Gender in The Workplace
Women and men experience different types of mobility within the workplace. Women tend to experience a glass ceiling, an invisible barrier that prevents them from moving up the corporate ladder. Men in jobs traditionally held by women, such as nursing, elementary school teaching, and social work, experience a “glass escalator” effect in which they are able to quickly ascend the job hierarchy to become managers and principals. There also tends to be a gender pay gap between men and women, with women earning only 77% as much as men.
One cause of the gender pay gap may be due to occupational segregation, which pushes men and women towards gender-specific forms of employment, rather than pay discrimination. Another cause is the double burden, a phenomenon in which women perform most of the unpaid childcare and household work despite being otherwise employed for pay. A third cause is occupational sexism, one part of which favors men for promotions due to their traditional breadwinner status. The 2001 class action lawsuit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., charged Wal-Mart with sexist hiring and promotion practices.
Another issue in the workplace is parental leave. The United States is currently one of only four countries that do not mandate paid paternal leave for new parents. However, among countries that do offer paid parental leave, almost all of them offer few or no benefits for fathers.
In addition, the emergence of transgender individuals in the workplace has begun to disrupt the gender binary of male and female. By creating a hybrid gender identity, the transgender community suggests notions of movement toward postgenderism.
Read more about this topic: Sociology Of Gender
Famous quotes containing the words gender in, gender and/or workplace:
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“Most fathers will admit that having children does not change perceptibly the way they are treated or perceived in the workplace, even if their wives work. Everyone at his workplace assumes that she will take on the responsibilities of the children and the home, even if she too is in the office all day.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)