Equal Opportunities - Gender Discrimination by HR Professionals - Research Paper Example

Equal Opportunities Gender Discrimination by HR Professionals ABSTRACT: This report discusses the issue of gender discrimination in the workplace from both sides of the coin, one side representing the women workforce and their claims regarding discrimination and claims of chauvinism against the employers regarding pay scales, promotions, and lack of equal opportunities; and the second side through which the scholar has dared to think outside the box and has tried to consider the opinions and judgments of HR professionals and corporations alike charged with HR Malpractices in the context of gender based discrimination. This report uses numerous case studies of some of the largest companies of this world and also tries to compare the performance of male vs. female employees. This report will use empirical evidence as a means to get to a valid conclusion, that is, if the performance, absentee records, stamina [work hours], and conflict ratios of female vs. male employees are equivalent, or if the research suggests that female employees are better off against their male counterparts; the conclusion would suggest that gender discrimination is wrong or unethical depending on the factors; although, if the scholar finds that the performance of female employees is inferior; this report may conclude that gender discrimination is not wrong; nonetheless, there’s a thin wall between wrong or right and legal or illegal, and certain laws [as discussed in the report below] in most developed and developing countries prohibit gender based discrimination in the hiring or other corporate processes such as promotions or pay grade. e performance of female employees is inferior; this report may conclude that gender discrimination is not wrong; nonetheless, there’s a thin wall between wrong or right and legal or illegal, and certain laws [as discussed in the report below] in most developed and developing countries prohibit gender based discrimination in the hiring or other corporate processes such as promotions or pay grade. Declarations This report is free of any and all bias, the research material or sources were not chosen or selected based on any preferred or special criteria by the author. Terms ‘Gender discrimination’ or ‘Sex discrimination’ in this report were used exclusively in the context of gender/sex discrimination in the workplace. Colour schemes and background of some graphical content scanned from books have been changed so as to match the schema of the report; all such images have been referenced based on their original source. The word count of this report excluding the title page, declaration, table of contents and bibliography is 2458 words. Statement of Purpose Even in the foremost decade of the 21st Century this world faces gender discrimination issues, ranging from safety of women as witnessed in Marion Shaub & U.S. EEOV v/s Federal Express Corporation to the case of Dukes v/s Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., wherein Dukes complains that Wal-Mart does not provide equal pay and opportunities to women, and the Dukes case is still ongoing and now has support of over 1.6 million former and current female employees. If the Human Resource managers of idol companies such as FedEx and Wal-Mart are carrying out such policies; then who is the world, its entrepreneurs, and SMEs supposed to look up to as glorifying examples. But then again, another way to look at it may be that since the superior officers and executives in these companies are creating and passing such policies, and these are highly qualified people, so why would they craft a policy that demeans womankind and steals them of opportunities; and specially when these policies could severely damage the company’s brand-name and goodwill. If quantitative figures are to be considered, one could make an example of the case of Dukes v/s Wal-Mart and straightforwardly declare that 1.6 million women can’t be wrong, and since they are closer to the situation, they know better. But then again, the case was filed in the year 2000 and till date the court has not reached any verdict; nevertheless, Liza Featherstone wrote a detailed book about the case in 2005 and mentioned that besides buying and selling discounted products, another major source of income of Wal-Mart is “bad labour practices” (Featherstone, 2005). Besides one lawsuit does not qualify as ‘quantitative research’. Wal-Mart again faced a similar gender based discrimination lawsuit in Waldin v. Wal-Mart in 2001 which suggests that Wal-Mart didn’t change its policies even after Dukes, so the question here is why would Wal-Mart’s or FedEx’s executives risk the company’s goodwill on the grounds of gender discrimination? Introduction Essentially the issue of gender discrimination is categorized into two legally different terms, the first being sexism, and the second sex discrimination. Figure 1: Gender discrimination These two concepts are quite distinctive in terms of ethical, legal, and moral implications. A person is a sexist when he/she is a chauvinist or believes in superiority of any one gender over the other, being a sexist does not pose any legal consequences; unless the sexist applies his beliefs in corporate policies or the hiring / promotional / other operational processes, this is when the issue becomes ‘sex discrimination in the workplace’ and is illegal and punishable by law. The legislations that deal with sex discrimination have been outlined and explained in brief in the chapter “Legal Implications” along with a list and brief of notable lawsuits related to sex discrimination. Keeping legal implications aside, author Lynne Eisaguirre enforces that sex discrimination is immoral and unethical in every possible way (Eisaguirre, 1999: 65). Even though many companies are fair in their compensation practices, yet there are substantial companies that do not maintain equilibrium in terms of compensation for employees. Gender based differences may be witnessed all throughout the UK in classifieds wherein companies state the age and gender as preferable prospects for employment. These practices are highly unethical as these operate on a chauvinist assumption and do not provide an otherwise capable candidate a choice. With cases such as Dukes v. Wal-Mart, Waldin v. Wal-Mart, and Marion Shaub & U.S. EEOV v/s Federal Express Corporation, the fact remains that gender discrimination is still haunting the workers of the 21st Century. We, the most intellectual species on the face of our ever changing planet believe that we are the most intellectual and ethical species to have ever set foot on earth, yet we, even after we claim to have left chauvinism centuries behind still act in the same manner, in an approach that makes us hypocrites. Evaluation of Performance Traditional beliefs state that any and all work related to physical exertion or leadership will be allotted to men, and petty tasks which require lesser force were designated to and for women. But lately it seems, women have been able to climb the ladder of success equivalent to men, yet the number of women like Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay) is considerably lower than their male counterparts, which may mean either one of 2 things, that either women are not being given enough opportunities or they are just not up for it. Although figures show us that participation of women in all types of jobs has increased in the last century and the participation of men has also slowed down significantly. Figure 2: Changes in labour force (Bratton and Gold, 2001: 92) We have used tests and examples that evaluate the performance of men and women in terms of psychological, intellectual and physical strengths. Psychological and Intellectual Dr. Renato M.E. Sabbatini states that the female brain and the male brain are radically distinctive, not in terms of performance in a uniform task, but in terms of being better in one specific thing as compared to other, for example, the male brain churns out better performance in mathematical calculation, which also accounts for the reason that there are more male mathematicians as compared to female ones, similarly, men tend to visualize distances and gaps better than women and this accounts for the reason as to why men are better drivers or pilots than women. On the other side of the coin, women tend to be more active socially and emotionally, which account for the reason why women are more talkative and seek social security. (Sabbatini, 1997) Dr. Edward O Wilson, who is also known as the father of socio-biology asserts that men tend to be more aggressive in terms of their position or rank and are by the nature of things, dominant. On the other hand, women tend to find their need of security in dominant or well off men. (Wilson, 1992) Physical Performance and endurance A survey by ‘Public Health Service’ concluded that the rates of absent-ism amongst the genders was fairly equal and also the fact that experienced and aged women of over 45 years old took less frequent leaves than their male counterparts (Margolis, 1985: 262). James G. Hunt also asserts that absentee rates of men and women are quite similar and that the difference is just in the perception of women by men and traditional philosophies of companies. (Hunt, 2004: 63) An important quote about the perception of women in the British Army is “No real man wants a woman to do his fighting for him” as stated in ‘Inventing women: science, technology, and gender’ (Kirkup and Keller, 1992: 220). The authors also mention a study by the British government and Pentagon, which both lead to a conclusion that due to smaller built and lower strength, women are not a preferred choice for the military (p 220). So should women be declined their rightful posts just because men don’t want them to “protect them” or work under their command. Preferred leader Producing an astounding result, many studies conducted on the subject whether male or female bosses are more preferable by employees, almost all the studies suggest that women and men alike prefer a male boss over a female boss. Even more astounding was the fact that more women than men preferred to work for a man. Some reasons amongst many were: women are much more prone to mood swings, men are straight-talking and that they are better in terms of decision making. (Gallup and Gallup, 2002: 139-140) (Hakim, 2004: 111) (Daily Mail Reporter, 2009) Responsibility of the Human Resources Dept. One would have to agree with Mr. Hunt that the reason for women being inferior might be our perception towards women and their own self esteem issues. Besides if the companies that pay less or decline equal opportunities to women based on the fact that they consider women to be substandard as compared to male workers, then why should they hire them in the first place. Since Wal-Mart and other such companies are hiring female employees, it is for certain that they know the fact that women would be work as much as men, especially for mid-low level positions where the performance of women and men stands equivalent. And since these positions do not require much physical strength or extremely cognitive decision making skills, and the performance of candidates from both genders will maintain an equilibrium, then it is the HR Management’s responsibility to ensure an equilibrium in the pay grades. Theories of HRM Reward management being a key theory of HRM determines the basis of a reward system, and it doesn’t matter how simple or complex the reward system is, it always determines the rewards (outputs) based on a specific employees inputs (competitiveness, evaluation, role, benefit of company, etc.). Since the mid-low level employees have been able to maintain an input equilibrium, they should be rewarded equally based on the inputs of all employees, and therefore we may ascertain that Wal-Mart’s reward management system is not only biased but flawed too. This case also applies to any other company that discriminates in pay grades in lower-mid level positions (all non-executive), not only in terms of gender, but race, colour and ethnicity also. Figure 3: Reward Management Work-Life Balance: This theory of HR focuses on helping an employee in distinguishing between his personal and professional life, by ensuring equal time and support for his personal activities. In our case, most employers do not prefer to hire female employees, especially those in late 20s because of the fear that they could ask for too many leaves due to either “family problems” or pregnancy or even due to her responsibilities as a “housewife”. Legally an employer cannot provide such reasons for not hiring a female employee, not even pregnancy could be used as a reason. (Employee Rights K, N.D.) Performance and Appraisal: As previously discussed, the theory of reward management tells us that rewards and bonuses should be allotted based upon the inputs. Here, we shall add another factor to that which is appraisal and increments. If the input of an employee does not increase in due time, but is still equivalent of the inputs of other employees, then the company should evaluate its position and the performance of employees and the HR dept. should work hand in hand with the strategic management to work on a technique through which the productivity could be increased (one method to do this could be the use of control chart to find out whether the same number of employees could churn out more revenues if supplemented with additional machinery/software, only after ascertaining that human resources fall under the category of common causes). Irrelevant of the increase in productivity the company should consider inflation as a factor and increase the pay grades in due time. (Bratton and Gold, 2001) Recruitment and Selection: As Jeffrey Gold states in his book, that most employers claim “we don’t interview people, we audition them” (Bratton and Gold, 2001: 189). More often than not, employers also consider physical attractiveness as a major role in their recruitment process, this holds true especially if the post is concerned with the external operations such as meeting prospective clients and suppliers. Although, this steals the other employees of opportunities as the Recruitment manager has not actually considered the employee based on his/her capability. Then again, there are times when the recruitment manager deliberately chooses a female candidate because of the difference in pay scale based on gender; which is wrong ethically considering the fact that such companies hire women so that they would have to pay less yet expect them to perform equally to the other (male) employees which sometimes get paid much more than their female counterparts. Ethical and Legal Implications Sex discrimination in the workplace and is illegal and punishable by law according to the following legislations in the UK (Crosby, Stockdale and Ropp, 2007); The Human Rights act of 1998 The Equal Pay act formed in 1970 And of course the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 The legislations in the U.S. that prohibit companies to make decisions based on gender discrimination are quite similar except for the fact that they are more concentrated on the details of termination or lack of opportunities, for example there is the ‘Pregnancy Discrimination act’, although the Section VII of Civil Rights act (1964) is the major legislation which is concerned with gender discrimination on a wider perspective and deals with all sorts of discrimination practices including racism, caste, colour, nationality and of course Gender. (Crosby, Stockdale and Ropp, 2007) Even though the equal pay act is still operational, some companies do find loopholes within the system to continue their discriminative policies. BBC News reports that the pay disparities amongst genders are significantly noticeable, specifically for director or executive posts. The network also reports a noteworthy rise in the cases filed regarding the same, the rise as reported for session 05-06 was more than 155%. (BBC News, 2007) The same was realized by Oil giant Shell, who realizes that gender gap is quite sizable in the company and as a matter of fact, research revealed that there are only 7% female executives in the company (mid-top level). The company has promised its stakeholders to take the necessary steps to eradicate this discriminatory gap and give equal opportunities to all candidates irrespective of their gender. (Ceridian UK, 2008) Considering the case study of shell, one hopes that other companies such as Wal-Mart and FedEx will also take necessary steps to eradicate the gender gap in the fields of HR Planning, recruitment, and reward management so as to set a moral example for all other corporations. Conclusion and Recommendations No theory in the context of Human Resource Management negotiates in favour of discriminatory practices. Most studies that have been a part of this report establish that the performance of women is more dependent upon the perception of women, that is, if women’s performance is equivalent to that of men, they are likely to be overlooked by chauvinistic policy makers and recruitment managers. All the steps within the HRM cycle should be executed without any bias of any sort and the company’s performance recognition policies should be extremely precise and preferably prepared through automated solutions. Figure 4: HRM Cycle (BPS Consulting, N.D.) Automation of all common cause processes (prepared through a control chart) is a must. With the help of modern computing technology and the rise of consultancy alliance, most HR processes could be easily automated, and this is the best possible way to remove bias from the environment. And since social or gender related bias is a psychological issue, some HR managers may act upon their instincts, thereby not even knowing that their decision is biased. Works Cited BBC News (2007) Gender pay gap 'on the increase' , 7November, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7081822.stm" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7081822.stm [31 January 2010]. BPS Consulting (N.D.) BPS Consulting, [Online], Available: HYPERLINK "http://www.bpsconsulting.com.au/about_people.html" http://www.bpsconsulting.com.au/about_people.html [2 February 2010]. Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2001) Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice, 2nd edition, New York: Routledge. 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