The research in the article provided was an extensive examination of various factors and their effect in hiring staff in certain professions. The researchers wanted to know the effect of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, effects of employment equity directives when the minorities are less qualified and also the effect of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on hiring decisions based on gender and gender role-stereotyping.
The research was undertaken to analyze the effects of employment directives on hiring of staff. Some of the professions have been designed by the society to ‘suit’ a certain gender. In socialization, the society defines certain gender roles. In this process certain jobs are ‘best performed’ by a certain gender. And it is in this line that, most governments introduce policies that may bridge the gap in gender defined professions. Some of these professions include nursing, police force, manual work such as plumbing etc that seem odd when performed by the ‘wrong’ gender. The employment equity directive seems to have an effect on hiring of staff. This therefore brings the question that; does employment equity directive favor the minority?
METHODOLOGY
The researchers devised a method in which two gender dominated professions were selected. This was nursing and the police. Nursing is a female- dominated field while police is a male dominated field. There were three candidates for the nursing job, in which two were female and one male. In the police officer job, two were male while one was female.
Six conditions were designed in which the first condition, the respondents were informed of the Employment Equity program and that candidate qualifications were in line with traditional gender-role expectations. The second condition was that the candidates’ qualifications were negative to traditional gender role expectations. The third and forth condition was that both the male and the female, that is two of the candidates in both posts were equally qualified following a pre-test in which gender identification had not been done. The respondents in condition 3 had Employment Equity program and gender distribution information. For condition 4, only gender distribution information was received by the respondents.
For condition 5, it was similar to condition 1 only that the Employment Equity statement was demonstrated urgency in inclining towards a gender-balanced workforce. Condition 6 was identical to conditions 3 and 4 apart from the absence of Employment Equity statement and gender distribution information.
Three hundred and ninety six undergraduate students of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource were selected as respondents. The respondents were assigned to one of the six classes.
METHODOLOGY AND THE RESEACHERS QUESTION
The methodology has proved to answer the questions by the researchers. Following the various conditions devised by the researcher, it was possible to examine different kinds of scenarios where gender-role and employment equity programs go hand in hand. The wide range of scenarios including the various conditions helps the researchers avoid fallacious analysis and conclusions and therefore good statistics are provided.
The researchers have been able to utilize a theory. But they first built a hypothesis. These two research measures are of importance. The research also made use of review of literature and were therefore able to build there base of knowledge on the issue. From my point as an academician, the methodology used was good. This is because, one, the researchers were able to address their research question. At some instances, the researchers devise methodologies that don’t precisely address their questions. They therefore end up having irrelevant information which is not in line with their subject matter. The methodology was also able to come up with data that was easily analyzable. The methodology also utilized relevant respondents- Human Resource students- who were relevant with the recruitment tasks in the country. The large number of respondents avoided a fallacious generalization. In research, a small sample may result to incorrect information. Thus the sampling method- which is part of the methodology- was good too.
