Table of Contents Page
Introduction 3
Research Articles, Overview & Opinion 3-7
Bibliography 7
Introduction to Female Gender Diversity
In some of the most male-dominated professions on the globe, the numbers of females entering these professions or even taking up academic studies in these fields remain very low. The author intends to look at they why this is and offer insights and opinion on ways to improve this by critiquing 2 articles in this field. Taking the engineering, sciences, maths and technology professions as an example a significant gap still persists particularly in management and senior roles. The why this is; well the standard theories of bias, discrimination, no or small number of role models, attitudes to family and family responsibilities and work life balance are those favoured as the reason why women are not as prevalent in these professions as they maybe should be in a 21st century society.
Many governments, universities/colleges and organisation have tried initiatives to try reversing this and improving the statistics of females in these professions. Such things as mentoring programmes and career development programmes tried to reduce the gap as mentioned previously. The two articles reviewed around this area are:
Research Articles and Overview
“The Role of Gender in Team Collaboration and Performance” from Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol 36 No 2, June 2011, 146-53; Author Julia B Bear
“Flawed Policy, Failed Politics? Challenging the Sexual Politics of Managing Diversity in Engineering Organizations” from Gender, Work and Organization, Vol 19 No 6 November 2012 doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2010.00545.x
According to research there is a shortage of femal...
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...ognise the past models successes, avoid snap decisions, focus on one major change and not have to many changes all at once. Provide reassurance that gender diversity change is good. Provide proper training, resources, support and guidance.
Bibliography www.midtool.org www.blogs.hbr.org frameworkaddict.wordpress.com Bear B Julia, Woolley Anita Williams; “The Role of Gender in Team Collaboration and Performance” from Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol 36 No 2, June 2011, 146-53;
Kanter Rosabeth Moss; “Ten Reasons People Resist Change”, Harvard Business Review, September 25th 2012
Sharp Rhonda, Franzway Suzanne, Mills Julia and Gill Judith; “Flawed Policy, Failed Politics? Challenging the Sexual Politics of Managing Diversity in Engineering Organizations” from Gender, Work and Organization, Vol 19 No 6 November 2012 doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2010.00545.x
Although many women have achieved a college education, many will nit be able to share the same values as there male peers. Many women will have certain messages conveyed about them which will be used to profile them in their selective fields. These factors will contribute to the controversial issues facing women today in the workplace. The gender roles that have challenge women today will not allow the equal status of women who are trying to advance there job careers. Only with enough support from activist groups of women’s rights will break these stereotypes and, allow women to have a fair and equal role in society.
Cañas, K. A. & Sondak, H. (2011). Opportunities and challenged for workplace diversity: Theory, cases, and exercises. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.
The once male dominated, corporate, "white collar" America has seen a phenomenal influx of women within the last thirty years. Although a female lawyer, physician, or CEO is no longer considered a rarity in our times, women still face quite a deal of oppression in comparison to their male counterparts. In retrospect, some professions have always been controlled by women, and men have not made a noticeable advance in these fields. In 1970, finding a female lawyer to represent you would be a difficult task, since less than five percent of the profession were women. Today, that number has risen to almost thirty percent. The percentage of female doctors has almost tripled in the course of thirty years. African Americans have not made such a conspicuous progression within the last fifty years, while women have made a tremendous impact on the corporate world. One may wonder, how did women make these extraordinary advances? For the most part, it is due to the education they receive. At the present time young girls are encouraged to enroll in classes dealing with math and science, rather than home economics and typing. As pointed out by Nanette Asimov, in her essay "Fewer Teen Girls Enrolling in Technology Classes", school officials are advocating the necessity of advanced placement, and honor classes for teenage girls, in both the arts and sciences. This support and reassurance than carries over onto college, and finds a permanent fixture in a woman’s life. While women are continuing their success in once exclusively male oriented professions, they are still lacking the respect and equality from their peers, coworkers, and society. The average male lawyer, and doctor make twenty-five percent more money than their female equivalent. Women have always lived with the reputation of being intellectually inferior to, and physically submissive to men. This medieval, ignorant notion is far fetched from the truth. In 1999, high school men and women posted similar SAT scores, being separated by a only a few points. In addition to posting similar scores on the SAT, the average males score was a mere two-tenths of a point higher than an average females score on the ACT. Even though a woman maybe as qualified as a male for a certain occupation , women receive unwanted harassment, and are under strict scrutiny. A good illustration of this would be the women represented in "Two Women Cadets Leave the Citadel.
But sex-segregation does not really explain the overall gender wage gap. Women’s average educational attainment now exceeds that of men’s and as a result, women have been entering previously considered to be “masculine” occupational fields at growing rates. Even in the STEM fields, women are no longer underrepresented except for in computer sciences and engineering. However, gender wage gap is present at every level of the career ladder in every field. How and why does this
It is primarily evident that a lot of amendments have been made in the field of employment to achieve a sense of work place equality for men and women. However, there is the understanding that the topic of inequality and inequity is still persistent in contemporary society. It is manifest that there are a numerous amount of barriers that females endure in the workplace environment, and this binary is occurring because of their gender roles. This paper’s intent is to recognize that the concept of gender stratification experienced in the occupational spectrum causes the downward social mobility for females. The focus of this paper is to further investigate the argument that women in the workplace are still facing numerous amounts of impediments,
On the other hand, studies show that the number of women working has dramatically changed since 1970. These studies show that back then, the workforce was made up with 37.97 percent of women. Comparing this percentage to the studies made from 2006 to 2010, the presence of women in the workplace has increased at least 10 percent. In the 1970’s, it was really rare to see a woman working as an accountant; today, 60 percent of those accountants are women. Also, they have kept their own “careers for women” because more than 90 percent of dental assistants, secretaries and other work fields are composed by
Why are most brain surgeons and CEO's male? Why are most secretaries and nurses female? Why not female surgeons and male nurses? These are simple and frequent questions that can be answered by most Sociologist and Theorists. Sociologists and Theorists equate this type of job inequality phenomenon with occupational sex segregation. Sex segregation in the workplace is one of the most visible signs of inequality in the labor market. In almost every work setting, it is rare to see men and women working at the same job. When they do, they usually perform different tasks, with unequal levels of responsibility and authority. Even when job tasks are virtually identical, it is not uncommon to find men and women allocated to distinct job classifications within an organization. The two theoretical perspectives that I will discuss in order to explain this sex segregation are neo-classical and human capital theories, and institutional and labor market segmentation theories.
Historically our society drives men and women toward different socially acceptable behaviors and careers. Stereotypically men are the capable breadwinners that choose careers as: firemen, policemen, mailmen, garbagemen, milkmen, and the list continues. However, women are the warm caregivers that may choose one of three titles: teacher, nurse, or secretary. The above career pathways have been driven by societal norms, subsequently leaving women with marginal room for vertical mobility and limited leadership representation.
Stewart, G., Manz, C., & Sims, H., (1999). Teamwork and Group Dynamics. New York: Wiley. pp. 70- 125.
Half of all employees in the US alone are women and yet “only around five percent hold senior positions (Source 11)”. According to this, one can assume that out of all the employees in the US, only around three percent are women in senior positions, which is a small number of women. However, the representation of women in large corporations is bigger with twenty five percent as higher level managers (“Sexism in the workplace”). Small numbers of women in different kinds of jobs is still common in today’s jobs, even though some may consider the sexes to be equal. They are also underrepresented in blue collar jobs such as construction workers, precision production, and mine working. The cause of these small numbers could be because the employers of these jobs are sexist and the gender of the applicant matters when finding people to fill the jobs, but this is not always the case. Women could also not be applying for the blue collar jobs as well. They may not do this because they do not feel that they could stand doing the heavy duty work. Men could be convincing them that they could not last in the job, when in reality they most certainly
Engleberg, Isa N. and Dianna R. Wynn. Working in Groups. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.
STEM is best known as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM for many years has been primarily seen as and stereotyped into a masculine work field. But as of recent years, while it expands, more and more women have been rising in these fields. However, there is still a tremendous gender gap between men and women in these fields and areas of work. The gender gap between men and women in STEM is alive and well. There is no denying that the gender gap between men and women in STEM is immense. But there instead are many sufficient reasons as to why there is such a huge gap between men and women within in fields. Some probable causes for the lack of women seen in these areas are biased towards women, unconscious bias girls receive
Lieberman, Simma. “Better Communication between Men and Women in the Workplace: Some Useful Tips”. Retrieved on October 4, 2004 from http://hodu.com/business-communication.4.shtml
Within living memory, young women who have wanted to study engineering faced such dissent that in 1955, Penn State’s dean of engineering declared, “Women are NOT for engineering,” asserting that all but a few “unusual women” lacked the “basic capabilities” necessary to succeed in this profession (Bix par. 2). Although the number of women in social sciences and humanities has grown steadily, women remain underrepresented in science and engineering. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that “women remain underrepresented in engineering constituting only 10 percent of full-time employed engineers and 7.7 percent of engineering managers...” Although this is the case, social norms, culture and attitudes play a significant role in undermining the role of women in the aforementioned fields in addition to the gendered persistence and their individual confidence in their ability to fulfill engineering roles.
The persistence of the gender gap has been evaluated through the barriers, wage disparity, and discrimination that women endure in these organizations. In evaluating the barriers that women endure, it is displayed that they are left at a disadvantage compared to men, since they do not have the same learning opportunities, and are unable to progress at the same level. Also, in the assessment of the wage gender gap, unfair treatment towards women has led to their value and worth be questioned, eventually obstructing their ability to advance in their organizations. Finally, the analysis of the discrimination that women face in the workplace, has expressed that women are not given the same opportunities as men, which hinders their ability on rising in corporate hierarchy. The opposing argument to the gender gap focuses on gender bias, and recognizes the underrepresentation of women in upper management positions. The gender gap can begin to close if organizations take the initiative to hire more women and encourage their participation in the workforce. Overall, the gender gap in the representation of top management positions does exist in corporate organizations, however these organizations can make a change and bridge the