Gender equity in the workplace

Here it is, the year 2021 and gender discrimination remains, incredibly, an unsolved problem in too many workplaces. Despite the fact that attention has been drawn to the issue for almost fifty years, there is still a fundamental injustice in the way women are treated in work environments that are directly dominated by male senior management or at least influenced by male senior management. traditional leadership attitude, mindset and practices.

Although women make up about 50% of the workforce, they still face discrimination in several important areas. These include unequal compensation, a lack of upward organizational mobility, a lack of key decision-making power, and sexual harassment. These are profound deficiencies and injustices in the work culture. It has taken a long time to eradicate these blemishes from our workplaces. Such defects are not only ethically unfair, but depress the hitherto unrealized productive potential of half the workforce.

It is not as if there have been no attempts to remedy gender inequalities in the workplace. Many top management teams acknowledge the historical existence of male-oriented favoritism and sexism embedded in their and other workplaces. This recognition has been supported by initiatives to make their businesses and organizations fairer and more equitable. However, the problem persists. Cases of gender discrimination continue to be documented and controversial within administration offices, human resources departments, and law firms, resulting in the deployment of considerable resources for seemingly endless management of the consequences of misbehavior.

Elisabeth Kelan from the University of Essex in the UK has been researching gender equity issues for over twenty years. She has determined that there is widespread agreement that gender inequality prevails in general, but it is interesting that these same people do not admit that such incidents occur in their own specific workplaces. Why is this so? Dr. Kelan sees several reasons for this. To begin with, many see discrimination as a fault from their competitors or from other companies, but not from their own more virtuous workplaces. Second, there is a belief that the problem was worse in the past, but is largely being resolved, stating that all mitigation efforts made so far have worked to reduce it to a lesser problem. Finally, there are those who do not fully value gender equality as important and, if it happens, it is not their fault.

If we accept Dr. Kelan’s findings as authentic, the question arises: “What are people thinking?” What I think they are thinking is what has always been thought. At the levels, men big and small see themselves as better leaders, sharper decision makers, more enthusiastic managers, stronger negotiators, and superior competitors. And let’s face it, there are some traditionalist women who think that these roles are also more masculine in nature.

Even if one views the data and intellectually accepts gender discrimination as a problem, it does not automatically follow that the necessary behavioral changes will occur. When I reflect on my own past, I see relevant examples. I have long believed that gender equality in the workplace was a quality worth pursuing. It’s a no-brainer. However, have there been cases where I was more inclined to accept a male colleague’s opinion over a female’s during a meeting, or did I think a colleague was too sensitive and not tough enough, or did I pay more attention to the appearance of a woman instead of listening to her? thoughts? Embarrassingly, the answer is yes. It is these small but significant actions that prevent us from advancing in the acceptance of women as full and equal partners at work.

Anti-bias training programs and the like can make a difference in altering operational behaviors, but further progress may be better if each of us looks more deeply at how we interact with each other beyond superficial manners. Clarifying the personal values ​​that motivate our behavior patterns can reveal more to us individually and strengthen needed improvements than any mission statement or management protocol. The time has come to end gender discrimination.