The Elimination of Discrimination against Women in the Workplace - Case Study Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Elimination of discrimination Against women Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @2010 Elimination of discrimination against women Introduction Over the past years, women have been exposed to various forms of discrimination in their places of work. Women are forced to quit their jobs once they get married, or become pregnant and are not given promotions because of their gender. At times women are paid low wages and the wages are always delayed on the belief that men are in dire need of money more than females. Women are constantly sexually exploited by their employees and they easily fall in the trap for the fear of loss of their jobs. Women lack job security and protection and are at high risk of unfair and unilateral dismissal and they also lack negotiating powers. They are not paid during maternity leaves as well as sick leaves and are denied paid annual holidays. Women are usually given part time jobs which are of poor level and are poorly paid. Case study: The Victorian Company The Victorian company is company in Australia that eliminates discrimination against women in the transport and logistics industry. The company assesses the particular training and education needs that women require in order to qualify working in the industry and also scrutinize and tackle main factors that affect the decision of women to work in the industry. The company has an action plan which reviews that the number of women in the industry is small but their presence is significant and therefore inclusion of more women in the industry need to be supported. The support given is essential in incorporating and maintaining women in the transport and logistics industry. As a result of the tough enrollment market, shortage in developing skills by women the industry result to be men dominated and the entire attitude and culture within the recognized man workforce makes it hard to draw in more women to the industry and maintain the already working women in the industry. (Rafftery, 1994)The action plan points out that it is essential to elaborate the professional character of the industry together with the broader benefits and opportunities accessible by women in the transport and logistic industry. The company considers many other options apart from training and education that may attract more women to the industry. Approach used by the company The company carried out a research to demonstrate the differences between females and males in the transport and logistics labor force and labor force in general. The transport and logistics industry is traditionally seen as unsuitable for women because most of employees are males and the tasks in the industry are considered to be masculine. The number of women continues to be low in the non traditional occupations and industries particularly in the transport and logistics industry (Verwighen, 1987). Career barriers and inequality remains a problem in the transport and logistics industry. In a study carried out on 1000 transportation and logistics workers, half of whom were females, more than 75% of females and 33% of males believed that females are limited in development opportunities because of exclusions in both social and professional levels. The company believed that introduction of greater interventions could see more women being included in senior positions in the logistics and transport industry and also their talents could be developed. Use of glass ceiling The Victorian company employed the use of glass ceiling theory to help in employment of more women in the logistics and transport industry. Although the glass ceiling has been revealed to be confusing as a hypothesis of administrative inequality because it wrongly imply that there exists only one obstacle at the peak and there are no more barriers once a female breaks through the top barrier. Females who break through the glass ceiling are faced with numerous issues as they perform work in their senior positions. Within the logistics and transport sector there are career paths that have been laid down but there are numerous paths to promotion and advancement and this hinders promotion of women to top positions. A study showed that both women and men in the transportation and logistics industry advocated for a glass ceiling for females. The Australian transport and logistics sector has recognized that females holding supervisory positions statistically drag behind all other industries and internationally Australia ranks the most horrible of western countries. A report given by the Australian Bureau of Statistics together with economic cooperation and development organization showed that only 10% of females were represented at the top executive positions of the major companies and in according to the equal opportunity for women workplace agency women held only four positions of chief executive officers in the year 2008. A census on women leadership in 2006 displayed that 8.7% of seats were held by women on board directorships and the figure declined to 8.3% in the year 2008. In companies also the number of women board representatives has remained low and this includes females in the logistic and transport company boards. A census by equal opportunity for women workplace in 2008 displayed a decrease in the number of female managers in the transport and logistics industry from the year 2006. Female executives were greatly affected by the decline and the number decreased from 18%from the year 2006 to the year 2008, while the figure of male managers were the majority declined by 7.1% only during the same period. Strategies used The company uses the training strategy to make sure that more women gained knowledge on the tasks of the logistics and transport industry. The general assumption has been that females usually posses’ different carrier motivations, aspirations and commitment in the workplace but this are not usually true. Women are always given jobs on expert role other than on the decision making roles for supervision of work where decision making is a daily routine and the productivity can be measured directly. Many of the women in the transport and logistic industry are given jobs on supporting tasks such as procurement, finance and human resource. Even though the industry is potential in giving women the other jobs within the industry females only attend to the supporting roles because they are not granted the other forms of work. This basis makes the Victorian company to recruit women so that they are able to perform the assigned tasks effectively (Stone, 1987). The conformity rules dictate that women are usually recruited for the enabling tasks and men for their operational tasks. The transport and logistics industry do not have quantified measures and hence evaluation surrogates like substitute for capability, social credentials particularly in the administrative posts. For instance males greatly use informal networks while females are restricted by opportunity because they are not included in the informal networks. The company has carried out a research which displayed that women do not hold top positions in the transport and logistics industry because they have less power and are always segregated by the management, believe that women do not in management positions, women have many family roles to attend to and they lack suitable mentors. Because of these reasons, women are given jobs in the small operator niches of the industry. The Victorian company carried out a recruitment process for the transport and logistics industry and trained females to make sure they could perform duties. The company also developed retention strategies to make sure that the trained employees could work for long in the industry. The company did this by ensuring that females were provided with the best working atmosphere and were paid benefits on time. The company gave rewards to employees who served in the industry for a long and this acted as an incentive to encourage employees work in the industry. The company ensured that the industry provided flexible working hours to the employees and pregnant women were granted maternity leave as well as sick leave. Research by the Victorian company showed that women are not effectively able to apply networks in the industry whereas males greatly benefit from the extensive and diverse network to advance their carriers and jobs. The company trained female employees on networking to ensure that they had equal networking opportunities in networking. In the industry, networks function according to gender groups, composed of the men and the women. A study by the company showed that as females were more central than males to the industry network in general, the females were not more central to the male’s network (EOC, 1997).They had less contact with the central group which consisted of men and were perceived to have little influence. The females who worked in the combination groups of both men and women had more contact and therefore had much influence. This demonstrates that if men and women worked jointly in the industry then there was likely to be a larger mutual benefit. Advocacy for same pay The Victoria Company advocated for equal pay for men and women who performed the same amount of work. Female workers in the transport and logistics company were usually paid low wages than their male counterparts especially on bonus and over award payments. Women were not given much work in the departments which used to have paid over time work. The Victoria company advocated for females to be given overtime jobs and being paid and also inclusion of women in the over rewarding departments as long they were comfortable with the working hours. The Victorian company looked into the full remuneration package and also on the base of pay such as allowances, health insurance, annual contributions and performance based payments. The company ensured that females who did excellent jobs were given performance based payments as was the case with men. A research by the company showed that women in the transport and logistics industry were given retirements benefits which are half the amount given to the males (Rubenstein, 1997). This is because women taker a lot of time out of labor force to bear children and the company advocated that women were supposed to be paid while on maternity leave and deductions channeled to pension schemes so that their retirement benefits are not affected by maternal leaves. In relation to salary discrimination in the industry, the Victorian company states that the gender gap is wider in the transport and logistics industry. In the year 1984 the pay gap was17% and this benefited men and in the year 2009 the pay gap was21%. The Victoria Company views the industry as being behind equality in workplace and must deal with the issue of wages to make sure that there is equalization at workplace. Women contributed 44% of the total employees in the industry in the year 2004and are more likely to be given over time jobs which are poorly paid compared to the males. Women contribute a labour force of 70 percent in part time and 33 percent of full time labor force. This acts as a limitation because most of the part time jobs are at night. The Victoria Company advocates that men must be given the night jobs because they do not have many family responsibilities like taking care of the children and are therefore comfortable when working at night. Progress The skills of the women in the transport and logistics industry are under evaluated and this displays a range of historical, industrial and social factors. The prejudices concerning females as employees and the form of skills they have interfere with the objective of evaluation of female work (EOC, 1997). The efforts of the Victorian Company seem to advance and this as resulted to an increase in the number of female employees in the industry and the training given to the employees has seen the industry retaining female employees for a long time. Although the top positions continue to be dominated by males, there are improvements in the number of females as managers in different departments of the industry. The less number of the females may because of their conception that these jobs are meant for men. Recommendations The victory company should encourage the transport and logistics industry to train and employ females in accord with the set rules. The company should develop a strategy to make sure that participation in the industry reflects equal chances and anti discriminatory procedures. The company must act as mentors to the women and change their concept that the jobs in the industry are meant for men by equipping them with appropriate knowledge. The company must encourage women to work in the industry by developing a market strategy tat will attract females who are deviating from the work force or who are changing their careers. The company should encourage the industry to establish network forums in the female employees so that they do not feel out of place within the industry for instance the women in the supply chain networking. The company should establish career development programs to make sure that females have identical access to administration opportunities and programs. The company should research on the reason the females need to get logistics and transport qualifications and which obstacles hinder them from obtaining the qualifications by taking a review research into information concerning women within the professional education training together with post graduate and under graduate courses. The company should carry out a study on the logistics and transport undersized business operators and investigate the females operating in medium and small businesses establish and assess the overall value of logistics and transport industry. Bibliography Rafftery, F, 1994, Equal Pay, Journal of Industrial Relations Vol. 36(4) 10-15 NSW Pay Equity Taskforce, 1997, Pay equity and the undervaluation of women’s skills, Sydney Rubenstein, M, 1997, Discrimination: A Guide to Relevant Case Law on Race and Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay, 10th edition, London, Stone, D, 1987, Race-based and Sex-based Wage Discrimination Law, California Verwighen, M, 1987, Equality in Law between Men and Women in the European Community, Belgium Colgan, M, 1995, Equal Pay, Market Forces and CCT’, Industrial Law Journal, Vol. 24, 4, Oxford University Press, California Frizzel, J, 1995, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney. Equal Opportunities Commission, EOC, 1997, Code of Practice on Equal Pay, Manchester UK. Smith, M, 1996, Pay Equity and the Labour Market, RIPAA, Seminar Paper, International Labour Conference EOC, 1997, General Survey of the Reports on the Equal Remuneration, Geneva. Read More