing promotions.

On the other hand, women are mostly the underpaid workers in many organizations across the United States among other countries. For instance, a study carried out on the factors in human capital that affect wages such as skills and education have revealed that female workers are paid approximately 23% less than the male workers (Holbrow, 2017). Besides, women have also accrued to fewer wages a factor that is most rampant in high paying occupations. Experimental evidence has suggested that policymakers lack of objectivity has resulted in the varied wage gap between the genders.

Addressing Gender Inequality in Workplace

Achievement of gender equality in the workplace is feasible when the employees can enjoy and access uniforms opportunities, resources and rewards regardless of their gender affiliation. For instance, Australia and other countries across the world have made significant efforts in addressing gender inequality primarily related to health, female participation, and education. Gender equality ensures that organizations are able to achieve same outcomes for both men and women. Achievement of gender inequality requires a realization of some of perquisites. For instance, provision of equal remuneration for equal work to all genders, reduction of barriers that prevent the participation by female employees in the workplace and access to equal management and leadership position by all genders are some of the requirements to ascertain the availability of gender equality. Achievement of gender equality is an essential milestone in the organizational setting since it will ensure overall success in corporate performance. This has a general impact on the national productivity and workplace reputation.

The stakeholders and the civil societies are very crucial in fighting for the rights of women to equal participation in the affairs of the organizations. The civil societies can venture into lobbying for equal chances for women in organizational slots. Lobbying is the most effective form of seeking for gender equality since it draws the concentration of the policymakers into thinking in respect to the problem in question. Therefore, when the policymakers are included in the lobbying process, they will make the necessary remedies to the gender inequality in the workplace. Besides, the other stakeholders should facilitate more workshops and seminars for the workers so that they are educated on matters of professionalism.

Workplace gender inequality can also be avoided by ensuring that the government enacts important policies that ensure that women are provided with the necessary springboards to showcase their abilities in the male-dominated fields. Therefore, the government should initiate a gender equality model in the national human resource policies which are reciprocal. Enactment and utilization of laws and policies that govern the workplace processes regarding the human resource policies should be enacted to reach a gender balance. This will certainly eliminate the underlying gender inequality crisis.

Furthermore, the stakeholders in the organizational setting should fast-track human resource models that focus on skills and knowledge transfer through training and formal education which will enhance the capacity of women in the society to fit for the male-dominated fields (Kalpazidou & Cacace, 2017). Coaching, networking and mentoring the women through various programs by the organizations can assist in addressing gender inequality in the organization. The programs help women in having confidence in their capabilities and therefore develop their experiences. The programs should endeavor to place gender equality the center of the education and training. Capacity building ensures that the ability of women are raised to that of men so that they are all fit for the selection and participation in the aspects of the organizations.

Moreover, gender inequality in the workplace can be faced out by the ability of the companies to be proactive in recruiting more women in the workplace. This can be done by instituting the human rights department in the organization. The organization should elaborate that they wish to recruit, promote and support women. Furthermore, the salaries and promotional opportunities should be scrutinized and evaluated regularly to ensure that equal opportunities are observed (Peterson, 2011). In supporting women in the workplace, the companies should focus on providing a flexible work-life policy as the organizational culture. This will help in assisting the women to cope with the ability to work and at the same time cater to their domestic needs as basic caregivers in families. Companies should desist form limiting their capabilities to outsource talents from all genders provided they have the prerequisite skills and experience. The corporations should restructure their mission statements and strategic plans to accommodate an equal number of women and men in all the departments and the management level.

Moreover, the organization should ensure that they have set role models in the leadership so that women have people they can look up to and emulate. This is because women lose hop when no fellow women are advancing to the management positions. Besides, availability of numerous women at the peak of the organizational hierarchy has a trickling down effect in that it inspires more women to work hard and scale through the ranks. Similarly, since unequal pay and remuneration id another source of gender inequality, the organizations should make sure that they adopt policies that target allocation of equal pay to every employee at the same rank with the same responsibilities without subjectivity.

Finally, the companies across the worlds can eliminate gender inequality my ensuring that they establish strict policies that seek to punish the perpetrators of gender discrimination in the workplace. This is because discriminating someone basing on gender or sex has serious legal penalties. However, the companies cannot merely leave the task of punishing the perpetrators of gender inequality to the national governments but instead should take active roles in setting their own goals (Arora-Jonsson & Sijapati, 2017). The rules set should focus on offering zero tolerance to acts of inequality on the basis of gender. This will restrict any chauvinistic experiences in the organization which has a good implication to the welfare of the companies.

In conclusion, organizational discrimination based on gender is a very rampant issue in the world. The primary victims are women. Institutional bias limits the ability of the company to fully exploit its potential in advancing the career of its employees as well as achieving its objectives. Women have been segregated regarding pay, promotion, recruitment, hiring, and participation is decision-making practices within the organization. This discrimination is imminent in the human resource processes and practices that are decision oriented. However, the companies have a task of taking the lead in condemning and preventing gender inequality by fulfilling some conditions highlighted in above.

References

Arora-Jonsson, S., & Sijapati, B. (2017). disciplining gender in environmental organizations: The texts and practices of gender mainstreaming. Gender, Work & Organization. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12195

Carnahan, S., & Greenwood, B. (2016). Managers political ideology and gender inequality within organizations. SSRN Electronic Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2721979

Holbrow, H. (2017). Too Few Women at the Top: The Persistence of Gender Inequality in Japan by Nemoto, K.K.Nemoto (2016). Too Few Women at the Top: The Persistence of Gender Inequality in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell...