Gender Discrimination In HR Practices

Why the HRM Practice Is Performed

Discuss about the Qualitative Research and Academy of Management.

Workplace diversity describes the range of variations between the employees in the organization. Diversity entails race, ethnic group, gender, age, personality, tenure, education, organizational function, background, personality, and cognitive style (Murray and Ward 2017). Diversity entails how employees perceive themselves and how the employees perceive other stakeholders of the organization. Such perceptions greatly impact the employees’ interactions and even their interactions with external stakeholders. For a vast assortment of the employees to function efficiently as the organization, human resource professionals need to deal efficiently with issues including communication, change and adaptability (Wright and Kehoe 2008).

Diversity shall increase substantially in coming future. Successful companies acknowledge the need for instant actions and are willing as well as ready to spend resources on the management of diversity in the workplace now. Diversity at workplace include increased adaptability, broader service range, variety of viewpoints, and more effective execution. Some of the challenges of diversity include communication, resistance to change, implementing diversity in workplace policies, and successful management of diversity in workplace (Benner and Tushman 2015).

The HRM practice is poorly performed in the organization as it is based on stereotyping, superstition and discrimination against the female workers. There is a gender gap pay between men and women with the former always being given less pay. At the recruitment, only few women are shortlisted against the many men despite equal qualification and competence. Even the successful women are placed in junior positions and no managerial, leadership or senior executive positions (De-Paola and Scoppa 2015). No promotion for women or even retraining as opposed to men. Men are always viewed as more productive and receive even awards and bonuses as opposed to women counterparts.

Such practices are anchored on the stereotypes, superstition and negative attitudes towards women in the organization. The HRM works stereotypically to classify women as those are not as much productive as men and hence only a few of them are to be recruited in junior positions. Superstition and stereotypes takes precedent making women to be viewed as those who cannot lead or manage (Bakker and Schaufeli 2008). Men are promoted occasionally because the HRM has negative attitude towards females and always want to discriminate against them. Lucrative positions including executives and management are a preserve for males as women are only viewed as those who can work under men.  Males are thus given much pay in order to motivate them to be more productive (Atkinson 2013).

HR Practice Discrimination against Women

The current HRM does not creates value to the organization.  Women are underutilized despite having the required skills. Men know that they will be automatically promoted to executive positions and hence do not have incentives to work harder for the organization. Also, there is no teamwork as women feel shortchanged and have no incentive to work towards effective value creation (Christian, Garza and Slaughter 2014).

The Form of diversity being examined in this report is gender. The women are being stereotypes as those who are less productive, less educated, and less skilled and hence are only being given junior clerical duties which cannot make them earn any meaningful pay. The observation indicate that there is a gender gap between males and females in the organization. Males dominate the workforce and are paid much more compared to the fellow female counterparts. The gender gap witnessed in every level of the organization is because the males’ labor are valued over women based on the biological determinants (Bamber, Lansbury, Wailes and Wright 2014).

The women household duties are not paid for and hold limited value and lacks any value in the organization. The organization has played into the societal irrational value of the males’ work in labor market leading to their greater accessibility and control to positions of power (Breevaart, Bakker, Hetland,  Demerouti, Olsen and Espevik 2014). The females in the organizations, therefore, remain disadvantaged in the labour market because the men are freed from domestic responsibilities. The organization does not appreciate the women reproductive roles and their responsibilities for domestic labor limit association with the highly valued resources (Schmitt, Branscombe, Postmes and Garcia 2014).

The gender pay gap is a daunting challenge that women face as they try to earn their living. The causes of gender are very many including discrimination, stereotyping, variation in qualification and education, and family responsibilities. There is an urgent need to solve the issue of gender pay disparity to enable women to compete favorably with male counterparts. If this problem is not solved, women will continue to lag behind despite their increased educational qualification and experiences. Men tend to benefit at the expense of the female counterparts by having many hours of work to sell to various employers who even stereotypically prefer male to female (Diefenbach 2007).

The reason given for the narrowed pay gap is the realization by women to proceed to colleges and Universities, engagement in traditionally male professions such as engineering, medicine and law that pay higher as well as increased educational qualification and experiences. Women have also devoted more time by shifting from their traditionally preferred better work-life balance jobs. It is recommended that women should continue to take up the traditionally male professions, employers to stop stereotyping, as well as males to become responsible for family matters without leaving it for female counterparts (Hendry 2012).

In the organization, women are discriminated in every corner of the organization which limits their opportunities. For example, the women are not being given better positions which would otherwise have them get better pay (Hall 2006). Also, the organization does not promote women in senior executive positions or in leadership positions which could have enabled them get better pay. The women are also discriminated against as they have no access to any management roles (Otiniano-Verissimo, Gee, Ford and Iguchi 2014). The women are also junior employees who take instructions from the senior male counterparts.

Further, the women are being stereotypes as less productive and hence given less duty which only attract low pay. The women are also discriminated since they are not given any training and upskilling unlike their male counterparts and this limits women abilities to ascend to executive and leadership positions (Solon, Haider and Wooldridge 2015). Further, the women are discriminated against by being given more leave duration as compared to fellow men which limits their ability to sell more labor hours and also come back with loss memory of their work and hence cannot develop professionally. 

HRM needs to be adapted differently to wipe out the gender discrimination. The HRM should take the necessary steps to improve gender diversity. They need to assess the diversity in the workplace. The organization should make the assessing and evaluating its gender diversity process integral part of its management system (Gephart 2004). The HRM should have a customizable employee satisfaction survey to achieve this assessment for the organization effectively and conveniently. This will help the management team to determine challenges and barriers to diversify and present in the workplace and policies required to be included or excluded (Dipboye and Colella 2013).

The HRM should then reassess to determine success of diversity in workplace plan implementation. The HRM should develop diversity in workplace plan. Selecting a survey which provides detailed reporting will be central decision. This report shall be the stepping stone of the gender diversity in workplace scheme. The scheme has to be detailed, attainable as well as measurable. The HRM must decide what alterations need to be made as well as the timeline for such a change to be obtained (Armstrong and Taylor 2014).

The HRM should implement gender diversity in workplace plan. The executive and management teams must be committed. Leaders and managers in the organization must integrate diversity policies into each element of purpose and function of the organization. Attitudes toward diversity must arise at top and filter downstream. Management cooperation alongside participation is needed to establish culture that is conducive to organizational success plan (Klingner, Nalbandian and Llorens 2015.).

The gender diversity implementation will greatly decrease discrimination and improve women access to opportunities. The HRM will appreciate women and realize that both men and women are equal. The HRM must reconsider that both men and women have equal productivity. It is totally inappropriate to embrace the stereotypes and superstition that only harbor gender segregation among women. By walking away from such stereotypes, both men and women will be recruited based on what one knows and what one can deliver. By doing this, women will be given leadership, managerial and senior executive position (Haslam, van-Knippenberg, Platow and Ellemers 2014).

The women will also be promoted and upskilled for effective professional and career developments. The HRM must put stringent measures to ensure that they do not prefer either male or female when recruiting. This will ensure that many women are absorbed in the workplaces as well a given equal opportunities of taking leadership positions. In so doing, the recruitment will be fair at the point of shortlisting and subsequent placement being done merits. The female workers will get more earnings that is commensurate to their efforts and thus reduce the gender pay disparity (Cheng and Ho 2001).

The organization will gain greatly from this change of attitude since the productivity of an individual increased when he is appreciated and given a task he is best talented. Thus women will feel appreciated and hence will have increased labor productivity. The employees will work as a team to achieve the goals and the objectives of the firm. The organization will benefit from increased adaptability, broader service range, variety of viewpoints and more effective and efficient execution (Basford, Offermann and Behrend 2014). This will create value creation as women and men will work at the business ability to get promoted on merits and in the process effectively executing the strategies of the company leading to higher productivity, profit and ROI. 

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