How Organisations Could Help to Reduce Gender Gap in Pay - Term Paper Example

How Organisations Could Help To Reduce Gender Gap in Pay Table of Contents How Organisations Could Help To Reduce Gender Gap in Pay 1.0 Introduction 2 2.0 Background 2 3.0 Recommended options 3 4.0 Requirements 3 5.0 Compare options 4 6.0 Conclusion 5 7.0 Recommendations 5 References 6 Farrell, W. (2005). Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It. U.S: AMACOM Publications 6 Murphy, E. and Graff, E. (2006). Getting Even: Why Women Dont Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It. U.S: Touchstone Publications 7 Poulsen, K. (2011). Exploring Pay and Management Gaps for Women (Womens Studies). U.S: Nova Science Pub Inc 7 Shackleton, J. (2008) Should We Mind the Gap?: Gender Pay Differentials and Public Policy. London: Institute of Economic Affairs 7 7 1.0 Introduction According to Poulsen (2011), gender inequality or discrimination can be traced back to the biblical ages when women’s roles were confined to just taking care of the house, and children as well as the husband. Perhaps from such early cultures is where gender discrimination that was greatly prevalent in the past centuries stems from. This present report revolves around gender discrimination and in particular, it focuses on discrimination against women in terms of pay. This to say that women are been discriminated upon in some sectors or companies by receiving lower pay as compared to their male counterparts mainly because of their gender. The main objective of the report is to present and compare two ways in which an organisation could help to reduce the gender gap in terms of pay. Additionally, the report will state the requirements, cost, social acceptance, and ease of implementation of the recommended options. 2.0 Background In reference to the writings by Jashik (2010), she wrote that women have taken a lead in the enrollment of doctorate degree programs and in the period of 2008 to 20009 majority of learners who were awarded with doctoral degree in the United States were women. Moreover, according to the Council of Graduate Schools women make up 50.4 % of total students studying doctoral degrees. However, it is beneficial to note that women still predominately make a small percentage of students studying technical and/ or science subjects such as engineering. Despite the fact that women have increasingly taken a lead as the majority in higher education, they still face pay discrimination that is based on gender. The European Commission substantiated this fact by stating that in the European countries where women make up a total of 60% of university graduates they still earn 15% less than their male counterparts thou it is positively noted that this gap has narrowed down over the past decade. 3.0 Recommended options According to Murphy and Graff (2006), some organisations justify paying women less because women are faced with natural circumstances that at times limit where they can work and even the duration they can work while men are flexible thus making them more reliable. Farrell (2005) lamented that the main factor that usually limit women flexibility is their parental duties especially if they have younger children whose needs are more delicate and demanding. In this regard, Shackleton (2008) recommended that for organisations to reduce pay gap they should support working female workers through implementation of policies such as flexible working hours and even allow new mothers to work at home, childcare arrangements for young mothers, and provision of parental leave. The other option of reducing gender pay gap in organisation is division or allocation of job without regard to gender, which will justify equal payment. Therefore, the human resource managers of organisations will allocate similar job to both male and female without any exceptions or special treatment to the female workers. 4.0 Requirements In order to implement policies that support working female workers the organisations will incur certain costs. The costs will cover for hiring day care employees who will take care of the employees’ younger children while their mothers are working. Secondly, the organisations will incur costs in redesigning of a room that will be used as an in-house day care center where the young children will be spending their day as their parents work. The table below represents the cost estimates that a small or mid-sized company may incur in order to implement this option. Items Costs (GBP) Redesigning of the room 1500 Playing kits 2000 Monthly salary for the day care workers 500 Total 4000 The organisations stakeholders will readily accept this option since it allows female workers with younger children to report to their workstation whilst caring for their children, which is a perfect work-life balance. Additionally, this option will be easy to implement once a suitable room is created within the organisations premises and it will have minimal interruptions to the normal working operations. In the implementation of the option of allocating work without regards to the gender of the employees there will be no cost incurred since this will fall under the mandate of the human resource manager. The option will readily be accepted by the stakeholders more so because of the affirmative action campaign that is ongoing and is based on the slogan of ‘what a man can do, a woman can do better.’ Additionally, the implementation of the option will be easy because it is naturally expected that employees in the same pay range and position should be handling similar tasks without any special treatment or discrimination. 5.0 Compare options Both options have similarities in the sense that they eradicate factors that could be used to justify unequal or lower payments to the female workers. Secondly, they are similar since their implementation requires restructuring of the organisation in certain levels. However, the two options differ since the option of supporting working mothers will involve physical restructuring of the organisation while the other option will only require restructuring of how work is allocated. The first option of supporting female workers offers special treatment to them such as flexible working hours while the option of allocating work without any regard to gender seeks to treat both male and female workers equally without any special treatment. Lastly, the option of supporting working women favors female workers the most while the second option of equal allocation of work might not be favorable mostly to female workers who have young children since it does not accord them any special treatment. 6.0 Conclusion This present report has established that despite female workers earning less than their male counterparts they are the most educated since nearly 60% of degree holders in Europe are female, and therefore, the existing gender gap pay is not justified. The report has presented two options that can justify equal payments to both male and female workers since they eliminate certain factors that at times employers use to justify paying female workers less than what they pay their male counterparts. 7.0 Recommendations This report recommends that organisations should eliminate factors that at times justify for male workers to be paid more than female workers do and this involve creating an environment where everyone is treated equally. References Farrell, W. (2005). Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It. U.S: AMACOM Publications Jaschik, S. (2010). Women Lead in Doctorates. Retrieved from: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/14/doctorates Accessed on [29.04.2013] Murphy, E. and Graff, E. (2006). Getting Even: Why Women Dont Get Paid Like Men--And What to Do About It. U.S: Touchstone Publications Poulsen, K. (2011). Exploring Pay and Management Gaps for Women (Womens Studies). U.S: Nova Science Pub Inc Shackleton, J. (2008) Should We Mind the Gap?: Gender Pay Differentials and Public Policy. London: Institute of Economic Affairs Read More