Women and Paid Work - Essay Example

? Women and Paid Work Introduction Women live in a society that is segregated according to race, class, gender, territories and other cultural differences. Consequently, opportunities for and attitudes towards them vary substantially based on their demographics. Therefore, only the survival of the fittest or the most superior is possible while the inferior classes often don’t see the light of day. Females become victim of such prejudice on regular basis, especially in field of paid work. Various researches have been conducted in the past to study factors linked with this social disorder. This dissertation is also focused on studying extent and causes of gender stereotyping in paid work. A comprehensive research has been conducted highlighting the critical findings and analysis in subsequent sections. An initial thesis and few preliminary conclusions have been drawn which shall be tested and verified through this study. This paper supports the belief that females have always been subjected to stereotyping and unfair treatment at places of business. Earning lower salaries, bearing prejudiced behavior from colleagues and facing sexual harassment are common examples of obstacles faced by women in our society. Radical measures are required to be taken at national level so as to evolve the role of women in our society and in its corporate culture, promoting sexual equality and empowerment of women. Research Findings I have conducted a thorough research, studying various literature material and conducting interviews and surveys. I developed a quick questionnaire and distributed its copy to each of the participants, including several feminism activists, working women and men holding executive positions in reputable organizations. This was accompanied with a short candid interview to study verbal cues, body language and tone of behavior of participants towards this notion. I ensured to include interviewing such people in my research who claimed to have views contradictory to mine, in order to help me perceive other side of the story: I kept an objective approach with an open learning mind and with no preconceived notions. It was observed that the health sector gives most employment opportunities to women, nevertheless, in lower positions and salaries. Other white-collar jobs such as banking, law and engineering only witness an immaterial proportion of women entering the field. The survey statistics revealed that about 60% of low positions and low-wages jobs are held by female employees. However, I was told by most of women that they still work at such pay scales out of financial needs. Female participants, ranging between younger age groups of 20 and 25 years, representing the largest number of employees in the population selected, claimed that they work to stay independent and earn livelihood for themselves. Other reasons included keeping busy instead of staying home, pleasure working and supporting families by single parents. Younger females claimed to have faced heavy unemployment and loss of jobs during slump periods. The employment rate for such women, ageing between 25 and 44, faced a sharp decline and fell to 77.1%, while for those aged 25 to 44, it came down to 77.3% under recessionary pressures. However, surprisingly for females with ages between 55 and 64, the employment rate, not getting affected by downturn, enhanced by 1.2% in recent years. Similarly, employment rate for married women having children also grew over the last three decades. On the contrary, I was told by men, occupying influential positions in organizations, that they still prefer hiring women without children since they are capable of giving more time and commitment. During interviews with working men, I discovered an odd fact that there are social preferences of some married males to maintain distance from female colleagues at work since they wouldn’t like gaining proximity with them and causing any trouble at home where they live with their wives and families. Women suggested that they prefer working part time rather than full time since it gives them a window to run household work simultaneously. This trend is mostly seen in women who have childcare responsibilities at home while another substantial proportion work part time because they are unable to get some employment of full-time nature. At the same time, a substantial number of women work part time because they cannot find full-time employment. There were no age-specific patterns observed in area of part time or full time employment. However, I noticed that most of the women anticipate discontinuing work after a short period and therefore they find it less fruitful to invest in higher education and on-the-job training. Most women have accepted their social positions and therefore make decisions in compliance with them, instead of attempting to break the bureaucratic norms. In the absence of proper human capital investments and urge to hold executive positions in organizations, women earn lower as compared to men. Moreover, employers find it disadvantageous to hire women and bear unnecessary costs of firm-specific training, appraisal and promotions since they don’t foresee a sufficient return on their investment. On the other hand, some of the women also highlighted the positive aspects of this agenda, such as gaining self-confidence and financial independence, fulfilling their individual and family needs and achieving a higher influential status in family. Some also claimed that the domestic atmosphere at home gets enhanced through increased household earnings, adopting better luxuries and lifestyles and mitigating financial pressures. Women involved in self-employment and running their own small-scale business seemed very content with their working lives since they didn’t have to face a bossy and male-dominant environment. With own capital and resources, many women also declared they have been very successful so far in their ventures and acknowledged a radical evolution in attitudes of corporate markets towards their existence on influential positions. Analysis and discussion Women in paid work have to face gender stereotyping, conflict of priorities between work and home and resentment from male-dominant society which doesn’t readily accept empowerment of females in corporate world. Women mostly work out of need and suffer from disparity of low wages. Due to conventional division of labor on the basis of gender for each family, some women in rural areas are victims of ill-education and unskilled aptitude. Also, some women themselves prefer to neglect the need for education and experience, thereby having lesser technical expertise. Working women have to carry double the burden as of men since they have domestic responsibilities to look after as well, including childcare, family concerns and household chores. Women face hostility from colleagues yet they choose to continue work since they are short of reputable and well-paid employment options to switch to. Another evil of this society causes women to be troubled with sexual harassment by their colleagues and bosses. Though, none of the participants claimed to have faced it much, extensive literature and past experiments have proved it to be true. Working conditions are worse in some informal organizations where bureaucracy overshadows rights of women. Even women who were working in the formal sector stated that they face gender discrimination and sexual nuisance at their workplace. Researchers of similar experiments have recommended strongly that national bodies and relevant authorities must take serious notice of the situation and take rigorous measures to rectify it, creating equal employment opportunities for women and promoting their higher education. It mandates mentioning that employers are not purely wrong on their stance since they have evidences of differential productivity demonstrated by men and women at work. In order to run profitable businesses, they must satisfy their primary stakeholders rather than displaying a staunch feminist and socially correct stance. This area has not been covered in my research so it shall be only fair to rely on past statistical information available in studies and agree to this fact. Nevertheless, the research enabled us to understand how our community and economic world has progressed in acceptance of equality of women in paid work. There are major discriminatory practices still running in our society but there has been an overall substantial evolution in this regard in recent decades. Trends of self-employment amongst women has seen rapid growth in past two decades, though they haven’t achieved same level of success and exposure as have self-employed men. More frequently now in recent years can one observe women representation in various professional fields, working in prestigious capacities. Men have been seen to put in more effort and time in housework and childcare while women have been seen acting as breadwinner for households. The gaps in wages for both sexes have tended to become smaller, especially for younger females and can be expected to diminish completely in near future (Gutek. 380). Conclusion Since late 1970s, after passage of couple of decades, it is finally safe to state that earnings of women have been stabilized as compared to men’s and there has been a radical enhancement in proportion of women in the working classes. However, there is still a long way to go before the wages disparities entirely disappear (Blau and Kahn. 7), especially in services industries such as retail trade, agriculture and similar service organizations, where male traits are valued more and hence women are paid less and mostly hired on part time basis (Lewis et al. 35). In my opinion, speculating from the high levels of discrimination still confronted by women in the labor market today, it seems this might take another decade, if not more, to vanish completely. As of today, women are expected to be primarily responsible for childcare and household work in most families. What is needed is a radical restructuring of fundamental principles and norms of our society in order to accept women empowerment and equal working opportunities for them. References Blau, Francine D., and Lawrence M. Kahn. The Gender Pay Gap Have Women Gone as Far as They Can? The Academy of Management Perspectives 21.1 (2007): 7-23. Gutek, B A. "Women and Paid Work." Psychology of Women Quarterly. 25 (2001): 379-393. Print. Lewis, Jane, Mary Campbell, and Carmen Huerta. Patterns of Paid and Unpaid Work in Western Europe: Gender, Commodification, Preferences and the Implications for Policy. Journal of European Social Policy. 18.1 (2008): 21-37. Print. Read More