Paste your essay in here… HOW DOES SEXISM AFFECT THE UK’S WORKPLACE?
INTRODUCTION
From the mid 17th century, the rise of a patriarchal society in which means a system whether big or small, from families to governments were being controlled and dominated by men. As stated by Bell Hooks in “Understanding Patriarchy (2004)” “Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation”; with the comparison of patriarchy to “ life-threatening disease” had fully highlighted the seriousness of the term. It is also mentioned that although the word is specifically related to men more than women, women seems to have a better understanding of the word and what it really means while men always associated the word with feminism and therefore denies any experiences of their with the term. Even though with the rises of feminism starting from France in 1837 by a French philosopher – Charles Fourier (1772-1873), women have been fighting for their rights till this day but the powerful concept of a male dominant society still exists. Since patriarchy had become a silent norm in our daily lives, both genders are influenced by the idea in which created many negative stereotypes especially on women; as a result, women are more likely to experiences at least one type of sexism throughout their life, chiefly at work. Sexism in the workplace has been an alarming issue in the UK since 52% of women had experienced unwanted sexists actions in the office according to a research from the Trades Union Congress and the Everyday Sexism Project (2016). In this essay, the commons sexism issues, their affects on the UK and the existing solutions by the government will be discussed.
COMMON SEXISM ACTIONS TOWARD WOMEN IN THE OFFICE
As stated above, as one of the result from patriarchy are the normalises of stereotypical terms and assumptions in this case specifically for women. For example, the term “like a girl” is used as an insult with the meaning of being weak and powerless. This made men feels like they had power over women in some way and this led to actions of disrespecting and underestimate females even though they have from the same background and titled equally in profession. Women faces various unwanted sexist behaviours at works because of these reasons as well, the most common issue is recorded via a survey done by 1,500 women set by TUC (2016) was sexual harassment at 52%. Not only this, the survey also shown that there is about 30% experienced being the target of inappropriate jokes and 25% were subjected to being touched unwillingly. These figures shows the alarming issues of sexual harassment toward women in the UK’s office but the amount of cases recorded where women stood up for themselves and reported the incidents are quite low. The reason behind this is that most of them felt ashamed and embarrassed, “It makes us miserable at work where we just want to do our job and be respected” said TUC head Frances O’Grady. In most cases that they did has the courage to report, their employers will only either ignores or continuing to jokes about the problems; if not, there are a few other reasons that they did not try to fight back. Firstly, considering the further assaults both mentally and emotionally that they might suffers from if the words were spread around. Secondly, in 2014 the employment tribunal fees was introduced and this meant that in order to bring a sexual harassment case to court will cost a certain amount of money and this could be costly to some women with lower incomes. Another reason is they are considered to be risking their job since most of the assaulters are men with higher positions. Due to these reasons more and more women are staying silent and choose to suffers by themselves in order to make an income. A rare case of fighting back to sexist actions in the office is Nicola Thorp – a receptionist in London was dismissed from her job only because she refused to wear high heels to work. Many companies made policies about what female are acquires to wear to work such as they can only wears high heels and dresses to work because it is though to be ‘professional’. Nicola made her own petition against the overall issue of discrimination in the workplace and successfully gained attention and justice for not only herself but helped in changing the current situation.
Another main sexist issue that women faces in the workplace is the huge wage gap. Although the pay gap in hour wages had reduced in number from 23% in 2003 as a result of the Equal Pay Act, according to a study by The Institution for Fiscal Studies (IFS), women are being paid 18% less than men averagely but this figure is only true for women who are in their 20s as it is related to maternity leaves. Women after the age of 30 will be treated differently with the reason of having babies, the number continues to rise after 12 years of having a first child at 33%.
There are many studies which shows that sexism does affects women not only physically but mentally as well. A study published in the journal “Sex Role” (2015) by Laurel B. Watso said that women who suffers from sexual harassment are usually more fearful and anxious. It is proved that harassment can lead to trauma and depression, especially when the victim has to face the situation daily. Also, with several cases of assault targeted at women reported by the media which involves violent and rape, this had made women’s already anxious mind became more and more afraid of being the victim. Despite the seriousness of these cases, the sad thing is the act of victim blaming from the people as the women who got raped suddenly became the reason behind the man’s action. Another fact is related to when women actually decided to get help from professional or doctors. In a lot of cases, women who came to the doctors asking for help, the doctors are less likely to treat them the same as men for some reasons. Firstly, science researches found that it is harder to detects if a woman is experiencing pain than a man because of biological reasons. Secondly, as a result from gender stereotypes that makes it more difficult for women to get proper treatments from doctors. A survey in 2014 by the National Report and For Grace participated by more than 2000 women shown that about a third of women were said by their doctor that their case can not be treated. Other reported that about 51% were told “ You look good, so you must be feeling better” and 45% had the assumption that the pain is not real, that it is only in their head.
UK’S EXISTING SOLUTIONS
There are a lot of policies made by the UK government in order to achieves gender equal at the moment but one of the most important was the Equal Pay Act established on 1975. The legislation acts as a guarantee by companies and business owners to make recruiting, working, wage and other related factors to be equally distributed among men and women according to their position not their gender. As a result of this legislation, the gender wage gap of UK had flexibly changed in the last few decades with the narrowest point since 1970 was 9.4% in 2016 for full-time workers, about forty years into the act. This figure shown that the legislation actually worked and it helped to narrowed down the gender pay gap but according to Deloitte (2016), with this speed gender equality in the workplace will not become a reality until the year of 2069 which is about almost a century after the empower of the act while the government promise to undertake it in a generation. On February 2017, the UK government had officially announced the gender pay gap reporting in order to get companies to publish their statistics on the company’s gender pay gap. The report is mandatory for all companies with 250 or more employees and this will be done every year on their company’s public official website. Aside from the actions of adults, it is also very important to educate young children/ young adults in order to spreads awareness on what the right attitude and actions are toward sexism.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, sexism in the office especially sexism overall are affecting women not only physically but also mentally as well. As much as the big issue of gender discrimination in Britain’s workplace is, it is even more important to set up solutions and effective legislations to solve this problem. It should be one of the main goals for the UK to reduce the big gender gap that still exists in the country and to achieve it fast.