Gender Inequality In The Workplace

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In recent months, women have been challenging today’s society to make several changes to the way people are treated. Specifically, the Time’s Up movement has been bringing awareness to the problems surrounding sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workforce. People disagree upon what qualifies as inequality in the workforce, therefore there are many different definitions and opinions on this topic. The Cambridge Dictionary has provided a definition to give context to what this issue regards. It states gender discrimination is, “a situation in which someone is treated less well because of their sex, usually when a woman is treated less than a man” (“gender discrimination”). Multiple dictionaries incorporates the fact gender discrimination…show more content…
Rivers and Barnett have found in many different business verticals, including high-tech and research laboratories, businesses choose men over women because of their gender. Businesses hire people in order to fill positions and to get work done. However, when businesses have biased opinions when they hire people they limit their hiring field and may in turn hire the wrong people. In some situations, this results in hiring less qualified and productive employees, which leads to less success for the business. Barnett also found that two thirds of managers pick men over women when they consider promoting someone. Promotions are suppose to bring success to individuals and businesses. However, when promotions are favored towards men it creates negative work environments, which in turn results in more people quitting. This causes high turnover rates for businesses, which decreases their profits. Businesses should recognize that training new employees cost more than retaining their existing employees. For example, if a nurse quit and the hospital had to hire someone new they would be losing money and resources because another nurse would have to step away from their own work to train the new employee. Not only do bias influences hurt businesses’ success, but it also impacts countries’ success. Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz from World Economic Forum has found when businesses allow bias to influence management decisions they have less diverse ideas within the organization. This is because when businesses have a higher hiring rate of one gender they have ideas that favor that gender. In turn, businesses lose opportunities involving the other gender. Drzeniek-Hanouz found businesses, “that discriminate against marginalized groups within society also tend to be less innovative.” With less innovation in a business their success rate decreases and their position in their industry and in turn the world's

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