Essay: Gender Inequality in the Workplace

In the United States, there are several places where gender inequality is still evident in today’s society, one of which is within the workplace. Men and women are often treated differently at work simply because of their gender. Specifically, women continue to be discriminated against in a variety of ways in the workplace, and the gender disparity is particularly evident when one examines hiring practices, performance evaluations, promotions and wages.
Workplace discrimination occurs when an individual is adversely treated due to a number of different factors, alone or in combination. Job applicants or existing employees can be discriminated against because of age, gender, race, ethnicity, skin color national origin, mental or physical disability. It is illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, gender, or national original when hiring or in the workplace according to Executive Order 11246 which is enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). This executive order also requires employers to ensure that equal opportunity is provided when hiring new employees. When paying a salary to men and women with the same qualifications, responsibility, skill level, and position, employers are forbidden to discriminate or treat the employee or applicant differently, on the basis of gender. Even with the implementation of this Executive Order in the United States, there is still empirical evidence indicating that gender discrimination still occurs in many facets of the workplace. For instance, the article, Gender Stereotypes, Same-Gender Preferences, and Organizational Variation in the Hiring of Women: Evidence from Law Firms looks at several law firms in the U.S. The study demonstrated that people’s inherent gender stereotypes lead to gender discrimination, even unintentionally. For example, employees with more palpable masculine characteristics such as assertiveness or aggressiveness were more likely to be hired than women who were more passive and reserved.
Annual performance evaluations are prone to subjectivity, which opens the door to gender bias. Biases can lead to double standards, in that­­ a situation can get a positive or a negative spin, depending on gender. In support of this notion, a study performed by Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio at the Harvard Business Review demonstrated that women were almost 2 times more likely to receive critical subjective feedback (as opposed to either positive feedback or critical objective feedback) compared to….. It also revealed that women received less constructively critical feedback. The objective of constructive feedback is to allow an employee to focus on their positive attributes while identifying areas where there is room for growth. However, this specific type of feedback was not often apparent among that given to women workers. Men were much more likely to receive positive feedback. Lastly, it showed that women’s positive performance was more likely to be attributed to characteristics such as luck or their ability to spend long hours in the office, perceived as real commitment to the firm, rather than their abilities and skills. As such, they often did not receive due credit for their work.
Opportunities for promotion are another aspect of the workplace where gender discrimination is prevalent. Though women and men say they want to be promoted in about equal numbers (75% and 78% respectively), women are significantly less likely to make it to the next tier in their organization according to a study done by Business Insider. The study looked at data on promotion and attrition rates and other aspects of career paths at 118 North American companies. Across all organizational levels, it found that women are a whopping 15% less likely than men to get promoted. The study demonstrated that fewer women than men aim for the very top. Among senior managers, 60% of women said they wanted to be a top executive, compared to 72% of men. Women were also more likely to cite stress and pressure as one of the biggest reasons for not wanting to hold top positions. Contrary to popular belief, women are not leaving their organizations at higher rates than men. In fact, women in leadership are more likely to stay with their companies than men. At the senior vice president level, the study showed that women were 20% less likely to leave. Women often start out in entry level roles, but by the VP level more than half of women hold staff roles (positions in functions that support the organization like legal and IT). Men, on the other hand, are more likely to hold line roles at every level of an organization. This difference poses a potential problem because line roles frequently feed into senior leadership. At every level, women were at least nine times more likely than men to say they do more childcare and at least four times more likely to say they do more chores at home.
Nearly all women represented by hundreds of different kinds of jobs, earn less than men in the same fields and with the same qualifications and years of experience. This is particularly true of jobs in fields that are female dominated. Thanks to the societal perception that “women’s work” is less valuable than that of men’s work, female-dominated fields tend to have lower wages than similar positions dominated by men. As the New York Times reported, according to a study conducted by professors at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Haifa, janitors, for example, earn wages 22 percent higher than those of maids and housekeepers. The former are typically men, while the latter are usually women. Elementary school teachers, composed of females who largely dominate that sector of education, are paid less than secondary school teachers, where women still make up the majority, but at a much lower scale. Whereas only 10 percent of elementary school teachers are men, they make up 44 percent of secondary school educators. When the number of female professionals starts to grow within an industry, the pay rate tends to drop. When women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography. The pay rate for designers fell by 34 percent when women’s numbers starting growing in the field, as did the salaries of biologists (dropped by 18 percent) when the same situation occurred. And this trend is not limited to just those two professions.
Most employers are well aware that they must and should prevent discrimination in the workplace. There’s a clear disparity between how women perceive their opportunities for advancement and how their companies see it. Companies should institute training to help employees learn about what gender bias is and how to combat it. Men and women alike could be undermining their coworkers’ or employees’ abilities to succeed at work without even knowing it, and the first step to resolving this issue is making them aware of their behavior.