1.1 Introduction
The fight for equality between men and women while getting a major support via gender diversity awareness is still open and is said to be yet far from over when it comes to the work place. While there are laws against gender discrimination in the work place, there is yet much to “overhaul” in the system for women as capable as men to be paid as much as men receive for the same position, with the same responsibilities and same abilities (Puri, 2011). Women bachelor graduates are becoming more and more accomplished than their male counterpart. This is an incident that is well documented and to add to this, a higher percentage of honour graduates are found to be women as in the case of Harvard Class of 2006, wherein 55% of the women graduates received academic honours while not even half of the male graduates received honours (Rosenheim, 2012). Employment studies showed that women are said to receive a range of 70-80 cents for every dollar men receive. For example, in the work field of educators (e.g. teachers), female college graduate teachers earned 89% of what male teachers received. In the field of business, women received 86% of what men received. In the field of sales, women receive 77% of what their male counterparts received (Sommers, 2012). In a study conducted by the Census Bureau, of about 71 million full time male employees, 8.1 percent or (5.7 million) earned US$ 100,000 or more per year. However for about 52 million full time female employees, only 2.5 percent earned US$ 100,000 and above annually during the same survey period which the Institute for Women’s Policy Research calls this “continuing occupational segregation”. The issue of gender diversity in the work place is significant because of the complications it creates in the organization (Hsu, 2011). This difficulty may be explained logically; however this logical explanation positions women at a disadvantage. Women are at a disadvantage due to their child rearing capabilities. When a woman gets pregnant and gives birth, regardless of her career or position in the organization, she has to take a leave, work less hours, becomes limited in terms of mobility, etc. so much so that men are preferred over women because of this possible discontinuity. Women are traditionally more home-based thus the psychology of the work place being predominantly male has remained prevalent (Analytictech, 2013). Other experts believe that the gap between men and women’s salary was tackled not due to gender differences but to preference. According to Warren Farrell who wrote the book “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth behind the Pay Gap – What Women can Do About It” the bias of women to work in less demanding industries affect their level of compensation. Age may be a factor since according to a study conducted in 2010 by Research Advisors, women earn as much as men if they are between the ages of 22 to 30, single and without children. In fact, these women earn 8% more than men of the same age bracket; a considerable statistic considering at that it is evident in 147 of 150 cities in the whole of the United States. With more female graduates, it is quite plausible that women will earn as much as men thereby closing the gap in compensation between genders. This is helped by the fact that the US has increasing knowledge-based industries and dwindling manufacturing industries. Race is also a factor since most African Americans, Hispanics and Asian women are more likely to acquire a college degree and join the workforce, compared to their male counterparts.
1.2 Background: Gender Issues at WalMart
WalMart is a US company that has been criticised for gender related work issues. A lawsuit was filed against WalMart in 1991 by three female employees of the company. This was subsequently expanded into a class suit, presumably because the plaintiffs believed that it applied to all female employees of WalMart, which they believe is around 1.5 million women. The total number of complaints numbered to 120 women, all claiming gender related work discrimination. In 2011, the US Supreme Court sided with WalMart, despite statistical proof that showed WalMart preferring male employees for managerial positions despite having about 60% of its workforce made out of women. WalMart countered by saying that there were less women interested in management jobs than men, a point at the US Supreme Court took to consideration. As a point for WalMart, the Supreme Court said that promotions and pay-discretion were based on the discretion of individual store managers which meant that it could not be an encompassing company policy, hence making WalMart not the liable party. Since then, the company has strived to take on gender equity in the workplace, reaching number 27 in the top 100 corporations in America today (CNN Money, 2013). Today the company has supported women in both their stores, in the factories and farms that they acquire products from, and from their suppliers and commercial partners. The company donated $100 million to support various women concerns and purchases $5 billion on women-owned enterprises. There is still however, some concern on how the company can make the workplace more gender sensitive.
- Suggested Options
Two organizations, the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA) Climate Finance Working Group and the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America have proposed a framework for gender sensitivity in the workplace. These organizations believe that gender equality begin at the planning stage of the company, with discrimination deterrent options crafted during the strategic planning. This includes planning for budgeting, monitoring, performance evaluation and general audit. According to Matthew Bidwell and Roxana Barbulescu, two Wharton management professionals that specialized on gender equality in the workplace. According to them, as reported by Quast (2012), the way to equalize the work place should be through the implementation of work programs that would ensure that there is very little conflict between a woman’s responsibilities at home and at work. This includes the provision of day-care services for women with small kids, the promotion of flexible work schedules and more importantly the promotion of a results-only environment at work. In terms of hiring, employees should be hired regardless of gender and the hiring information should be gender neutral. The way jobs are structured and described must be made so that they do not emphasize masculine attributes.
These very general programs of actions and specifically a company can do the following:
- Flexible work schedules for women – according to Heathfield (2013), flexible work schedules help women by allowing them the time to meet not just their work obligations but their personal responsibilities as well. It also helps reduce the stress coming from commuting, traffic and fuel costs, which reduces women job burnout. It makes women (and employees) more productive since they have less stress during the accomplishment of their tasks. This works best for women who have small children because it enables women to manage their childcare hour effectively.
- Embrace training and further education – women need to equip themselves with the proper tools to become effective managers. This includes determining your strengths and weaknesses and then developing skill sets that are valuable to the organization. This also includes learning better ways of communication and developing a management ideology that suits the person.
These are two options that are made available to employees from WalMart to succeed in the organization. Of the two, the first one deal with lower-tiered Maslow-styled needs (basic needs for employment, family, security) while the second deals with higher-tiered needs (self-actualization) and is therefore an option that is not readily available for everyone. Both are socially accepted, with people understanding the value of family and education as two of the most critical elements of a balanced life. In terms of costs, both offer financial advantages to the company since they both promote higher productivity and employee satisfaction and the costs of implementing both are more for the account of the employee rather than for the company which makes it easier for the company to justify the program. I believe that these two options should be taken up by WalMart to support gender equality in the workplace.
1.4 Conclusions
Gender equality is important in any work setting because of the value of human resource to the organization. Happy employees are generally productive employees and decreasing any friction at the work place due to gender-based discrimination is critical to success. Reducing gender-based discrimination will result with women being able to obtain better pay and promotions, resulting from better working policies from employers. A large component of making this work is through the education of women not only in determining if they are being discriminated in the workplace, but also in understanding that some of their expectations regarding work must be founded on real-life principles. In any case, women in the workplace must have the training to determine any wrong perceptions about their careers to enable them to become more productive and successful at work.
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