Gender Bias in Organizational Culture

Gender Bias in Organizational Culture

Introduction

The paper aims to investigate the case of gender biasness in the organization and it will identify the key issue and present the recommendations. The concept of gender biasness is old and the theories of management and the authors present several concepts and issues regarding gender biasness in the organizational setting. Gender discrimination is pervasive within our society and is found in a multitude of settings. How individuals are treated in everyday life, from buying a car, hiring a mechanic, and even interacting with health care professionals is often influenced by perceived stereotypical differences between genders. Within the employment arena gender stereotyping can affect decisions from recruitment, hiring, promotion, job advancement opportunities to retention. Additionally, how gender-based stereotypes are perceived affects biases in evaluations. Individuals are perceived and evaluated differently depending on whether their actions violate expectations of how they should act or expectations of what actions are required for a role they have assumed. Both male and female gender roles can lead to discrimination when those roles are in conflict with expectations of social or work roles.

Gender disparity, although decreasing, is still a reality of the modern workplace. Although women make up half the workforce there are very few at the top levels of corporate America. Women are chief executive officers (CEO) in a little over one percent of over 800 companies recently surveyed. Across all jobs, women still earn 79% of what men do. Even when adjusting for seniority, work experience, and qualifications, women make less than men for the same work. Researchers examined gender differences in pay using matched, employee-to-employee data across all industries throughout the United States using U.S. census data. Experience and career choice accounted for a significant portion of gender differences in earnings, but a sizable proportion of variance in men's and women's earnings was left unexplained suggesting that discrimination or bias is a plausible explanation for wage disparities. Sexual harassment also plays a role in limiting women's advancement by creating a hostile work environment. A recent meta-analysis found 24% of women had been sexually harassed and 58% had been exposed to potentially harassing behaviors. More recently, Street it has been reported that in a sample of over 4,000 military reservists 40% of women working in such a male dominated field had been harassed in the last two years. Fifty percent of men reported behaving in ways that could have been perceived by female coworkers as sexually harassing according to a New York Times / CBS News national poll.

Issue in Organizational Culture related to Gender Biasness

American organizations are made up of an unequal distribution of men in leadership positions and women in subordinate roles. The social structure and norms may have convinced women to accurately conclude that the probability of obtaining a leadership position was lower for them than for men. In addition, gender stereotypes may have prevented actions that were required to reach a position of leadership such as pursuing advanced training, perceiving oneself ...