Introduction
Over the past decades, there has been a rising interest in a number of women who are employed in fields that were initially male domains. These women are referred to as “tokens” because of their scarcity in the male territory, for not so many women venture into these fields as majority go for more feminine professions. These women feel isolated most of the times and face unfair comparisons from their male counterparts. In most cases they are also pressurized to perform well, especially when they are in the same group or leading a group that has quite a number of male colleagues.
Earnings and Occupation Equality between Men and Women
Women’s earning continue to be significantly low in almost all the professions as compared to that of their male counterparts thus this leaves the earning gap between men and women as still a major topic of concern worldwide. In most companies, the male’s earnings are used as the yardstick to measure women’s earnings making most women to earn approximately 65.8 percent of what their male counterparts earn each month (Elaine, 19). The largest disparity is still evident when it comes to higher paying professions like management, health care, science and technology, manufacturing and construction sectors where women are earning 70% of what their male counterparts earn (Elaine, 16). This has sensitized the issue even more as women invest in work same efforts as their male counterparts
However, women who are venturing into nontraditional jobs are at an advantage when it comes to earnings as compared to their male counterparts who are not very well favored in this sector. Women’s educational investment and occupational choices have also become more similar to that of men with most employers aiming at providing more training and promotion opportunities for them thus diminishing the earning gaps between men and women.
Education has also proven to be a powerful tool for the success of most women as more women are using it to make tremendous progress into the labor force; professions that were initially reserved for men. In addition, employment for women seems to be taking a positive turn as the number of women being employed increases with some occupations like tenders, detectives and police hold potential employment opportunities for them. As their investment in education and training increases, women are being presented and promoted to hold administrative, managerial and senior Government positions.
Most professions are still considered male professions for instance very few women are head of states, parliamentarians and executives all over the world. Finance sector is also considered as a male entity because despite the fact that so many women have excellent qualifications to run these offices, they still have been denied this chance by their male counterparts. With access to loans from financial institutions, most women are also venturing into becoming employers and running their own business globally.
Some professions like police and detectives though providing more opportunities to women are sometimes challenging as this women are sexually harassed by criminals especially the uniformed police women and women detectives. They are sometimes also faced the organizations stress as they are subjected to higher rates of prejudices and sex discrimination than the policemen and men detectives.
Homosocial Reproduction which refers to the tendency in which the male executives of an Organization interact with their male counterparts and even promote them therefore denying women employees the right to promotion, an opportunity to excel and barring them from accessing available leadership opportunities.
Most executives assesses and ranks their employees basing on race and sex, these normally leads to unfair and inappropriate selection of employees for positions and promotions because these corporate executives will be comfortable working with their own reflections hence denying women and minorities access to network of information where they would have gained new skills and use these as tools to move up the corporate ladder.
Mostly due to information deficiency on their part, the minorities in the company usually feels discriminated and that their rights to corporate information have been violated, they feel they have less power due to minimal access to training and mentor ship. This demoralizes them causing them not to perform as to the corporate’s expectations. A small minority of employees will display prejudices in their behavior when they are neglected and a few strong personalities in this minority groups will influence the whole group leading to rebellious of some employees (Kanter, p. 117).
Conclusion
Discrimination by the senior management in an Organization normally determines the outcome of an employee and most women are denied the opportunity to climb the up corporate ladder due to the unfair judgment. In most cases, these women will solicit recognition individually from their colleagues than seek for approval as a whole group, this makes them feel useful and important to the organization. Women are more useful when assigned challenging tasks and when appointed to positions that are numerically scarce, than when assigned to common positions. The management should consider clustering more women as this will reduce stress in individual women undertaking complex tasks. This will lead to a balanced group proportions and effectiveness in handling subgroup disagreements.
Works cited
- Elaine Sorensen. Gender and Racial Pay Gaps in the 1980’s: Accounting for Different Trends. Washington ,D.C: Urban Institute, 1991.
- Kanter, R. M. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basics Books, Inc., Publishers,1977