Gender Bias in the Workplace

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Gender bias in the workplace Natalie Brown Bryant & Stratton College SOSC 102: Principles of Sociology Annetta Gad July 15, 2012 Abstract Women are represented as being underneath men in an organizational hierarchy. They do not earn as much money as their male counterparts, even though they may work as hard. Gender bias does exist in the workplace. It is the main cause for women not being able to break that invisible barrier, which keeps them from reaching senior levels. A woman can have the same degree as a man but will not be offered the same job as him, simply because of her sex. Even though policies were adopted to prohibit sex discrimination, it failed to help women who are at more senior levels of a company. Many people wonder if their gender determines how successful they will become in their career. Does gender bias still exists in the workplace today? Does sexism exists? Sexism is the ideology that one sex is superior to the other. Women are discriminated against because men feel that they lack certain traits that one should have in order to lead a company, in essence, they do not have man-like characteristics. I had the opportunity to explore this topic from three different angles: Taking gender into account, who gets the carrot and who gets the stick, and attitudes towards business ethics. Women’s career progress lags comparable to men’s. Progress in women’s advancement achieved over the past several decades has slowed considerably in recent years (Ely, Ibarra, & Kolb, 2011, p. 1). Organizations’ widespread adoption of policies prohibiting sex discrimination opened many doors to women; however, it failed to close the gender gap at more senior levels. Powerful, yet often invisible barriers to women’s advancement that arise from cultural beliefs about gender , as well as workplace structures, practices, and patterns of interaction that

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