Women in the Workplace
Women often experience male dominated barriers when they seek to rise to the top of organization ranks. Despite the moves that have been made for equal opportunity employment, men and women that start in the same job often are not paid equally, and do not advance at the same rate. In a male dominated business world, the women are seen as weaker, less intelligent, passive, fragile, with a lack of commitment to their career often because of family obligations. Managers often form alliances with those that tend to have the same background and lifestyle as themselves, since women are seen as different they cannot bond with those upper level managers and often get overlooked when new management positions are open. (Maume p.483) The glass-ceiling is the lack of mobility for women in careers, due to prejudices against women's ability to perform as well as men. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, known as the Glass Ceiling act, established the glass ceiling commission to study and make recommendations about eliminating the barriers and to create opportunities to advance women and minorities. (Gibelman p.400) If men hold the higher positions, choosing who is most suitable for promotion it is likely that women will remain in
Lipton, JP. "Neutral Jon Titles and Occupational Stereotypes: When legal and psychological realities conflict." March 1991, Vol.25. Darwin, Rebecca. "The Bottom line for Working Women." Executive Female, Sept/Oct 1995, Vol. 18. Duncan, Kevin. "Starting wages of women in female and male occupations: A test of the human capital explanation of occupational sex segregation." Social Science Journal. 1992, Vol 29, p479. Gibelman, Margaret. "Helping Clients Helping Ourselves: A social work agenda for achieving social equity." Journal of Womens & Social Work. Winter 1999, Vol 14. Csatari, Jefferey. " The Glass Ceiling Shattered." Men's Health, June 1996, Vol. 11. The economist Solomon Polachek holds a hypothesis that each occupation has a rate of atrophy that job skills depreciate with lack of use. Earnings power declines at atrophy, therefore if women plan to participate inconsistantly in the labor market they would best benefit from jobs with low atrophy rates like teaching and service work. (Duncan p.479) These jobs are often classified as women's jobs, which have a traditionally lower starting salary than male jobs. If the view that Mr. Polachek holds were universal than it would make advancement for women almost impossible if they planned to have families and take off work for any period of time. Differences in male and female preferences in jobs do exist however and can account for some of the inequality in the business world. The Hawthorne Studies of the 1930's and studies since have shown that women choose positions that are more meaningful, with positive social relations as opposed to males that choose careers on basis of income potential. (Tolbert p168) The traditional views of women as the supporting partner and the man as the primary earner have become barriers for women that would l
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Approximate Word count = 1227
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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