Managing gender equality in the workplace - Assignment Example

Organizations prefer to have individuals from diverse backgrounds as their team members because this choice can bring in more talent, innovative ideas, knowledge and learning opportunities. On the negative side, this measure can create a lot of anger, frustration, unhealthy competition, employees’ politics and complexes among the employees because of low tolerance and sexual superiority. In most organizations, we see that majority of the working force is of men and they are the ones serving at the superior positions.

Women are not much appreciated in the business world because it is a common misconception in our society that women are just meant for taking care of the entire family, raising the children and doing the household work. In reality, the potential possessed by females is commendable. Some organizations encourage women to become a part of the business arena and they design special policies and rewards so that women feel secure and proud of their status. They treat women as equally to men and condemn gender discrimination in the workplace.

Also those belonging to diverse backgrounds have to face real problems when mixing up with team who have entirely different cultural backgrounds. Due to such issues, the ultimate productivity of an organization suffers. Among many such organizations, Unilever is one organization which is a supporter of diversity and gender equality. In this paper, we will be focusing on the practices of Unilever that are aimed at managing equality and diversity within the organization, relate these practices with the theories based on equality and diversity and recommend possible diversity management strategies for Unilever.

Theoretical Review Globalization has brought in challenges for almost all organizations. Of them, the biggest one is to survive and compete with other organizations in the industry. Multinational companies are realizing that inviting people from across the borders to become a part of them is an intelligent move which can certainly benefit the company. When a team is diverse, every member will be having his own ideas and opinions about things and when these ideas combine, the result is nothing but success.

But this is possible only when diverse teams are managed in a way that their productivity is enhanced. Similarly, women in the business world are as capable as men. Today, companies are realizing that the talent and ability women possess cannot in any case be ignored and they deserve to be given opportunities. There are a number of key factors that an organization like our chosen one, Unilever is taking into account while designing and implementing its gender equality practices. At Unilever, they have a global diversity program, the purpose of which is to ensure that they have the right talent and creative people in the company.

They also ensure that the workforce is gender balanced so that the maximum output can be achieved. Unilever is making it certain that the graduate recruits make fifty percent of the workforce. However, the annual reports reveal that although women are working in senior and middle level positions at the company but there is only one woman who is serving Unilever at the leadership level. We can relate this to the concept of glass ceiling effect.