Trends in Workplace Discrimination against Women

Women who receive high-level appointments in academic and in the other professions and who advance to upper-level corporate positions.The appointment in July 1999 of a woman as president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard,the world’s second-largest computer company, was greeted with the pronouncement that “the glass ceiling finally had been shattered, and that the appointment reflected the absence of barriers that blocked women from promotion to middle and senior management positions.Discriminatory workplace policies and practices adversely affect older women,women of color,pregnant women and women with children as does discriminatory conduct at all points of the employment relationship.

Proofs of Women Workplace Discrimination:

• A former sales representative in Hewlett-Packard’s Long Island office alleged that company policies and practices barred female sales representatives from promotion to sales managerial positions.Although female sales reprensentatives often received the highest performance ratings, not one of them had ever been promoted to a management post.Evidence supported the worker’s claim that female sales representatives had been adversely impacted by these policies and practices.

• A Business Week study found that female business school graduates with MBA degress earn 12 percent less than male graduates.Because these graduates were all new hires directly out of school,this salary disparity reflected neither experience nor performance only corporate management’s decision to favor men over women

• Federal government employment policies favor men over women     
  Some legal commentators argue that the personal choices made by women outside work have important implication for earnings and promoting in the work environment and that these personal choices not workplace discrimination.
  
  
  The contention that opportunities for promotion may not be as great for women who choose to leave work for extended periods to take care of their children.Women who plan to interrupt their careers to bear children may select occupations where job flexibility is high but compensation is low.
  
  
  Since its initial formulation,the concept of the glass ceiling has grown to include disadvantaged racial minorities as well women, and its focus has expanded to include all promotional opportunities not merely those pertaining to senior management positions.The concept caught the amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  
  
  One of the areas upon which the commission focused was typical employer held perceptions of working.Convinced that these perceptions tended to perpetuate the existence of the glass ceiling, the commission undertook to determine whether they had any basis in fact.To the contrary, the commission concluded, such perceptions arose out commonly held false stereotypes, including notions that women:
  
  
  • do not want work
  • are less committed to their careers than men
  • are not tough enough to succeed in the business world
  • generally are unable or willing to work long or unusual hours
  • are unable or unwilling to relocate geographically
  • are unable or unwilling to make decisions
  • are not sufficiently aggressive rather they are too passive
  are too emotional
  
  
  Not only do employers hold false assumptions regarding the role of the female workers, but they also perceive conflicts between the child-rearing responsibilities of working mothers and their job responsibilities.Until this stereotypes are eliminated from the workplace, discrimination against women will continue.