Women in the workplace are a relatively recent development. The first time a woman was allowed to take up a so-called "man's job" in this country was during the war, when the men were away serving their country. It took Emmiline Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes nearly forty years to finally get the women's vote. Even though this was their primary struggle, they indirectly fought for equal opportunities for women in the workplace as well. Nearly a whole century later, prejudices still exist about women being the weaker sex. Many laws have been passed against sexual discrimination such as the 'Equal Pay Act (1970)' and the 'Sex Discrimination Act (1976)'. However, women are still singled out. For example, just recently a former nurse, Kate Bleasdale, received a record amount of compensation: L2.2 million. She had set up her own company in 1985, called 'Match Group', whose purpose was to re-train and help qualified nurses to find suitable jobs. However, she was subject to hate mails and verbal abuse from her male board members. She also found out that her (male) finance director was paid more than she was. She was finally forced to leave the organisation. Her compens

In conclusion, in the matter of under representation of women, employers need to promote equal opportunities for both sexes. Different medias such as training programs, recruitment through non-biased job selection are just some of the points that they need to consider in helping women achieve their goals(s). Women are more commonly placed into low-level unskilled professions and middle management levels, and the majority of them reach their saturation points at these levels. One could argue that men are under-represented in such areas. Men have been known to be discriminated against working at these levels, just like women are discriminated against when they achieve higher goals.

The majority of higher level management positions are predominantly male; therefore women tend to feel insecure in such positions. Women should be made to feel equal to their male counterparts from a very early age so that no differences arise in their professional lives. Though men and women have different roles to play as far as nature goes, it doesn't necessarily mean that their basic mental characteristics are different. They can exhibit the same quality of work no matter how hard the task. Hopefully some time soon, gender inequality will only be a history subject and no longer an issue in business related fields.

An important point that influences the employment of women is the "pull factor". Unfortunately, informal routes such as head hunting still play a significant role in the promotion of an employee. This can act as a major disadvantage to women if their area of work is particularly male dominated.

The ratio of female to male managers varies significantly in different regions around Britain. Bearing in mind that populations for different regions are different, the following are the proportions of men to women in managerial posts:

The age for retirement for women and men is 60 and 65 respectively. There are supposedly 'talks' about an increase in retirement age; however it is not clear whether women and men will have the same age for retirement. Either way, it seems unfair that men get an extra five years of service compared to women. Especially since women have longer life expectancies than men. In 1997, the life expectancy at birth for a girl was 79.6 years and that number is expected to rise to 82.7 by the year 2021. Men on the other hand were expected to live up to 74.6 years at birth in 1997, and that figure is expected to go up to 78.6 by 2021. Due to their longevity, in 1996 the female population made up for just more than half of the entire population of Britain, and that number is still on the increase. However, in the Spring 2001 survey, it is mentioned that female managers tend to be slightly younger. 32% of women were aged under 35 compared to only 26% of men. On the other hand, 41% of men were over 45 compared to only 36% of women.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2856
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)