Discrimination is the act of being biased towards a particular individual, or a specific group of people based on their age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or many other factors. Workplace discrimination occurs when an individual is denied certain rights and job opportuinities due to their specific status or qualities, while others that do not contain those qualities are granted these oportunites. Workplace discrimination is illegal in the United States, there are anti- discrimination laws such as the civil rights act of 1964 which protects employees who have been discriminated against by their employers. It is often challeneging to identify when specific forms of discrimination have taken place so in order for this law to be implemented the employee must document discrimnatory treatment and have collective evendice tord the dicrimination because just one act doesnt build a reliable case.
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the United States, which is a federal agency that enforces laws towards workplace discrimination. At least 25 percent of women, and 17 percent of men in the United States experience sexual harassment in the workplace. Those statistics are especially startling when you consider the fact that many women and men do not report, or admit that they have been sexually harassed out of fear of being alienated in their careers.We also have to keep in mind men over all don’t report because of the ideas of men and how a man should be yet at the same time women don’t report do to fear. Another common workplace issue is gender inequality regarding pay, health insurance, maternity, etc. Women are frequently the main topic of discussion when it comes to gender inequality. There are many companies whose health insurance policies do not cover a womans male spouse, but rather a males female spouse. They automatically make the assumption that a man will have his own insurance coverage. Also, regarding the pay gap between women and men, a woman makes around $0.79 for every dollar a man makes. Pay discrimination arises when employees excecute the same amount of work, but do not recieve the same amount of pay. It should be the content of a person’s work that should determine their pay, not their title. There is a labor law called the equal pay act which abolishes wage disparities amongst different sexes, but despite this law and its efforts there is still a huge pay gap between men and women. This is said to not become truly equal until 208 years from now, which means we are doing all of this work for something we will never see.
Women have also been discriminated against in the workforce due to pregnancy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has stated that there has been a 65 percent increase in complaints about discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. Pregnancy discrimination is when an employer refuses to hire a pregnant woman, terminating, or treating a pregnant women negatively compared to other employees . There is an ammendment called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 which protectcs employees from discrimination by employers based on pregnancy. There is also another aspect that jobs are adding now for the male in the family to also take time off for when the baby is born yet they don’t get reprimanded as women do for bringing life into this world. Several studies show that many women get laid off , or even fired from their jobs because of their pregnancies. Often male bosses make the assumption that having a pregnant employee will slow down the progress of the company. They feel as though the pregnancy will result in the employee’s inability to work well in a stressful environment.
The research shows gender characteristics do exist and play an influential role in the workplace Women are being treated unfairly in the way that they are paid. Women are usually given the same jobs men are to do, and it is unfair that they are underpaid. The article “Gender inequality in the Work place” from Bloomberg.com, Ben Waber the author, says “work ethic can lead to success for women.” He believes in this article that if women keep working hard and not give up on their hopes of equality, they can begin to get their point across. The reason being for this might be because of the stereotype that women, are not strong enough and are too emotional to be able to get to the point where they are making the same amount of money as men, if not more. Woman are still seen as the weaker sex who can’t handle stress in a work environment as well as men. Statistics prove that women are paid less then men but this keeps on happening due to the fact that women are not standing up for themselves as much as they should be.
