Diversity in Gender, Work and Organization

Introduction

The issue of gender has proved to be a thorn in the flesh in how organizations manage their employees. Although the number of women in the workforce has proliferated since the 1970s, the feminine is still underrepresented. Many companies have made tremendous steps in hiring a more diverse workforce and have gone ahead to structure an inclusive workplace to retain their staff. Workplace bias continues to affect and impede the process of hiring, promotion, and retention of underrepresented groups such as women (Stamarski & Son Hing, 2015). According to the newspaper article, gender inequality is a complex phenomenon experienced through organizational structures and practices. Most of the gender inequalities are through human resources practices that negatively impact how women are paid, hired, and promoted at the workplace. The workplace is now termed as an inhospitable place for women and negatively affects their work performance. Discrimination at the workplace is a result of harmful policies and decision-making arising from HR management. The disadvantages that come with discrimination affect women’s health psychologically, mentally, and physically. The newspaper article sought to explain the nature of discrimination within the policies, decisions, and discrimination causes at the workplace. It further seeks to discover why the number of men at the workplace outnumbers that of women.

HR focuses on organizational practices that help employees accomplish their organizational goals through proper management.HR practices are crucial in ensuring employees access value rewards and outcomes from the company.HR practices can also determine how employees treatment within the organization. Human resource practices can be classified into policy, decision-making, and making of policies and decisions. The making of management policies entails the interaction of organizational decision-makers and the organization’s employees or prospective employees. Institutional discrimination occurs when the organizational policies are biased regardless of their knowledge, skills, abilities, and performance. This type of discrimination can occur in women during recruitment, assignment of roles, job evaluations, and promotions. Institutional discrimination can be evident in various organizational policies and negatively affects the work output of any employee. This discrimination can also occur where the organizational decision-makers use a criterion bending to favor men over women. Women are less likely to advance on the job ladder if they use criteria to showcase their experience and performance. Personal discrimination is likely to occur when decision-makers assess competence and potential (Stamarski & Son Hing, 2015).

Women face personal discrimination, especially in the jobs category dominated by men or perceived to be for men. Females are evaluated and assessed more negatively and recommended for jobs less often compared to their male counterparts. Women face underrepresentation in leadership and at higher management levels within the organization due to discrimination, thus losing opportunities. There is always prejudice against women by some managers who see them as having low promotion potential than men. As a result, men usually ascend faster through the job hierarchy than women. According to the study conducted in the United States, it is evident that women receive lower wages than men. Within any given job category, men top compensation and wages for the same quantity of work. This wage gap can be attributed to personal biases by the decision-makers in any organization (Ziman, 2013). Most women face gender discrimination through harassment, which consists of various verbal and non-verbal behaviors conveyed to them by organizational decision-makers (Stamarski & Son Hing, 2015). This behavior is always through sexist messages, which convey an insulting and negative attitude towards female employees. Women experience gender harassment, such as sexist comments when applying for a job and discouraging feedback from the hiring team.

Leadership plays a vital role in gender discrimination as it is through it that the organization commits these harmful practices. Having gender organizational leaders means having few women leaders as they are the ones who set policies of the organization to enable it to reach its goals. Leaders can influence women’s under-representation through discrimination, not allowing gender supportive policies, and being unsupportive of gender diversity (Essig & Soparnot, 2019). Having women in critical leadership positions signifies that the organization supports gender diversity and can create a favorable climate for women. Women are more satisfied to work in organizations with female supervisors than those with a male as leaders. There is less organizational support for women working in organizations headed by men, and women are more likely to experience gender harassment in those workplaces. Creating an environment of teamwork and inclusivity will go a long way in keeping the working environment positive and productive. Employers have the mandate to keep the working environment safe for each gender, race, and age group of every employee from any form of harassment. By HR focusing on diversity, there is a need to create a culture of inclusivity to safeguard their employees’ interests and ensure retention. Strong policies must be put in place by the organization to protect employees from negative behaviors. A culture of inclusivity for all genders acts as a magnet for retaining talented workforce in the organization. The critical thing is to train employees on their biases and how to conduct themselves at the workplace.

Organizations need to be more diversifying in terms of gender to be competitive in the business world. Managers of present and future are responsible for strategizing their organizational policies and development to accommodate a multicultural environment for retaining talent and achieving the common organizational goal (Broadbridge & Simpson, 2011). Diversity is essential as it fosters competition and better employee performance leading to profit maximization. Gender diversity has contributed to employees’ productivity and satisfaction through its distinctiveness in reducing conflicts and focusing on utilizing the human workforce. Competitive benefits and more significant economic productivity achievement are through firms embracing diversity and appearance tactics to be comprehensive organizations. Lack of gender diversity in any organization attracts higher absence and lower productivity, resulting in higher corporate costs. Different genders at the workplace stimulate harmonious relations and favorable attitudes, which improves contribution and enhanced team performance to achieve the organization’s goals. Staff drawn from various cultures improves the organization’s diverse experiences, views, and approaches at different levels of commitment to enhance their general performance. Drawing a pool of healthy men, women, and transgender people increases creativity and innovation, thus ensuring talent comes to the organization. Different genders have different views, bringing different experiences, innovation, and creativity to the organization. Inclusivity helps reduce gender stereotypes, promoting the organization to a corporate brand with a touch of gender parity. It is also evident that an organization with gender parity has enhanced staff collaboration during meetings, sharing skills, knowledge, and ideas. High employee retention is guaranteed when there is a collaboration between employees of different gender and safe the hustle and the costs of hiring new employees. Gender diversity in an organization improves understanding of the customers’ needs. Customers come from different backgrounds and thus need to work with employees of mixed genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds to fully understand each customer’s needs (Krishnan, 2020). For the organization to communicate effectively and understand its needs well, the employee base should reflect the customers. Organizations that embrace gender inclusivity achieve greater profitability by sharing ideas, experience, and skills and retain more talents for the business’s benefit.

Conclusion

Therefore, organizations need to take steps in mitigating discrimination at the workplace and ensure there is gender diversity by changing their HR policies that are harmful in retaining and recruiting employees. The article emphasizes that HR takes necessary measures to ensure that they have enacted policies geared towards rewarding managers who embrace gender diversity. HR should learn to manage work-family conflicts which affect people differently through adopting flexible work arrangements for different genders. Women are the most affected by the work-family conflicts than men since they take the most family roles. Such arrangements are through written policies outlining the affected job divisions.HR should ensure they base their criteria for employee recruitment on accurate knowledge of the job and not gender stereotypes (Verniers & Vala, 2018). Their policies should reflect reliable measures on explicit performance expectations and apply acceptable practices in workers’ evaluation. Employee’s performance should be based on actual work behaviors to avoid bias through gender stereotypes.  Interventions such as diversity training through interactive discussions and lectures can help in improving this situation. To achieve Greater productivity, HR must do away with organizational structures, policies, and practices that are hostile and discriminatory to gender diversity. Conflicts arising due to gender diversity at the workplace are solved by sensitizing employees to appreciate employees’ gender and culture. The organization’s values and culture should prioritize teamwork and create an environment of respecting each other.