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Introduction
Nations all over the world need individuals with proper skills and training required to do certain jobs in order to become efficient contributors to the growth of the economy. Yet at present, the society and government are confronted with substantial challenged. Among these challenges include but are not limited to the following: poor literacy level and shortage of skills. Shortage of skills include: literacy skills; numeracy skills; problem-solving; decision-making; technical skills; vocational skills; leadership; management; planning; interpersonal; communication; social; facilitation; negotiation; critical thinking; marketing; entrepreneurial; income-generating; and awareness of political, legal, and social. A lot of these skills could be taken as obstacles for success in the contemporary world and must be obtained through education. However, education system has been unsuccessful to many people, particularly in rural areas. This paper explores the different factors that affect the nature of work today.
Gender Diversity
Involvement in the labor market is an essential component of the labor force as it elucidates supply of labor in that market. The great increase of women’s active involvement, especially married women, to the work force in the industrialized and urban places of the emerging nations is creates massive changes in the work environment. Employment of the female population in the labor market encourages society in making use of such potential authority in a good way. The components which can be movers for greater participation rate in social and economic fields are given priority.
One of the prevalent aspects of today’s nature of work is the presence of diversity. Diversity is not just an ethnic or a cultural problem. In actuality, diversity pertains to the perceived differences among individuals in sex, race, age, ethnicity, mental and physical ability, religion, sexual orientation, family status, and work (Bell, 2012). Organizations and leaders have to understand that emerging diverse backgrounds is all about change (Liswood, 2010). Diversity brings with it a variety of reasonable profits to a business. Gender and sex perceptions serve as the primary social categories in nearly all cultures (DeFrancisco and Palczewski, 2007).
Years ago, women in offices were unswervingly selected to either obtain a part-time employment or a work that demands low responsibility merely due to the ongoing stereotype among women as carers of homes. As to unmarried women, they stop going to work as soon as they get married or when they give birth to their baby. For women with children, they likely care more for their children than their employment. In Moreover, the most widespread impression is that women do are devoid of the same mental, physical, as well as emotional skills as men do. It is this stereotyping that influence the trend in today’s work environment.
Gender Inequality
Most companies are after of people who have excellent educational background. Hence, education is one of the factors that affect the nature of job at present. Both education and gender bias impacts the employment status among women. Women’s education has been a debatable issue in some parts of the world. It embraces aspects of gender equality as well as admission to education, and its association to the mitigation of paucity. From the 1960s to the early part of the 80s, there had been an increased in the number of women in the United States who earned their bachelor degrees in engineering and science. However, during the late 80s onwards, the number reached its plateau.
The significance of technology and engineering to contemporary society for wealth production and maintenance of way of life has long been identified. Nonetheless, the technical work fields in several industrialized nations are aging, and there is a decrease in both interest in engineering and science as well as the size of conventional talent pool of white males because of demographic and cultural changes, encompassing increases in the normal life span in developing nations and decreases in the total number of birth rates. Even though women as well as the minorities are frequently expected to fill in the shortfall in science and engineering, several nations are not even near the zenith of achieving a crucial mass of minorities and women at either the craft or professional levels.
Refining women’s educational attainments has been established to have clear influences on the wellbeing and financial future of women, which in turn improves the prospects of their entire community. In the poorest countries of the world, 50% of girls do not attend secondary school. Yet, research shows that every extra year of school for girls increases their lifetime income by 15%. Improving female education, and thus women's earning potential, improves the standard of living for their own children, as women invest more of their income in their families than men do. Yet, many barriers to education for girls remain. A lot of factors can be associated with the decreasing number of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Barriers to equality continue.
In Lisa Krieger’s article titled Few Women Pick Computer Science, the author explored the gender gap in information technology. According to Krieger, since 1996 to 2002, the number of women taking computer science has decreased from 41% to 34.9% (p. 291). This issue has been a major concern because it is not only in computer science that the number of women taking the course decreases but also in engineering and other fields of science.
Job Creation
Job creation is normally a good aspect of entrepreneurship. With the economy deteriorating and the rate of unemployment going up, the country could make use of more jobs. More jobs would mean that individuals would have money to spend, save, and invest. Establishing a measurement of job creation is a significant step to make traditional and social entrepreneurship more analogous. Then people would understand better which businesses can create vital impact and which will have biggest effects. To measure the value of creating jobs, it is essential to know the actual number of jobs created as evaluated by the upsurge in employment. Such upsurge can create social impact with regard to the income that the individual earns and the benefits of the job including tuition support and health insurance.
In recent years, when one speaks of growth, it signifies revenue growth. When a corporation generated and vended more gods that it did in the past quarter, then that is considered growth. Profitability has now become paralleled to growth. The word profit growth has displaced revenue growth. Profit growth is generally the outcome of downsizing, cost cutting, or offshoring operation. These can result in increased profit. However, profit growth by way of cost cutting is a blind alley. Businesses that are implementing are not growing.
Competition used to signify that someone in the same line of business is trying to win over the company’s consumer base. At present, when one speaks of competition, it means geopolitical. It is not anymore that kind of business that is involve in competition. It is now the country that is involved. If a country does not reduce it barriers to permit for more competition, the business becomes less competitive.
These terms will make people better understand the various forces that will have impact on the quality and quantity of jobs particularly in the United States. These will also help us better understand that economists are being hired by the affluent and that they are working in contradiction to the normal employees and not in favor of employees. Demand is known to be the foundation of opportunity. It is the combination of means and needs. Need in the absence of means is not considered demand and vice versa. It must be clear to anyone that is not included in the list that some forms of employment diminish the potential market for services and goods. The higher the employment rate, the lower will be the demands for services and goods. De-growth increases a company’s profit. It manifests rightsizing, cost cutting, offshoring, and downsizing of jobs. All of these have been into existence for so long low.
Creating jobs can be made possible through innovation. Innovation is recognized to be the lever of economic growth. In the absence of innovation, demand becomes unrequited. Innovation accomplishes demand by way of improving production and creating new products. It is considered a luxury. It is also the least productive of all activities since majority of attempts at innovation did not bear any fruit. Only companies or businesses with strong strategic plans are able to survive innovation. They are able to acquire capital and they make use of myriad of concepts to make the company grow. The problem with innovation is the fact that it is completely dependent on investment. Initial investment is based on demand. Without this demand, then there is no chance to exploit innovation. Dying demand will turn off the tap for providing financial support for technology.
Improving the Work Employment Opportunities
The need to create environments that encourage and support women’s education in the field of science and technology and environments that promote women’s love for sports must be well-established. There are various women who are willing to get a career in science and technology and women who wish to make a name in the field of sports. However, because of so many impedances, women opted to stay behind the scenes. If only society removes the barriers that restrict women to prove their capacities, perhaps, more advancement will be developed and a stronger economic can be formed. At the moment, the Global Employment Agenda aims to place employment at the heart of economic and social policies (www.ilo.org). This is consistent with ILO’s (International Labor Organization) Millennium Development goals. According to the agenda, “through the creation of productive employment, to better the lives of people who are either unemployed or whose remuneration from work is inadequate to allow them and their families to escape from poverty.” (www.ilo.org)
It is also important for society to recognize the presence of diversity in today’s work environment. Diversity is highly essential in various aspects of the industries mainly because individuals with varying point of views every so often recognize issues that would then be overlooked. In a workplace, the experiences and talents of employees help companies succeed. Not enough gender diversity can weaken efficiency and reduce creativity in thinking and searching for solutions to problems. When individuals in an organization categorize themselves into psychological and social identity groups, there will be negative linear relationship between performance and diversity (Turner et al, 1987). In a research conducted by Morrison, it was found that the friendship among diverse individuals in a workplace functions differently for both genders, in that, women tend to need more emotional support while men are inclined to demand for more functional tasks (Morrison, 2008).
If gender diversity continues to prevail, organizations that do not retain or seek any progress in the best and talented employees that they have are most likely to suffer all the consequences. These employees are what endure the competitive characteristic of the international and global business world. The viewpoints by women taking higher position than men are most of the time taken as gender-based stereotypes thus creating negative impact on gender diversity at the workplace. This contributes to distortion of women’s real and actual talents and leads to the disconcerting gap in the management position of companies. Gender diversity can destabilize women’s ability to pose grave encounters in the developments of their professions. Women are often perceived as purely good in caretaking such as rewarding and supporting. Men are observed and taken as individuals with high taking-charge abilities as well as delegating tasks and persuading superiors.
Improvement of a gender-sensitive workstation should be taken as a general corporate rule which makes every effort to advance gender equality and enable women to participate disparately in decision making.
References
Bell, M. P. (2012). Diversity in organizations. Mason, Ohio: South-Western College. http://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Organizations-Myrtle-P-Bell/dp/0324302576
DeFrancisco, V. L., & Palczewski, C. H. (2007). Communicating gender diversity: A critical approach. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-Gender-Diversity-Critical-Approach/dp/1412925592
Liswood, L. A. (2010). The loudest duck: Moving beyond diversity while embracing differences to achieve success at work. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. http://www.amazon.com/Loudest-Duck-Diversity-Embracing-Differences/dp/0470485841
Krieger, L. “Few Women Pick Computer Science” pp. 291-293
Morrison, R. (2008). Are Women Tending and Befriending in the Workplace? Gender Differences in the Relationship between Workplace Friendships and Organizational Outcomes. Sex Roles, 60, 1-13.
