Workplace Gender Inequality in Australia

This assignment delves into the complex issue of gender inequality within Australian workplaces. It examines various facets, including the persistent gender pay gap, prevalence of workplace harassment against women, and the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. The analysis draws upon research studies and statistical data to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by women in the Australian work environment.

Running head: GENDER DISCRIMINATION AT WORKPLACE
GENDER DISCRIMINATION AT WORKPLACE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary:
Gender discrimination is a hot topic all over the globe and Australia has not lagged behind in this
context. Although the government and other organizations have taken a good number of initiatives, it
persists in large numbers of organizations. The gender pay gap persists to be 15.3%. Besides, issues like
biasness in hiring and promotion, unethical firing, biasness of the male members, improper interview
questions, improper job description and many others are some of the ways by which the issues of gender
discrimination persists in the organization. Therefore, human resource department should make sure that
it develops their practices in ways that will help in eliminating this discrimination and incorporate a
diverse workforce.

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Contents
Introduction:...................................................................................................................................................3
Issues:.............................................................................................................................................................3
Challenges:.....................................................................................................................................................4
Hiring, promotions and firing:.......................................................................................................................4
Unequal pay:..................................................................................................................................................5
Job description and benefits:..........................................................................................................................7
Recommendations:.........................................................................................................................................8
Recommendation 1:.......................................................................................................................................8
Recommendation 2:.......................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion:..................................................................................................................................................10
References:...................................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction:
Sex and gender discrimination takes place in different organization when they treat their
employees unfavorably depending upon that employees’ sex. This takes place when that individual is
applying for a job or when they are a current employee (LaNauze, 2015). Researchers are of the opinion
that although women have made it evident that they indeed have the ability to perform with the same
skills and success in every endeavor, which is performed by men, the issue of gender discrimination, is
still prevalent in the recent times (Adapa, Rindflesih & Sheridan, 2016). The government has passed
many anti-discrimination laws that had clearly stated that gender discrimination is illegal. However,
human resource management as well as many employers undertakes practices that are small, mid size and
do not support equal distribution of resources and respect for women (Loi, Loh & Hine, 2015). Still
greater organizations favor advancement of man stating that men are much more productive and focused
than women although researches state otherwise. This kind of thinking invokes criticism and every
organization should implement human resource management who will effectively help in bridging the gap
and will thereby help in increasing the pace by which gender discrimination should be erased from the
nation.This assignment will mainly denote how the case of gender discrimination is still reported in the
nation of Australia. It will depict challenges that women usually face in their organizational place and
how human resource management can take an active part in recommending solutions for overcoming the
challenges.
Issues:
In the workplace, women are subjected to various types of discriminations in comparison to men.
In most of the cases, it is seen that qualified women are often not nominated for promotions as the
management considers that women will not be able to handle greater responsibility due to a number of
reasons. They think that women may become pregnant, or have to dedicate her in family duties for which
they might not be able to serve the position well. Even researches conducted in the recent decade states

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that women are also discriminated with other women for looks like they are “not pretty”, “too old”, “not
stylish” or others. Many positions like these in sales and public relations, women get placements in firms
according to the ways they look (VonHippel et al., 2015). “Glass ceiling” is also a form of gender
discrimination. This term can be referred to the barriers and challenges that prevent female employees
from getting higher ranks in the management. This mainly takes place when the executive positions or the
upper level positions are given to men. Often men are seen to get more time off than females. They are
seen to get better compensation package and different benefits than women.
Challenges:
Hiring, promotions and firing:
Often human resource management becomes helpless but has to accept certain unethical demands
from their long-term clients. In many cases, it is seen that often there are female employees who have
excellent qualifications and better experiences than their male counterparts do. However, often the human
resource department cannot hire them simply because the clients of the company are more comfortable in
dealing with male employees (Winchester & Browning, 2015). Moreover, the human resource
departments are seen to lay off their female employees during company cutbacks and reorganization at
the same time when male counterparts in the same job and will less seniority can keep their jobs intact.
Interviews conducted by the researchers in different organizations have supported the same fact.
Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner namely, Kate Jenkins had thereby stated to Guardian
Australia that “Incorrect assumptions are being made that gender equality has been achieved despite
disturbing and comprehensive evidence to the contrary” (Davey, 2018). Often it is seen that there are
many human resource managers who interviews female in an unethical ways. They often are seen to be
asked about their number of children, their plan of having children in future and many similar others
which are not asked to any male interviewees. This is a direct form of gender discrimination that is often
done by human resource managers. The plans of a female member having children or the number of

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children she has, does not state any fact about the skills she need to have for the job (Sojo, wood & Genat,
2016). Therefore, these unethical practices need to be stopped. Often management, while taking
interviews set up minimum height or weight requirements from female employees, which does not have
any link with their job profile or job performance. Terminating them or not hiring them with these
excuses, are still seen in many organizations.
Unequal pay:
Often men are seen to be paid more in comparison to that of the females although both of them
are performing the same job. An interesting data was provided in the guardian that is provided below:
Source: Gender Paygap, The Guardian Australia 2017
The national gender pay gap is mainly seen to be calculated by WGEA called the Workplace Gender
Equality Agency. They mainly use data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics called the ABS. they
have found out that the current gender pay gap nationally is 15.3%. For the past two decades, the numbers
are hovering between 15 to 19%. This gender pay gap mainly shows the difference between the men and
women’s average weekly full time base salary earnings. Data by WGEA had shown that fulltime
remuneration gender-pay gap is currently 22.4% (Wgea.gov.au, 2018). This thereby states that women

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who are working full time are getting $27,000 a year less than that of the men counterparts who are also
working full time. The main reasons provided by the data sets for this sort of gender discrimination are
mainly biasness and discrimination in hiring and in paying decisions (Charlesworth & Macdonald, 2015).
Secondly, men and women working in different industries and different jobs are paid differently with
female dominated industries and jobs that are paid lower salaries (Wgea.gov.au, 2018). Other causes
depicted by them are the women’s disproportionate share of domestic work and unpaid caring as well as
their facing of lack of workplace flexibility for accommodating caring and other responsibilities
(especially in senior managerial roles). Data has shown that between the time of 1997 and 2017, the
lowest gender pay gap was found in 2004, which was 14.9% and was highest in November 2014 which
was 18.5%. The following graph would help in portraying the facts:
Gender pay gap (1997-2017)
Source: Wgea.gov.au. (2018).
Job description and benefits:
Studies conducted by different researchers over the years had held the human resource
management responsible for the poor job description and job classification developed by them. This is

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one of the sources of gender discriminations at the workplace. It has been seen in the researches that male
gendered words in job descriptions make an impact on the females who are seeking for jobs. It was found
that masculine worded descriptions of jobs are responsible for significantly deterring women from
applying to those jobs. This takes place regardless the nature of the job being stereotypically female, male
or gender neutral. Human resources management knowingly or unknowingly use masculine worded
gender descriptions to tell women that they were not the right fit for the role she is applying for
(McDonald, Charlesworth & Graham, 2015). This actually gives them a suggestion that they should not
supply for this job regardless of qualifications. In cases of masculine gendered job descriptions,
researchers found that women employees to give significantly lower job appeal rating to those jobs. Their
sense of belongingness to these kinds of jobs gets drastically reduced. This factor adds to the cause of the
development of confidence gap (Membre et al., 2015). Many ultimately perceive that women suffer from
lack of confidence when compared to that of men in the workplace. Other than that, benefits provided the
company policies to the women are also not similar to that of the man. Often the human resource
management is seen to provide health insurance policy to the woman that does not cover their spouse.
This is assumed that their husbands will have their own benefits in their own organizations. However, at
the same time, male coworkers have their wives covered by the benefits of the policy. Again, it is seen
that the policies of the organization are such that as the husband of the female coworkers are in jibs, they
have to provide increased health benefit (Gentry et al., 2015). However, the male coworkers do not have
to pay for their jobs. Therefore, the human resource department should take a strict step against such of
these policies of the organization and report about this form of discrimination effectively.
Recommendations:
One of the female employees was asked an open-ended question in an interview. She had stated
that she had been working in an organization for a large number of days. She has received exemplary
reviews from a variety of stakeholders of the organization (Pocock & Charlesworth, 2017). She had even
won employee of the year reward; yet five of the times she had applied for promotions it had been filled

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in by men who are less qualified than she is. Jenkins had been seen to state in Guardian Australia that “I
think that probably one of the most surprising and concerning findings was just how prevalent the
opposition to advancing gender equality is” (Davey, 2018). The human resource management has one of
the largest responsibilities of erasing this sort of discrimination from workplace. They have the power of
influencing the workforce in ways that will promote a diverse workplace where males and females have
equal rights and respect.
Recommendation 1:
The human resource management should reassess the job requirements for the senior leadership
team. They should develop strategies by which women are given chances to serve positions in their
organization by conducting ethical hiring procedures. Companies should not only hire women but should
also try their best to examine the different barriers faced by the already existing employees to reach the
leadership positions. The human resource management should rethink their interview processes. They
should set a set of questions for the interviewees for a specific job role that would be irrespective of males
and females seeking the job. While setting job description or while asking questions in the interview, care
should be taken that proper phrasing of the words are done so that it does not elicit different answers from
the employees. Researchers are of the opinion that fear of litigation changes behavior. They suggest that
in the later stages of interviewing there should be teams of mixed gender interview candidates for
reduction of hiring biases (Davis, Frolova & Callahan, 2016). Moreover, the human resource department
should also make sure that all the employees have the same access to different opportunities. In many
cases, it is seen that male counterparts get opportunities to talk with valuable clients and hence they are
considered as more impressive candidate for promotion. Therefore, HRM should make sure that they
introduce processes so that all employees irrespective of males and females get the opportunity to meet
the same standards as they progress through their careers (Pearl-Martinez & Stephens, 2016). This will
help to ensure that all will get the same exposure to training and opportunities. Moreover, the human
resource management should also make sure that proper policies are prepared following that the salary

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slab will be prepared. The allocation of salary structure will be same for both the gender and monitoring
bodies should be given responsibilities. The policies should also contain proper hiring and promoting
guidelines. Care should be taken so that biasness is not incorporated.
Recommendation 2:
Men are thought to be more productive, responsible and focused than the women. This old age
orthodox belief had been inculcated in the organizational cultures that restrict any changes. Although the
present day enthusiasm showed by the social workers and activities and also the various types of
initiatives taken by the organization, the gender pay gap cannot still be bridged (Crebbin et al. 2015). The
human resource managers should help employees to manage work as well as personal responsibilities at
the same time of assessing the gender pay gap issues. They should also help employees who are primary
care givers when they remain involved in caring of elders, child or both. The human resource manager
should ensure that the number of work hours demanded by the job is allowing for personal life. He should
make sure that the system is focusing on the bottom line rather than face time. It should not matter to him
that when the assigned work is completed but he should only care that the assigned work is completed
within deadline and with good quality. Offering support for childcare an elder care can be assured. Care
should be taken that employees do not leave due to punishing hours or work rules. Rather control should
be provided to them over their schedules (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014). Men play an important part in
solving the issue of gender discrimination and therefore training sessions and counseling sessions are
required by which the age-old orthodox thinking can be eliminated. Rather men should be trained as such
that they themselves become an active part in erasing away gender discrimination by making the
workplace healthier for women mentally, physically and emotionally (Pocock & Charlesworth, 2017).
Care should be taken that there are strict penalties for harassments of the women employees. Proper laws
should be prepared which would keep out sexual harassment out of place.

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Conclusion:
Gender discrimination is one of the most important issues in the nation currently. Different laws,
policies and rules have been published by the government and by different organizations. However, still
the effect is present which is accounting for about 15.3% of pay gap between them. Biasness in hiring,
termination and promotion, unequal pay of salaries and improper job description and benefits provided to
women employees be mainly the trends yet noticed in the human resource management. Therefore,
recommendations are provided so that work life balance can be maintained. Sexual harassment can be
eliminated and training of the male employees needs to be ensured for smooth work. Moreover, proper
policy structure for fixed salaries, proper hiring, firing and promoting guidelines and unbiased interview
questions are ensured.

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References:
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Perspectives on Accounting, 35, 100-110.
Charlesworth, S., & Macdonald, F. (2015). Women, work and industrial relations in Australia in
2014. Journal of Industrial Relations, 57(3), 366-382.
Crebbin, W., Campbell, G., Hillis, D. A., & Watters, D. A. (2015). Prevalence of bullying, discrimination
and sexual harassment in surgery in Australasia. ANZ journal of surgery, 85(12), 905-909.
Davey, M. (2018). Australian report finds disturbing evidence of gender inequality. [online] the Guardian.
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La Nauze, A. (2015). Sexual orientation–based wage gaps in Australia: The potential role of
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Loi, N. M., Loh, J. M., & Hine, D. W. (2015). Don’t rock the boat: The moderating role of gender in the
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