Gender Inequality In The Workplace And Ways To Resolve It

When it comes to gender inequality in the workplace, the leading factor that impacts inequality is unequal pay. “The report finds that nearly a quarter of all female employees surveyed do not believe they are being paid fairly- compared to their male counterparts. These results are based on a survey of over 700 men and women across the United States”. Further research on this topic is important because not many people are aware that this type of discrimination is still an ongoing issue. Most males are not aware because the unequal pay does not happen to them, but that is not at fault to just them. We as a human race need to make things like this issue aware to everyone and make sure they are educated in the topic in order to come together and find a resolution. This global societal issue impacts the entire female population because it is directly affecting them in their workplace and that in turn has a chain reaction on how they support their families.

Women are not seen as equal partners with their careers and it affects their pay and how they are looked at and treated compared to their male counterparts. Gender inequality is not something that just happened overnight; it has been an ongoing issue for many years but has been pushed to the side because it is only happening to women around the world and not the entire human population. In order to resolve this conflict in the workplace, there needs to be further research done in order to educate and then act on it.

Gender inequality should not still exist in our world today. Instead, we should be informing our society of the devastating outcome it is having on women in the workforce, and coming up with a permanent solution such as allowing women to take leave to have and raise children and not lose their status/role in the company. In this paper, I will discuss some of the ways that Gender inequality has gotten to the way it is today and future actions we can take to resolve it.

Gender inequality will not get resolved overnight. But it can however, shed light upon it so that people are aware that this issue has been occurring for way too long. “Throughout history, women have faced intense discrimination- from a lack of legal rights and very little independence from their husbands, to being thought to have inferior brains. In many societies, women have long been viewed as less than fully human”. Women have been seen as domestic homemakers since the Colonial period, and were kept inside the homes to take care of the household and raise the children. This view that society has about women not being seen as equals to men has been forming for a long time. We have made huge strides on the issue as far as women finally getting the right to vote in 1920. But, their citizenship was still held by either their father or husband because women were not allowed to do so themselves. Since then, with the right to vote, women started to gain a voice and be able to say what they wanted to do, instead of being told what to do.

There is now no unspoken rule that says women need to stay at home and take care of the kids and not be able to have their own careers. Women have gone out into the world and made themselves successful just like men. So, it still comes as a surprise to see that with all the strides women have made for themselves, they are still not fully seen as equal to their male counterparts. Women are told they can do it all, but in reality, that is not the case. Women are not supported enough by society in order to do it all. Women do not want to have to choose between having a successful career and having a family, and it shouldn’t have to be a choice for them. In the sense that women can have children and men cannot, that is the substantial difference between them that causes the gap in gender equality. “Considering women of childbearing age (16–40 years), there is a very large difference between those who have children and those who do not. For women without children, the gender gap in earnings is about 25% and stable across levels of development. For women with children, the gender gap is much larger and falls with development, from about 70% to about 50%”. This statistic is very important to the topic of gender inequality because it shows that with women being the only ones that can bear children, they are essentially punished for it in the workforce by the large unanswered gap in salary wages once they come back to work.

The fact that the gap in salary earnings doubles and almost triples because a woman has a child is an insane statistic to wrap your head around. If this is the leading cause of the gap continuing to grow when it comes to earning and gender inequality, then this is what needs to be focused on in our society. Not enough light is being shed on the “why” when it comes to gender inequality, just that it is there. There needs to be a program put into place that allows women to take leave in order to have their baby and recover, but still give them the option to be able to work at least part time while they are at home recovering, so they do not lose their careers. When a woman takes off time to have and raise children, the company does not think about her coming back and wanting to pick up where she left off.

Essentially, women have to start all over every time they return from having a child. There is no option for them to work from home, or stay in touch with their employer so that they can continue to progress within the company and not fall behind and be pushed out later down the road. Women who leave to have children, lose their career progression and the opportunity for promotions and raises because they are not present. No one takes into consideration that they are at home taking care of their children, not just on vacation. This is why women who are out having a baby should not be thrown to the side when it comes things like promotions and raises because they have still invested time into the company beforehand and should still be considered and given the chance while they are out.

Gender inequality is also not just a civilian issue, it is very present among the military branches as well. Gender inequality has been seen in the military for years as well, because at first women were not even remotely considered to be able to be drafted. The military was solely for men and there was no way that anyone was going to let a woman join. They again were viewed as the homemaker and the ones that needed to stay behind in order to take care of the house and keep the homelife in order, including taking care of the children. It was not until 1948 that a law was finally passed in order to permanently allow women in to the military. They were able to join before that as nurses and able to serve overseas with men in order to be there to take care of the wounded. It has taken society up until the last couple of years to allow women to now join any job they would like, including combat positions. “On Thursday December 3rd, 2015 Secretary of Defense Ash Carter rescinded the explicit policy banning military women from serving in combat roles. This change in policy represents a significant departure from traditional military policy. Many people will view this as the final solution to gender inequality in the military. Policy change is the first step towards full gender integration, but implementing this policy will require an ongoing focus on organizational culture aimed at shaping daily practices”.

It was seen that women would be a distraction to the men in combat jobs, or they would not be fully capable to do everything to the same capacity that the men could. Although, the physical fitness test for the military is separated into male and female grading standards, the military is trying to see both men and women as equals. It is hard to for that to be true when on paper, women are still being held to a different standard than men when it comes to physical fitness. This is what starts the image that women are not as strong or as capable of men, because they see that by the government we are not being held equal on everything. An all-around new standard needs to be put into place so that everything across the board for the military including physical fitness grading is the same and equal. This will help everyone see that there is actually no difference at all between men and women in the workforce and there is no need for women to be treated as such.