Have You Experienced Gender Discrimination at Work - Essay Example

HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED GENDER DISCRIMINATION AT WORK? by + Abstract: According to Office for National Statistics, the female employment rate has climbed steadily from 53% in 1971 to 67% in 2011. However, gender inequity has become a controversy among the different workplaces. In this research, the condition of gender equity and whether women have received the same career opportunities as men will be investigated. Throughout the research, 20 persons were invited to fill a structured questionnaire about their view and past experience with gender discrimination. The result indicated that gender discrimination is not common and participants do not think that gender has affected any aspects in their career life. Introduction With the development of our society, female labour participation has been increasing rapidly in many developed countries. However, the employment rate of women is not fairly matched as men (Livanos, Yalkin and Nuñez, 2009:815) and the typical cause of difference in employment rate among female and male workers is gender discrimination. Gender discrimination has been a barrier from the traditional work environments. The issue has almost been scraped out of the current workplace environment. However, different barriers are felt in the achievement of a gender equality workplace environment. There are many pieces of research that suggested that a number of female workers have been treated in a discriminated way in the work place. For example, women lack most of the promotion chances (Livanos, Yalkin and Nuñez, 2009:815) and are subject to lower wage at work (Nyhus and Pons, 2012). The paper hypothesised that gender discrimination is common among universal workplace and come along with unfairly treated situation based on gender. The situations range from job allocation, payment inequity, and other forms of discrimination. Firstly, the literature review will describe the existence of sex discrimination at work. The methodology of the research will be described next, and finally with results that are supported by research data. Literature review The increasing number of female rate of employment does not equal to enjoying the same career promotion opportunities as men (Michailidis, Morphitou and Theophylatou, 2012:4231). Female employees usually experience difficulties to approach a higher level status of work. It is harder to get promoted compared to male employees. Also, they receive a relatively lower wage (Livanos, Yalkin and Nuñez, 2009:815). Research from Michailidis, Morphitou and Theophylatou (2012:4238) shows 69.5% respondents indicated that gender did have an effect on their promotion. Despite these findings, there have been issues that related to the ability of women to access such promotions is limited. Although women could have more choices of workplace than last few decades, the barrier of promotion is still solid to them. In terms of wage, women receive unfair treatment. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the average wage of women is 18% lower than men (Nyhus and Pons, 2012). Despite the low pay, the same women work in similar capacities as their counterpart men. Some of them even perform difficult jobs than their counterpart men. The women comprise a large majority of the low-wage workforce. In addition to the discrimination at wage level, they experience workplace discrimination, and lack of access to employment benefits as their male counterparts. Fewer promotion opportunities and lower wage, indicate that the large portion of female employment cannot tackle the ubiquitous gender discrimination of work load. Nonetheless, the national study (2002) stressed that sex discrimination experiences have declined at work (Stainback, Ratliff and Roscigno, 2011:1166). According to the Avery, McKay, and Wilson (2008) research, however, approximately four to five percent of female employees have experienced female discrimination while working (cited in Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011:766). These results are an indicator that the problem of workplace discrimination is a major workplace issue that has not been tackled. This research will provide graphs to underpin the existence of female gender discrimination at work. Aims and methodology An enormous amount of books and journals have outlined the way in which female workers have experienced gender discrimination. The main aim of this research is to identify gender discrimination and whether gender discrimination still exists at work place nowadays. My research method is aimed at collecting pertinent data from responders through the survey. This opportunity sampling method will provide relevant and supportive data to investigate whether women suffer gender discrimination or not at the workplace. Respondents who have working experience would be considered as a target population. A questionnaire was allotted in the town centre of Lancaster. The applied methodology has successfully obtained data from 20 persons, as an initial sample. Participants have provided qualitative information by answering about their gender discrimination experiences at work. A diagram and bar chart will be used to represent respondents’ answers. These data will provide insights to the prevalence of gender discrimination at the work place. Results and Discussion This statistic analysis verified whether employees have suffered gender discrimination or not at the workplace. The total respondents were 20 people, 10 were male and 10 were female. 50% of respondents were not at the manager level, 35 % were managers, 15% were at the senior manager. Figure 1: Number of people suffered gender discrimination at work This Figure 1 bar chart shows that both male and female employees did not suffer gender discrimination in their workplace. 100% of both gender participants did not suffer any gender discrimination. According to the research of Avery, McKay, and Wilson (2008), it is stated that approximately four to five percent of female employees have experienced discrimination in the workplace (cited in Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011:766). In contrast, the result of this research is opposed to aforementioned study. In recent years, people prevalence of gender discrimination in working place has greatly decreased. Figure 2: Different wages in gender Figure 2 illustrates that the different wages between responders are separated by gender. 90% of workers (eighteen out of twenty) in both genders have received the same wages among the same level of manager. Although a minority of male workers earned little or much higher wages than female, majority respondents commented that they have received the same wages. However, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the average wage of women is 18% lower than men (Nyhus and Pons, 2012). In comparison, the result from the OECD is opposed to the data that is collected in the survey. Most employees nowadays do not suffer from gender discrimination about wages, however few of them still suffering about the wage gap between male and female employees. Figure 3: gender does have an influence for the promotion and opportunities Participants were also asked whether gender has an influence on the promotion opportunities. Figure 3 demonstrates the percentage of whether gender has an impact on getting promoted at work. Almost all respondents (sixteen out of twenty) commented that they do not think genders affect getting promoted or receiving opportunities at work. On the other hand, research from Michailidis, Morphitou and Theophylatou (2012) shows that 69.5% respondents agreed that gender has a negative effect on chances of getting promoted. This research demonstrates that the fact has changed in recent years. Gender is no longer has an impact on the promotion. In addition, figure 4 shows that 90% respondents received equal opportunities get promoted to a higher position. As a result, gender does not have an effect on their promotion and opportunities at work place. This unexpected outcome may be explained that people nowadays have become more open-minded and the campaign that propagated the gender equity has a positive outcome. Conclusion This study set out with the aim of the existence of gender discrimination between female and male workers in terms of promotion and wage. Other researches in literature review pointed out that the average wage of women employees is lower than men. Also, approximately 70% respondents agreed that gender does affect their promotion chance negatively. The result of this study, however, suggested a different circumstance of gender equity at work. This research provides totally different results compared to aforementioned researches. These results underpin that female workers are not suffering gender discrimination in the workplace. However, there are some limitations to this research. Firstly, this research has investigated only 10 female and 10 male responders who are working in Lancaster town. Secondly, the research only investigated employees in small-scale companies or private business in Lancaster. So the findings cannot be generalized to the enormous group of employees. Also, employees in other countries may have experienced gender inequity due to the cultural issue. It is necessary to obtain enormous amounts of sample data from participants in different countries. In addition, next survey should gain the data from larger population outside of Lancaster. Lastly, future research will verify factors which could lead to the barriers of women’s promotion at work. Final references Bobbitt-Zeher, D. (2011). Gender Discrimination at Work: Connecting Gender Stereotypes, Institutional Policies, and Gender Composition of Workplace. Gender & Society, 25 (6), pp. 764-786. Full report - Women in the labour market. (2013). Office for National Statistics. Livanos, I., Yalkin, Ç. and Nuñez, I. (2009). Gender employment discrimination: Greece and the United Kingdom. Int J of Manpower, 30(8), pp.815-834. Michailidis, M., Morphitou, R. and Theophylatou, I. (2012). Women at workequality versus inequality: barriers for advancing in the workplace. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(20), pp.4231-4245. Nyhus, E. and Pons, E. (2012). Personality and the gender wage gap. Applied Economics, 44(1), pp.105-118. Stainback, K., Ratliff, T. and Roscigno, V. (2011). The Context of Workplace Sex Discrimination: Sex Composition, Workplace Culture and Relative Power. Social Forces, 89(4), pp.1165-1188. Read More