Gender Equality in Australian Workplace
Added on 2020-02-18
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Gender Discrimination in Australia Analysis Of Findings :Question 1: In what ways do Australian women experience Gender Discrimination? Gender discrimination is the discrimination or prejudice based on the sexual identity or gender orientation of a particular individual. Sex discrimination in the workplaces has become one of the major problems in Australia, which is affecting the social sustainability and ethical balance. Gender discrimination is affecting women’s empowerment and social balance within a particular society. It is causing poor image and profitability of different institutions and organizations. The three major points of gender discrimination are the pay gap, barriers to leadership roles in workplaces and sexual harassment both on professional and domestic levels. Firstly, the pay gap is one of the major concerns of gender discrimination in Australia. Gender pay gap is the average difference between the salaries of men and women for the same job. As illustrated in the graph below, Australian men of particular skill level earn 24% more comparing to the women of similar skill (APH 2017). In addition, standard working hour for the male employees is 6 hours and 30 minutes (Jayachandran 2015). Alternatively, the standard working hours for the women employees is 7 hours and 30 minutes (ibid.). This is likely because it includes fulltime and part time working women. Australian women with dependant children often tend to choose working part time or doing unpaid work at home in order to accommodate family responsibilities. Keely (2011) stated that the lack of equal remuneration is one of the major reasons behind these discrimination challenges. He further added that it is a major indication that the Australian workplaces are suffering from gender discrimination on the basis of pay gap and working hour gap (Keely 2011). The problem associated with gender pay gaps might not be the educational background affiliated with both genders rather it might be the different ideologies of people who believe that women are not as competent as men. Stereotypically women are considered to stay home, do domestic chores and take care of children instead of being in the working industry. Hence, lower wage for women displays the discrimination towards females in the Australian working society.
Figure 1: Wage Gap in AustraliaSource : (APH, 2017)Secondly, barriers to the leadership roles in organizations play a significant role in gender discrimination in Australia. Only 15% of all the CEOs of the Australian companies are women (Jayachandran 2015). Jericho (2017) concurs that one of the most significant area of Australian gender inequality is the very low proportion of women in senior roles as women depicts only 26% of all managers. According to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, out of the highest 200 firms in Australia, only 40 firms have appointed 30% females in the board (Women in Leadership: Understanding the gender gap 2017). This mightbe attributed to the fact that stereotypically women are considered to be better at taking care of the domestic responsibilities and not having sufficient leadership positions/skills. Alternatively, men are seen to be the “superior” individuals, who are responsible for earning money through differentiated occupational roles. Therefore, it might be an indication that the Australian organizations are facing serious gender discrimination by failing to give corresponding leadership position to females. Thirdly, sexual harassment is one of the critical gender discrimination challenges in Australian workplaces . Sexual harassment can be defined as unwanted and inappropriate sexual conducts that makes a person feel intimidated or offended. Some of the public limited companies and different departments are suffering from these types of challenges (Harzing 2014). According to the Australian Humans right commission over the last 5 years, one in five women experienced sexual harassment in the form of sexually explicit emails and text messages. Furthermore, under sex discrimination act from 2009-2010, 88% of the complaints were sexual
harassment in workplaces (Australian Humans right commission, year).This implies that the growing use technology enhances sexual harassment by making it easier for the culprit to harass anonymously without the fear of being exposed. It can also be to be connected to the fact that menoften see women as competitors in their male dominated society and harass them sexually inorder to make feel uncomfortable. Another reason why sexual harassment is so prevalent inthe workplaces is because women often do not report the harassments to the authorities due tothe fear of reinforcing the humiliation. Thus, it may prove that harassment and violence against women plays a significant role towards the absence of gender equality in Australia, which leads to social issues and also monetary issues in the country.Conclusively, gender discrimination has become an important challenge for the Australian companies as well as the society. The huge gap in the working hours, barriers to leadership roles in the organizations and sexual harassment should be regarded as major discrimination challenges. These particular challenges need to be overcome by the policy makers as well as community members collaboratively to maintain a strong social sustainability and ethical balance in a discrimination-free society. Integration of equality should be important criteria for the resolution.Q2) How effective are the solutions for gender discrimination in Australia Versus the Nordic countries?The rapid growth of gender discrimination in this highly developed era of 21st century mightbe instigating some countries for initiating changes in the national work ethics, educationalframeworks and policies for the rectification of the situation to the optimum level. Somenations might have achieved success to some extent in achieving equality in every sections oflife which is more prevalent in the Nordic countries. It has been observed by Adapa,Rindfleish & Sheridan that few countries in the world have been undergoing struggle forincorporating these essential changes into the governance of their country. Australia isconsidered to be one among those countries who have been struggling in implementing suchchanges in an effective manner (Adapa, Rindfleish & Sheridan, 2016).First and foremost, in order to minimize the gap of the gender pay scale of people in theNordic countries which does not happen in a country like Australia, are very efficient andsuccessful devising policies for achieving such targets and create a society with equality ingender? According to Korpi, Ferrarini & Englund, it has been found that the wage rate of
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