Gender Discrimination | Case Study | Human Resource Management

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Human Resource Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Locating the news article describing the gender discrimination issues
theglobeandmail.com. (2020). Walmart likely discriminated against female workers, U.S.
agency says. Retrieved 11 February 2020, from
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/us-business/article-
walmart-likely-discriminated-against-female-workers-us-agency-says/
Explaining the issues by briefly summarizing the newspaper article
It has been identified that world’s largest supermarket giant Wal-Mart is again facing
greater level of controversies in relation to gender discrimination. The news article state the
fact that almost 100 employees have filled the gender discrimination lawsuit against Wal-
Mart on February 1 highlighting the denial of equal pay for the retail store as well as
particular salaried management (theglobeandmail.com 2020). It has been identified that the
issue is about less pay in existing Wal-Mart employees and the ones who already left the
company. One of the ex-employees of Wal-Mart claimed that she trained many managers
and employees but did not receive the required wages; this means despite fulfilling all job
responsibilities and helping employees to their promotional doors, the suitable women
candidates are paid low or they are underpaid. Likewise, another female employee claimed
that “I went from working 50 hours a week to 80 to 90 hours a week and I asked for a pay
increase, as I was working a whole other departments. But, my claim was turned down by
Wal-Mart’s manager.
Furthermore, the article published on The Globe and Mail reveals the fact that Wal-
Mart retained a specific group of culture that existed way before 1990 and it continued on.
Even though women are working in multiple positions but they do not receive suitable
opportunity for promotion and growth. In this context, Daniel (2020) argued that gender gap
in the corporate sector has been a significant issue as despite growing level of female talents,

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female candidates in the corporate sector do not fair treatment in relation to pay, position and
promotion. In order to justify the degree of biased organisational culture in the corporate
sector, Lamm (2015) mentioned that only 6.4% of board seats are held by women in the
region.
Describing how the article provides illustration on the impact of HR
practices on Wal-Mart
The scenario and issues presented by Globe and Mail article state the fact that the
organisation Wal-Mart did not update its HR policies despite the constant claims and public
voices in relation to equal pay and discrimination. Every large organisation in the corporate
sector today are significantly are concerned about the social and ethical responsibility in such
context, diversity has been a significant HR practices. Nonetheless, as there have been several
layers of management in Wal-Mart, Human Resource department of the organisation did not
pay an equal level of focus on all managerial level of operation. The ongoing HRM practices
reflects the lack of focus on its workforce development program, lack of consideration about
external market factors like industry wage standards and lack of contemporary approaches in
the practice. The issue stated above is particular in relation to pay and discrimination in HRM
practices. In addition to this, the current HRM practice at Wal-Mart indicates that a complete
gap of communication in the HRM department. This happens, as the senior management of
Wal-Mart decides the HRM planning; there have been several layers in the management
often deprived from the corporate decisions taken by Wal-Mart’s management. Moreover,
each store of Wal-Mart has its own separate responsibility for HR management and thereby,
managerial decisions taken by senior management is not reflected across all its branches.
This means that the organisation holds a varying interpretation of corporate interpretation of
corporate human resource plan. This approach unexpectedly creates the challenge in