Sweden's Leadership in Gender Equality at Workplaces

Running head: MANAGEMENT WORK AND SOCIETY
MANAGEMENT WORK AND SOCIETY
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Author Note

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MANAGEMENT WORK AND SOCIETY
Women had made a lot of progress in the society the last few decades. Equal
treatment and opportunity has been given to women, even in workplaces. Workplaces gender
equality has become quite common in current times, with women being given the same job
role, opportunities and rewards that men used to get in earlier times. This change has
occurred after a lot of effort and struggle from the women population. However, even in
today’s time, there are several scenarios where women are not treated equal to men in
workplace and the society. The change has not been able to seep into every organisation and
women get unequal treated despite their skills and hard work. Denissen and Saguy (2014)
observes that women who work in job-sites are often subjected to verbal harassment and
gender biased comments indicating that they are not fit for the job. Even gender biased
comments are said to men who lack in their work stating that manual labour is only possible
by men. Moreover, the authors in their articles state that tradeswomen who associate
themselves with tradesmen often hear jokes and lewd languages to show their superiority and
are not treated with respect. Okechukwu, Souza, Davis and de Castro (2014) further states
that women are subjected to harassment both mental and physical, bullying and abuse in their
workplace which is male centric. Even women with disabilities are harassed similarly and
their work is not given any importance. Along with gender biasness, women of different
culture are treated differently in the workplace. There have been many reports of workplace
harassment and discrimination by women all over the world.
According to Cortina, Kabat-Farr, Leskinen, Huerta and Magley (2013) states that
women face workplace incivility and are targeted with uncivil behaviour from their male
peers and even the management. Blau and Kahn (2017) further investigates the issue of
gender wage gap which is a major issue even in current times. A majority of the working
women in Britain lose out on a large portion of money due to the gender pay par that is
present in the country. UK has one of the highest rate of inequality in terms of women

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MANAGEMENT WORK AND SOCIETY
working and hence they have to face a lifetime of unequal payments. Working women in
Britain earn an average of £10,000 less than the working male population. Yang and Aldrich
(2014) state that even in entrepreneurial view, the scenario is gender biased, as female bosses
are discriminated by their employees and not shown enough respect under they take up a
ruthless personality. Women are judged by their personality and a soft-spoken woman is not
shown as being competent or eligible to become a leader or an entrepreneur. Women find no
progression in higher education as opposed to men as they are often presented with lack of
support from family members and other close ones. Even in today’s time, there are many
areas where women are only seen as individuals who bring up a family and therefore has no
need to pursue education. Even if women do pursue education they are not supported for
higher education and are married off.
Parchela, Kaifi and Khanfar (2013) provides many reasons for the differences that
occur between men and women in the workplace and the reasons that women are paid less at
every instance. Firstly, it is said that women are often discriminated because of the generic
work environment that is often sought by women which consists of fixed hours at a normal
time, safety and good working conditions. On the other hand, men who have not completed
their college education often take up high risk jobs such as fire fighting, construction and
truck driving. However, women who do not have college education do not seek for high risk
jobs, but pursue jobs such as cashiers, secretary and caretaker which are not deemed to be
risky. This is the reason that women who pursue high risk jobs at a rare time are often bullied
in these workplace since the men are not accustomed to women working in such hazardous
conditions and do not think them fit to do so. The situation in UK, though slowly improving,
has been very tense in terms of women working equally with men. Seen as a progressive
country, it should have been one of the countries where gender equality is supported.
However, that ws never the case and in current times the statistics show that only 47%