Inequities and Discrimination in the Workplace essays

Inequities and Discrimination in the Workplace essays In countries such as Brazil, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Macao, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore, women earn 60 percent less than what men earn (256). Although U.S. figures arent as extreme as these, women face discrimination in the workplace. In 1999, women held only 5.1 percent of top executive management positions, and only 3.3 percent of companies highest paid workers were women (256). The term glass ceiling is used to describe the situation in which qualified women aspire to fill high positions but are prevented from doing so by the invisible institutional barriers (256). Discrimination of women in the workplace is a result of mens power and their reluctance to give up resources and their control over women and can be summed up for women of corporate America by looking at four categories. First, the quality of womens work tends to be undervalued. Frequently, studies asking participants to assess a piece of work have found that it is evaluated less favorably when said to have been done by a women than when the same piece is attributed to a man (257). Although the tendency to favor a mans work is not always found, when differences in evaluation are found they tend to favor men. Further, womens successes tend to be attributed to luck, and competent women are sometimes described as unfeminine. Societys distrust in womens abilities results from the stereotypical roles which label women as less assertive and expert than men. A second form of discrimination of women in the work place involves making unjustified assumptions about womens values. Whereas men are assumed to have values that tend to perpetuate the system, womens values are assumed to challenge it. Felicia Pratto and her colleagues conducted a study testing the status of the positions for which men and women were most likely to be hired. They found that women were favored to fulfil...