Gender Roles in the Workplace

Gender Roles in the workplace has been an issue for decades ever since women branched out of their typical expectations of being a stay at home mom and engrossed themselves in varieties of different fields of industry.

According to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, prohibits employers from discriminating against job seekers and employees on the basis of race, religion, sex, pregnancy, and national origin.

Women tend to be the victims when it comes to gender discrimination in the business world. In particular, women are less likely to get hired for a job that a man is also applying for. This is probably because generally speaking, women are more likely to leave their jobs when they get married or have children rather than men. However, as an employer, it would be unfair to assume this. If the woman is qualified for the job and shows promising work ethic, she should not be denied the job just because the employers fear that there is a possibility that she will one day leave her job. However, women should take this aspect into consideration when applying for a job because it is not fair to their employers if they plan to quit their job as soon as they get married or have a child. Women should have the integrity to be dedicated to their job and as long as they do that, the employers should not have any reason to treat them differently than men.

Although, there is also the issue of health benefits because women need more medical care than men if they plan on getting pregnant and having children. Yes, it may possibly be more costly but its not their fault that women are the only gender that can have children. There are men who want to have families too but it is impossible for them to have children so they don’t have to worry about these health issues. It is illegal for an employer to deny a woman these benefits because if she is the most qualified for the job, she should be provided beneficial healthcare just as a man would be.

A major controversy for gender roles in the workplace has been salary. According to Time Magazine, women earn 77 cents for every dollar men make. Some say this is because women tend to have careers that are lower paying such as a teacher as opposed to a business executive, and that is why they don’t receive as much income as men. However, there have been cases where women have the same exact job as men and the men are still getting paid more. Another possibility is that women usually take more time off to start a family and such, and so their pay is deducted for when they are absent. However, even with this minor difference, most economists believe that it is women being discriminated based on their gender.

Technically, women are protected against this discrimination through the Equal Pay Act (EPA). The EPA states that men and women in the same workplace are required to receive equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, as in they do not need to have the same job title, but the same job content, meaning the amount of work and effort it takes to fulfill the job requirement must be the same.

So how are employers slipping around these federal laws and still discriminating against women? Women are always held to a higher standard then men because they are expected to be a motherly figure that takes care of the household so if they want to have a professional career, they are expected to pull off both jobs at the same time. Yet, they are unappreciated by most of society, being portrayed as inferior to men. I am not saying that all of society is like this. Women have come along way since they first started fighting for their rights and I believe that their rights will continue to improve in society and the workplace. As for now, the gender roles in the workplace are unacceptable but I believe we are on the right track to making them up to standard.