Gender Inequality In Workplace Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Gender Inequality In Workplace. Answer: Introduction The report deals with the recent story on gender inequality published on the website, www.hcamag.com on 14 December, 2017. The story deals with increasing efforts by the employees to address the pay gaps and gender imbalances persisting in Australia. The story highlighted that there is a gender pay gap which is in favour of men in all occupations. The story informs about the Australias national gender pay gap, which is 15.3%. It is indicating that the employers are still not doing enough to reduce the gender inequality. The published news informs about the efforts being taken to reduce the issue but could lower the SAPs gender pay gap to only 2%. It is still a long process to eliminate the issue entirely (Hilton, 2018). The thesis of the paper is - There is need of increased effort from the Human resource department, to overcome the gender inequality in workplace. The report aims to analyse the gender inequality issue using relevant theory and literature and provide practical solutions to the issues. For this purpose the report draw on the concepts of the strategic management and literature related to the employee relation challenges. All the arguments are supported with the theoretical discussion. Analysis of the Gender inequality issue: Need of HR efforts There is a need of HR efforts to ensure the gender inequality as most of the data focuses on increased efforts from women to end the pay gap. There is multitude of factors, influencing the pay given to women. It includes nature of their employment, industry, history of wage fixation, and their trade union membership. There is clearly more role to play by the organisation in addition to the womens action alone. Equal pay has been a political debate since ages even after 30 years of equal pay legislation. Women despite focusing more on knowing their worth or doing research or by negotiating effectively may not help the issue to be resolved. Thus, HR needs to develop proactive strategies to mitigate the issue. Gender pay gap can be dealt at the HR level as on an average men are earning 24% more than women (Kahn, 2015).). According to the Federal Government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency, women are taking home a smaller pay packet than men and have poor job design. Also women enterin g into the management roles are denied of part time work opportunities. There are very few women working as senior mangers being part time workers. It is due to lack of flexible working embraced by men. Women take greater role in family care than men. Therefore, women mostly take part time jobs. There are still 30 top companies in Australia that has no women on their boards. Women have the significant potential to offer, which is missed by the Australian economy (Cassells, Duncan Ong, 2017). Role of capitalism and patriarchy Gender inequality in the Australia can be explained by Marxist theory. According to this theory, the segregation of the labour force is influenced by the capitalist system. Marxist believed that women liberalism can be achieved, by dismantling the capitalism. The inequality is arising due to exercise of power as per the class analysis. The Marxist feminism theory has emphasised on patriarchy as the cause of gender segregation for gaining greater economic advantage. According to Marxist feminism the inequality in distributing the domestic duties between men and women is beneficial for capitalism. The same extends to the work place (Whatmore, 2016). Marxist argued that this inequality caused the conflict between the labour and capital in various organisations. Marxist theory was however criticised by various feminist scholars for ignoring the gender related issues as his theory did not consider the child care. Child care could not be combined with employment which was the major drawbac k for women. It was the major concern for the radical political feminist theory. As per the radical feminist theory, the oppression in employment was the basis of patriarchy. This is considered the cause of the lower status of women both economically and socially (Bryson, 2016). The status of the women in the employment is also explained by the Dual system theory. This theory is based on the radical feminist theory and the material analysis of history. This theory explains the dual role of the capitalist system and patriarchy in sustaining the gender inequality in labour force. In this theory the job segregation is explained by the intersection of the capitalism and patriarchy. Both together have led to emergence of the dominant capitalist and men. Both the outcomes are similar although emerging from different systems. This theory however, extended the understanding of the gender segregation at work (Carter, 2014). Prejudice and Hiring biases Gender inequality in workplace is also explained by the neo-classical economists. It is known as the human capital theory and considers the differences in human capital possessed by the employees as a reason for gender inequality in workplace. According to the neo-classical economists, employees receives rewards based on their education, capability and training. It means that the organisation based their recruitment decisions depending on the market value of each individuals human capital. The theory explains that women were paid less as they were considered to have fewer skills than men. The challenge here is the prejudice that women had lesser market experience than men and lesser human capital. The reason for inferior skills of women was house chores and child rearing. Men tend to spend more time in paid jobs and thus, the human capital gap widens. Women stay out of labour market due to maternity leave and the human capital decreases. After re-entering the market, inequality in ea rnings is observed between men and women as women lack flexible working. Hiring biases are observed after rejoining from maternity leave (Ochsenfeld, 2014). Employee relation challenges The gender inequality in workplace implies the HR management to have strategic approaches in every organisation. It may be related with area of job design, career support, work organisation and work life balance initiatives. However, HR management faces employee relationship challenges. It is because not every team in the organization can afford to have the members of the same sex. Owing to cultural diversity, there are different customs followed in different parts of the world. It is difficult to meet the expectations of each employee. HR managers cannot control the thought of each employee. The superior employee of the team may not be accessible to his or her team members (Jackson et al., 2014). According to Sharma (2016), lack of cross-cultural communication skills is the barrier for HRD to identify the inequality. There is a need of capability approach to manage the diversity and gender equality. In this regard the HR needs internal capabilities to act in response to the issue, w hich is secured by the numeracy, literacy, education and training. Minorities and women lack adequate training program in par of the men. One of the examples of the capability approach is to combine the internal capabilities with external structural conditionsto develop flexible work arrangements. HRM needs to address the needs of the diverse group of people to avoid conflicts and tensions. The HRM should not consider the us verses them strategy. There should be a difference between the equality policy and diversity policy. Diversity management is focused on valuing the organisational initiative on respecting every employee in the workplace irrespective of gender and other variables. Equal opportunities are associated with employee treatment that is right based and tolerant. It includes initiatives that are entrenched in conformity of legal rules (Kulik, 2014). There is bulk of literature available on managing both equality and diversity. It is critical in workplace as it influences all the members working in the organisation. Managing both the aspects leads to increase in forms competiveness. It is possible if the diversity is not considered as public relation tool. Employees are motivated in every organisation using the performance appraisal method. It helps to maintain both equality and diversity. Some organisations do not uncover the origin of potential biases. This implies HRM for conducting the culture and management systems audit. Lack of such audits keeps certain members of the organisation at disadvantage as per Rees Smith (2017). There are incidents of racial discriminations that inhibited the formation of the constructive group. Appraisal system with gender biases was also found to increase the disadvantage position of women. It may be associated with the stereotyping attitude of HR, and other factors such as low expectation and double standards. Therefore, the racial and diversity audit is considered to be useful in reducing gender-based discrimination.Employee from diverse communities such as African-American female managers may have to work harder than Australian male manager owing to the biasness in performance appraisal. There ar e some firms such as seven-Eleven that manipulated the performance appraisal scores of the employees to reduce the rewards. Women mostly received low scoring than men and led to job dissatisfaction. Women rejoining after maternity leave were expected less productivity than men. They had poor flexibility in working. It affected their acceptance in workplace and income equality. Exploitation of the black or ethnic minority women was evident from the cost benefit analysis. It is attributed to the managers attitude towards equal opportunity. It implies for fairness and AA edicts in managing gender discrimination (Sharma, 2016). Recommendations- Practical solutions HRD can overcome this issue by initiating gender-focused HR management. There are mediating effects of the gender diversity. Gender-diverse workforce results from the human resource policies and practices that is gender-focused. It has great impact on the management as well as non-management levels. At the non management levels the gender diversity leads to higher productivity and higher market performance. A firm engaged in gender-focussed HR practices is the signal that it values gender- diversity. Such workforce gives competitive advantage. Hence, this implies for practical implications (Ali, 2016). HR managers can eliminate the pay disparities by determining the level of knowledge of each employee and the value they add to the organisation. HR managers should ensure that the job offers are not based on what an employee earned previously and maintain the internal equity (Meijerink et al., 2016). Correll (2017) suggested that promotions and biases should be bias free and ensure equitable development of talent. Both women and men with similar qualifications should be proportionately assigned to jobs that have better promotions opportunities. Both should be recommended for opportunities such as management training to increase skills that can impact the advancement. HR managers should give similar opportunities to both genders including bonuses, add-ons and similar increases. According to Tam (2017) HRD should perform an annual pay equity analysis at the time of merit increase. It will ensure that the pay is based on market value, last three performance ratings, past experience, and others factors. It is the duty of the HR to adjust the pay of the employee as per the projected pay. Bonuses should be given based on the annually established goals. Both the managers and HR partners should set the realistic goals. They must engage in open discussion with the employees if one demographic is getting too less. The mangers should be accountable for the development of the team members. The compensation should be transparent; it means that there should be clear formula determining the pay increases along with the pay range. This strategy helps provide a rationale and dispel the misconceptions. It is recommended by the, Australias Workplace Gender Equality Agencythat the HRD practice need to be explicit about the person responsible for equitable pay. Every organisation should have a remuneration review committee to recognise the discrepancies in pay equity. Accountability includes roles and responsibilities of the HR managers in the remuneration process. A company having competitive edge means it has level paying field. It helps to get largest segment of top talent. Strategic HR management should focus on promoting the flexible working, focus on measurement, promote female leadership, and eliminate the salary negotiation. There is a need of quick fix solution to address the gender pay gap. HR together with manager should consider the where the employees are heading towards (Javidmehr Ebrahimpour, 2015). Conclusion It can be concluded from the above discussion that HR is not doing enough to address the gender inequality. The factors that contributed towards the gender inequality in workplace in Australia as per the literature are capitalist system, patriarchy, stereotyping attitude by HRM, and prejudice. The other factors include lack of cross cultural skills, capability approach, biased performance appraisal system by HRM. The challenges faced by the women as a cause of these factors are gender pay gap, lack of flexible working environment, misevaluation of their capabilities during performance appraisal and hiring biases. Based on literature, gender-focused HRM practices are recommended. It is recommended to HRD to overcome the gender inequality by performing an annual pay equity analysis, focussing on promoting flexible working hours and, female leadership, and eliminating the salary negotiation. References Ali, M. (2016). Impact of gender-focused human resource management on performance: The mediating effects of gender diversity.Australian Journal of Management,41(2), 376-397. Bryson, V. (2016).Feminist political theory. Palgrave Macmillan. Carter, B. (2014).Capitalism, Class Conflict and the New Middle Class (RLE Social Theory). Routledge. Cassells, R., Duncan, A. S., Ong, R. (2017).Gender equity insights 2017: Inside Australias gender pay gap(No. GE02). 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