See Description

Running head: GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN WORKPLACE DRAFT ONE 1

GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN WORKPLACE DRAFT ONE 6

Gender discrimination in workplace draft one

Tiffany Williams

Columbia Southern University

Introduction

The fight for women to have their rightful position in workplaces has been going on for a long time. However, there are still numerous cases of gender discrimination where women are the main victims both in Africa and across the world. While there are laws defending the rights that women have, some women still lack information and end up becoming victims. This paper focuses on documented evidence on the laws defending rights of women in the workplace. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework where women can advocate more inclusive policies in seeking employment. Such a move would include a developing a policy that would be introduced to state assemblies on percentage requirements on gender representation in both public and private sector.

Fighting as a Corporate

National Women Law Center is one of the bodies that bring together the fight for rights of women at workplace. In their website, the organization has compiled a list of laws that explain the rights of women. The website also contains evidence on the discrimination cases; both individual cases and statistical cases. One of the articles run by the website is the fact about stagnant results in the wage gap in the last ten years dating back to early 2000’s. This is against the rise in the number of women who are the bread winners in their families (National Women Law Center, 2013). This information is contained in their information also.

An article ran by the Los Angeles News expresses the fight that then women in China are having through the Working Committee on Women and Children. This is a workforce that brings together the fight against discrimination of women and the fight against child labor. The article narrates the efforts to save a lady who was discriminated at work application level. Cao ju who was applying for a tutorage job could not be recruited since the job description read men only (Makinen, 2014).

From the above two cases, it is evident that women have been joining effort in ensuring that they win the battle. Apart from the national and international corporate unity in fighting discrimination, there have also been struggles within organizations. According to an article run by Oxford “The Context of Workplace Sex Discrimination: Sex Composition, Workplace Culture and Relative Power” many organizations have formed internal mechanisms to deal with discrimination cases. The aim of internal collaboration is to empower women who may lack information on their rights. This is the indirect form of discrimination that has replaced bullying and name calling (Thomas & Vincent, 2011).

One of the main focuses in internal unison in fighting discrimination is cases where women help fellow women to rise in the ladders of power. The article run by Oxford shows that women had traditionally decreased their ability by being jealous on one another’s improvements. However, after this case being reverted, the rate at which women rise to power has also increased (Peter & Shen, 2011).

The Challenges Still at Hand

When addressing Japan Institute for International Affairs, Christine Lagarde the managing director at International Monetary fund encouraged the government of Japan to reduce the taxation and workplace policies that do not favor women at workplace. Christine Lagarde argued that the government of Japan was lagging behind in the enforcement of policies that favor women (IMF, 2014). One of the policies that Christine Lagarde addresses are the rights for women who have parenting roles to be accorded more leaves that are fully paid by the employer. Christine Lagarde notes that, the Japanese government does not facilitate women who are parenting to continue working. This has leaded to increase in the number of women who dropout after their first child. A woman who has been in international leadership for a long time now analyses the relationship between Japan in 1960’s and 2010’s indicating that there are slight differences (IMF, 2014).

A report developed by Lund University indicates that the case is the same internationally. The case study identifies the Swedish labor market which does not offer any facilitation to women who are applying for jobs. The Swedish market is considered one of the developed markets and thus the authors expects its workplace policies to be forward looking but this is not evidenced (IMF, 2014). The authors in this case study identify policies that would guide governments in enforcing both public and private institutions to offer equal chance to both genders.

The case is still the same in China where most job applications have a specific gender that is targeted. While there are cases that favor women, most of the jobs favored men, and this leaves less lucrative jobs for women. Peter K and Shen K argue that while both men and women are targeted, it is just pretense for the advertisements that discriminate men (Peter & Shen, 2012). The authors call for policies that would help create open chances for both men and women.

Conclusion

The authors in the articles cited above indicate how far the fight for equal rights at workplace is far from over. The areas of challenges noted require both policy development and active participation by women and organizations as seen in Working Committee on Women and Children of China and National Women Law Center of America (Makinen, 2014). The findings in this paper affirm the need to develop a framework where women can advocate more inclusive policies in seeking employment. Such a move would include a developing a policy that would be introduced to state assemblies on percentage requirements on gender representation in both public and private sector.

References

IMF. (2014). The Economic Power of Women’s Empowerment. Japan: Author

Makinen, J. (2014,). China's women begin to confront blatant workplace bias - Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/28/world/la-fg-china- women-work-20140228

National Women Law Center. (2013). Employment. Retrieved from http://www.nwlc.org/our-issues/employment

Peter, K. & Shen, K. (2012). Gender discrimination in job ads: Evidence from China. Retrieved from http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/128/1/287.full.pdf html

Peter, K., & Shen, K. (2011). Gender discrimination in job ads: Theory and evidence. Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/papers/w17453

Thomas, F., & Vincent, F. (2011). The context of workplace sex discrimination: Sex

composition, workplace culture and relative power. Retrieved from

http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/89/4/1165.short