Womens Rights the ongoing fight
The core assignment is to develop a research question that drives a research project. It should be inquiry-driven and have references 4-5 which must be AIP Available in Print
Prospectus worth 15 points
Working Bibliography 20 points
Paper 90 points
inquiry means investigation
finding new ideas
Prospectus proposing research with discussion in MLA or APA style The Prospectus only has to be 1-2 pages long
Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.
There are many different ways in which women are discriminated against in the workplace. The exclusion of women altogether solely due to their gender is a now rare example of how women are discriminated against. Although women have gained overall access to the workplace, sex discrimination still persists in aIDitional ways. There multiple examples of potentially unlawful gender discrimination that women face. Hiring and firing are the first two problems women often face within the workplace. An example of this is woman applying for a job in which they have experience and excellent qualifications, but are not hired because some of the company’s clients are more comfortable dealing with men. Woman often get told that they are laid off or fired due to company cutbacks and reorganization, even though a man in the same job with less seniority than the woman gets to keep the job.
Another problem women have in the workplace is getting promotions. Woman who have worked for their company for many years, receiving great reviews and employee-of-the-year awards are often filled by less qualified men (Armour, 2008). The next problem women face is unfair pay. The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women working 41 to 44 hours per week earn 84.6 percent of what men working similar hours earn. They also found that women working more than 60 hours per week earn only 78.3 percent of what men in the same time category earn (Grohol, 2009). Job Classification is another common problem women face in the workplace. Another common problem for women in the workplace is not getting as many benefits as men. An example of this is if a woman’s company’s health insurance policy does not cover their spouse just because it is assumed that he will have his own benefits, while your male coworkers have their wives covered by the policy (Armour, 2008).
Besides the previous reasons stated, one of the most common problems for women in the workplace is being discriminated against due to pregnancy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has stated seeing a 65 percent increase in complaints about discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace between 1992 and 2007 (Chaney, 2008). Example of pregnancy discrimination are refusing to hire a pregnant woman, firing or demoting a pregnant women, denying a woman the same or similar job when she returns, or treating a pregnant employee differently than other temporarily disabled employees. Many women get laid off and even fired from their jobs because they get pregnant. Often male bosses will give excuses for these situations saying that the woman is unable to do their job or that their missing attendance will be a problem due to their pregnancy. Some bosses simply give the reason that women will not be as interested in their job once the child is born, which is an outrageous assumption to make.
Other bosses will give women an unpaid leave of absence and say they can go back to work after their pregnancy is over. Although those women are given their jobs back, their pay is often reduced or their job title even changed (Earp, 2007). A survey that was published by the Equal Opportunities Commission in highlights the degree to which pregnant women and new mothers experienced discrimination in the workplace. Approximately half of the women surveyed who worked while pregnant stated they encountered some form of discrimination. 7 percent of the surveyed women were either fired or left their jobs due to pregnancy discrimination, and 45 percent of women who worked while pregnant stated they experienced changes in their job description (Parker, 2005).
One of the most common places where women are discriminated against is a high-end corporation (Arfken, 2004). Women are often not taken seriously in the board room due to stereotypes such as Women Take Care, Men Take Charge (Marvin, 2011). A study conducted in Tennessee by Arfken and the other authors indicated only a slight improvement in board diversity with only 5.4 percent women board members. Board members are usually chosen by existing CEOs and, because those CEOs are mostly men, they tend to take part in an act called homosocial reproduction. Homosocial reproduction is placing others on a board who have the same general characteristics that person has such as gender and experience. While the numbers of women on corporate boards are slowly increasing, many feel the actual growth shows no real gains for women. According to the latest annual survey by the Board of Director’s Network Catalyst found that of the 12,945 corporate officers in the nation’s 500 largest companies, only 12.5 percent were women. About 18 percent of the largest companies still have no women officers because they are hesitant to take advantage of the talent and diversity of women directors (Arfken, et al, 2004).
Even though there is discrimination against women in major companies, cases prove that it is sometimes better to have women in the boardroom and in high positions. A study done by Christopher Clark showed that boards with female directors scored significantly higher on skill tests than males. Clark also found that the 69 companies surveyed had a 13 percent investment return compared to the all-male boards which only had a 9 percent investment return (Clark, 2005). There were also a number of surveys done by Janet Irwin and Michael Ferrault showing that women were more effective as managers, leaders, and teammates then men. Other studies showed that women do better at tasks such as meeting deadlines, keeping up productivity, and generating new ideas. In a test done by Irwin and Ferrault, women scored higher than men in 28 out of 31 managerial skill areas. Numerous males that were surveyed admitted that women knew what they were doing when it came to higher level jobs in large corporations ( Maskal, 1997).
The next common workplace women are often discriminated against is the medical field. Women are most often stereotyped as only being nurses or other lower-end health professionals. There is a huge difference between the percent of males and the percent of females when it comes to more advanced medical fields. A study conducted by Reed and Fischer found that women are not promoted at the same rate as men in medical fields. They feel that women are under-represented in higher medical positions. The CEJA found that there is a large difference in salaries between men and women. Studies show that the average female physician earns 34 percent less than her male counterpart. Female physicians are more likely to earn a relatively low income and are less likely to gain a relatively higher income. For example, while 19 percent of female physicians earned less than $60,000, only 7 percent of male physicians earned less than that same amount (CEJA, 1994).
