Inequality Based on Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Workplace - Essay Example

This author claims that while companies pay lip service to the promotion of diversity on their websites and in their advertising, and most incorporate formal policies embracing diversity in hiring, the real aim of top management is to maintain the white corporate elite. He arrives at his conclusions through an interview sampling of senior Fortune 500 executives, specifically asking them to define their respective firms’ diversity policy. He found that while most claimed they had such a policy, many could not give details.

Others expressed it in very broad categories, diluting the importance of gender and race if mentioned at all. From this he concluded that while most corporations stressed diversity for public relations purposes, few were concerned with steps to actually put it into practice. Finally, while the author admits many women are hired, few are promoted. While I believe there is some truth to this scholar’s allegations, my view is not as cynical as his. . (Connell 2010 The terms she uses, “doing gender” refers to the incorporation of roles society regards as normal for that particular sex.

Initially Connell reviewed the literature supporting this theory of socialization. She then like Embrick conducted interviews of 18 transgender volunteers to learn the workplace experiences of men changed their self identification to women and vice versa, irrespective of whether this was accompanied by actual operations. This sampling also included at least one individual who self identified as gender neutral or “queer”, deliberately adopting characteristics of both sexes. Whether secretive “in closet” or open “out of closet” these transgender people had to learn roles and behavior society considers appropriate to functioning as a member of their new sex assignment and discard those deemed inappropriate as their socialization prior to transition was for their original gender roles.

However some transgender people advised they did not transition their roles and behavior fully as they felt some new roles did not properly reflect their true personality or they wished to make a political statement about perceived injustices in the male-female power structure. Connell referred to the role transition as “undoing or redoing gender” and those maintaining some roles of their original gender assignment as adopting a hybrid gender. She pointed out that feminists have been hostile to transgender people presumably because they felt that their adoption of dominant male roles or submissive female ones was a preservation of the male power status quo rather than endorsing the goals of equalization they wished.

However she argued, and rightly so in my opinion, that trans gender people can actually foster