GENDER AND DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Gender and Diversity in the Workplace





Gender and Diversity in the Workplace

Introduction

Diversity management describes a school of human resource strategies that gained popularity in North American business culture through the 1990s and 2000s. Unlike other approaches to include marginalized groups in the workplace, diversity management is based on the logic that diversity is conducive to corporate productivity, and that as a result, there are market incentives for firms to diversify their workforces. The implementation of diversity management often resembles other approaches to inclusion, and therefore includes practices such as: diversity awareness education, targeted hiring and promotion practices, heightened discrimination and harassment awareness and flexible work options to adapt to different worker lifestyles. Despite its similarity to equality-based approaches in many of its practices, however, diversity management conceptualizes diversity differently; policies are not restricted to groups identified through legislation or otherwise and are cast at the level of the individual.

Notwithstanding diversity management's popularity, it has come under criticism by many who argue that it is slowly displacing more effective regulatory approaches to inclusion. (Sonia & Judy, 1996) In contrast to earlier equality-based approaches to employment inclusion in America and the United States, diversity management focuses on difference and emanates from business research findings linking diversity to productivity. In the US diversity management was introduced by business consultants who aimed to displace state regulatory approaches such as employment equity and affirmative action, with voluntary based diversity management. Alternatively, in America, corporate diversity management was promoted by the state as well as the business community because of the former's investment in multiculturalism. (Harish & Anil, 1996) Some authors have suggested that this divergence has resulted in lower popularity for diversity management among American corporations; in two surveys, less than 50 per cent of American corporations saw diversity management as top business priority.9 Irrespective of these differences, however, the corporate rhetoric arguing the business case for diversity is similar in both America. Critical organizational scholars have argued that diversity management's focus on the celebration of difference (and not on the removal of inequality) and its basis in corporate liberalism has resulted in a more narrow approach to inclusion compared to previous regulatory strategies.

Managing Diversity in the Workplace

The meanings of sameness/equality and difference/diversity are overlapping and need to be understood in the context of their use. (Joan, 1994) Early feminist struggles against overt discrimination often sought formal equality, which ...