Managing Workplace Relations - Essay Example

Managing Workplace Relations Why close the gender gap "Because not only is it the right thing to do, it's also good for business."- Royal Bank of Canada Background There is no denying that men and women are different physiologically, they are different when it comes to speech, physical strength, and they way they can be around people. However, in today's world, women are judged and compared to men in every aspect of their lives using this reality to justify the unequal treatment. Why is it so What is the psychological mindset of people that allows them to give one gender more than the other How does it affect the women in the corporate world What are the problems faced by women today and how do they fight to survive in this male dominant world What is the Glass Ceiling Glass Ceiling is a term which refers to certain situations where a qualified person is stopped from advancing or being promoted in his or her job within the hierarchy of the organization that he or she works in, and is not given a fair chance to move ahead from the lower level position because of discrimination. Most of the discrimination was basically related to racism and gender inequality, but also includes discrimination against age and disabled people although this is not as common as Discrimination against women and people from different race. We can also say that this situation can occur for men as well where there are certain job designs where women are preferred over men just for the fact that they are women. For example jobs like house cleaning and baby sitting. This is where a woman would be given preference over men. This problem uses the word ceiling because there is a block that limits people form getting higher positions and it is termed as glass because there are no written rules for such discrimination. Sometimes the limitation is not as obvious or apparent. The transparency of glass defines the transparency or the ambiguity of the reason for such limitations. This can only be made obvious if we compare it with the education, work experience and other obvious factors for critiquing and judging a person's capabilities. The glass ceiling terminology is not simply used to describe an outcome or a result that there are unreasonably few women at the top of organizations or less in proportion, neither is it a cry or a statement that suggests that discrimination against women is persistent at all levels of organizational hierarchies. It is a statement or a metaphor that simply tells us about the problems, difficulties and obstacles women face when it comes to going higher in an organization relative to men systematically increase as they move up the hierarchy. What is the Sticky Floor There are many social barriers that sill exist. these social barriers was the reason the concept of glass ceiling was coined but now a new concept has arose from the limitations women face due to these social barriers. This concept of "sticky floors" describes the reason why women are stuck working in their old positions and are unable to go up the hierarchical ladder and keeps them at low level, non-managerial and mostly support roles such as assistants or subs, and discourages them from getting promotions. It hinders their job and career development. This term basically highlights the barriers such as family commitment, associations with colleagues, stereotyping and other social barriers that hold these women down, hence the term sticky floor. Even if the women go up the hierarchical level there is discrepancy in the wage rate. This term generally is related to the females, but can also be applied to other working members as well. According to Rebecca Shambaugh in her article, "Glass ceiling or sticky floor The real reason women don't make it" in the Washington business journal, "In fact, our most useful insights may come from exploring what keeps us stuck: our outmoded, self-defeating and, let's face it, unconscious behaviors". This shows that it is the behavior and the attitude that women hold while working in a corporate world, that keeps them down and this behavior is unknown, women may not consciously make friends or try to contact people outside their circle of colleagues. They will not manipulate others or be good self-monitors, this is what keeps them away from getting what they want. Managing Workplace relations - Women and the Glass Ceiling in Australia, Myth or Reality Women everywhere face the difficulty of passing through many social barriers before they can get to the place or the position that they want. Women all around the world work in an environment where discrimination takes place and men are generally favored. This may be explicit somewhere but mostly it is implicit and cannot be easily identified. The Methodology and its Limitations There are several factors that we can consider while dealing with glass ceiling and sticky floors, those factors are: Income levels: this basically will highlight the fact that even if the women are allowed to go up the hierarchical level, there income level or basic wage rate is lower than men, this is because of the pre conceived notion that males are the breadwinners of the family. Now in this generation, where there is an increase in single parents and single mothers and other factors such as women being the breadwinners of the family due to circumstances, is a matter of concern. Education: This basically deals with the fact that the more women are educated and sound in knowledge of their work, the lesser would be the effect of glass ceiling. If women are extremely educated, and have all the knowledge required to get the position, the higher ups will be left with no valid reason not to keep them or to give them a promotion. However, the affect of glass ceiling is visible when a man would be given the job if both of them are being considered for the position. Experience: Experience is what the higher ups look at when they are considering any individual for a position in the upper management or even bringing the employees from a non-managerial position to a managerial one. If a woman has no experience whatsoever, she can become a victim of glass ceiling and sticky floors. This is because men are again preferred over women if the matter is of experience. In a situation where two employees of opposite sex are hoping to get a position with little or no experience, the male employee would be chosen simply because the perception of the female being the weaker sex leads to believe that it would be easier to train a man than a woman. Psychological Barriers: this basically deals with the fact that females along with certain social barriers have adopted certain psychological believes that they will not be able to go up the hierarchical level because of their gender. This stops them for working towards their goals. Basically it means women do not even try to work way up because they believe that it will yield no results and that preference will always be given to her male colleagues. Another barrier is the characteristics of women. All human beings are what they are as a result of either nature or nurture. Women are said to naturally have the power to affiliate, to make emotional connections with the people they work with, and are more team oriented. They try to make a community of long lasting relationships and hence are uncomfortable of moving out of their circle and trying to make new connections. This results in glass ceilings and stick floors. Limitations: The limitations of this methodology are that there are many more factors that results in glass in situations where glass ceiling can take place, each of these situatuions depend on the person in consideration, the environment and the organizations. All these factors are subject to contradiction and there are many who would argue on the fact that women tend to use these situations to their benefit. The limitation is also the data that is taken into consideration. even if the statistics or facts have been taken by analyzing firms in Australia , they do not hold true for all organizations existing and do not take into account their organizational culture and environment. The data taken into consideration may not be recent and may not take into account the changing trends. The articles may rely heavily on opinions rather than facts which is one of the major limitations. The concept of glass ceiling has had an affect on women's career life in many aspects. The glass ceiling has had an affect on the wage rate of the women working in the same position as their male colleagues. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the latest data suggests that on average, hourly earnings of full time males and females are $28.83 and $23.4 respectively. This is an earning ratio of 81 percent, which has narrowed by around 4 percentage points over the last decade. This shows that females in general earn less for the same amount of work. the reason why this happens is because it is an age old believe that Men are the breadwinners of the family while females who work generally do it to spend some time and make use of their qualification, the burden of running the house does not fall on women and it is the males of the family that have to take care of the finance. This is not true anymore. Women nowadays work side by side or even above their male colleagues because they have higher needs and wants and also support their families financially the same way as husbands do. There are many single mothers especially in the western world such as U.S.A and Australia. In Eastern countries like Japan and China, females are generally expected t take car of the house while the husband earns, so this factor still holds true, however due to extreme poverty and the increase in prices, both the males and females even in Eastern countries are sharing the financial burden. The effect of glass ceiling exists everywhere. It is obvious in all Eastern and Western countries as the composition of women in higher position compared to men is visibly less. According to "THE GLASS CEILING HYPOTHESIS", A Comparative Study of the United States, Sweden, and Australia by Janeen Baxter of University of Tasmania and Erik Olin Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, women were 14.5 percent of all managers and administrators but only between 1 and 5 percent of top managers in Denmark and in Japan, they were 7.5 percent of all administration and management positions, but only 0.3 percent of top management positions in the private sector. According to the Breaking through the glass ceiling: Women in management, by International Labour Office Geneva, the amount of female workers in the world was 67 per cent in the year 1990 and is expected to increase almost 70 per cent between the age of 20-54 in 2010. Nearly 58 per cent of women were economically active in Africa, 64 per cent in Asia, 46 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 69 per cent in Europe and 73 per cent in North America. For the year 2010, these percentages are expected to remain the same for Asia, rise by 1 per cent for Africa, Europe and North America while in Latin America and the Caribbean rates will increase by 4 per cent to 50 per cent. This rate of increase especially in countries like Australia and other Developed countries is due to the increase in the level of education and the fall in the fertility rate, as more and more women get educated, they feel the need to work and capitalize on what they have achieved due to learning. Around 47% of the women according to a research in Australia are spending more time at work and take less time off for maternity leave and basically spend more of their productive years at work. In the United States, , the proportion of working mothers with children under the age of 3 grew from 34 per cent in 1975 to 57 per cent in 1994-5 while the percentage of working mothers with children less than a year old was 53.6 in1998. The research by Adele Horin found women in the education field made more progress in their careers than women in the other fields. Ten of Australia's 38 vice-chancellors are females but now this seems to be changing and the progress has slowed down in the past four years in both universities and the public service, according to Peters. In universities, female employees in the management section felt they were more harshly judged and controlled than men, and felt and that they had to workers almost twice as hard or even more to get the same kind of recognition and respect as men do. In the private sector, women in Australia have started to make it to the second and at times even the third level of management. But 54 per cent of Australia's top 200 publicly listed companies do not have a single woman employee in executive management positions, according to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. Solutions and Recommendations Women in all areas especially when it comes to making relationships, teams and a collaborative workforce are found better at it than men. Women managers are said to take taking more time than male colleagues in decision making as they are always trying to reach a consensus instead of using power as a means to solution. Managers say that they see less aggression and anger at board meetings when women are there. There is less of "me attitude", their power to control and calm the crowd down are some of the benefits of having women on the top position. Therefore there should be steps taken to counter the problem of glass ceiling and allow women to have the same chances of climbing u the ladder as men do. There are a lot of theories and theoretical approaches one can use to come to certain solutions and recommendations for the reduction of these social barriers. The theory of Unitarianism was basically a theory used by Christians to belief that there was a single identity of God as opposed to the doctrine of trinity, the existence of three people as one God. This basically tells us that in a corporate culture, we should not see mane and women as different entities when it comes to comparison and should not consider their physiological difference in judging their mental capabilities and intelligence, they should be seen as one and should have the same set of rules for both the genders. This way there will be no problems or hindrances faced by women, hence no discrimination. If an organization adopts the concept of pluralism it can actually be productive and can counter the effects of discrimination and glass ceiling. The concept of Pluralism as defined by Merriam-Webster is "a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in and development of their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization." this means that a pluralist will see the people around him as one and will try to emphasize on the commonalities of the people around him than the differences. A pluralist will not see a man or woman differently just because they have different genders, but will try to judge each individual by their work, effort and other facts that matter. If such a way or culture of organization is adopted, there will be no problems for women to try for higher positions and the psychological barriers that they have developed, will also be reduced. The labor process theory could be used to explain this concept as well. The labor process theory beliefs the alienation of human beings from what is natural to them so that new things can be learned. if employees are trained to abandon their pre-conceived notions of how women are and how they should be treated in a workplace, the concept of equality can become evident hence leading to a more harmonious and productive organization. The Affirmative action policies that have been implemented in many Private Multi-Nationals and Organizations have allowed the women who are still a minority in labor force to get equal opportunities as men. Policies like the Affirmative action policies should be implemented world wide so that women everywhere can enjoy the same benefits and have a feeling of security and trust in the organization they are in. Works Cited 1. THE GLASS CEILING HYPOTHESIS A Comparative Study of the United States, Sweden, and Australia JANEEN BAXTER University of Tasmania ERIK OLIN WRIGHT University of Wisconsin-Madison. Accessed on May 27, 2008 from http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wright/GenderGap.pdf 2. Bnet. Business Definition For: Sticky Floor. Accessed on May 27, 2008 from http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/sticky+floor.html 3. WBJ (Friday, March 3, 2006). Women and Leadership by Rebecca Shambaugh Glass ceiling or sticky floor The real reason women don't make it. Washington Business Journal Accessed on May 27, 2008 from http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2006/03/06/smallb3.htmlpage=2 4. Gender Index. Women in Management Labour Office of Geneva. Accessed on May 27, 2008 from http://www.genderindex.pl/downloads/ILO_glass_ceiling.pdf 5. Can Gender Parity Break the Glass Ceiling Evidence from a Repeated Randomized Experiment by Manuel F. Bagues, Berta Esteve-Volart New version, November 2007 Accessed on May 27, 2008 from http://www.fedea.es/pub/Papers/2007/dt2007-15.pdf Read More