Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: Strategies for Dealing with Diminished Responsibilities, Bullying, and Cultural Intolerance

This article discusses three scenarios related to sex discrimination in the workplace, including diminished responsibilities, bullying, and cultural intolerance. It provides strategies for dealing with each scenario, such as maintaining transparency, advocating for change, and developing cultural competency. The article also highlights the negative impact of workplace discrimination on employee morale, job satisfaction, and organizational productivity.

Running head: SCENARIO 1
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Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Scenario 1:
Researchers have opined that sex discrimination may be direct as well as indirect. Direct
sex discrimination takes place when an employee is subjected to unfavorable and opportunities
because of their sex. Indirect sex determination mainly takes place about what sort of
workwomen and men are capable or incapable of doing (Barak 2016). On analysis of the case
study, it was found that the female employee named Danielle was exposed to gender biased
attitudes and the behaviors of the male employees subjected her to indirect sex determination.
This case falls in the category of diminished responsibilities. This mainly means that the males
and the females are not given the same responsibilities and the opportunities based on the gender.
The case study shows examples of situations and events that fall in the category (Schultz 2018).
As she is a female, the duties of arranging coffees, birthday parties and similar others are given
to her. Although the males are equally capable of arranging for such events, the males of the
office do not do so. They categorize such actions to be feminine and hence allocate such actions
to Danielle only. Moreover sexist remarks are also made to her as people are seen to call them
“office mom” when “office dads” title is not provded to anyone. This shows that the workplace
environment discriminated between males and females. The CEO who was complained about the
gender discrimination by Danielle was also seen to avoid the topic stating that Danielle is being
over sensitive. In the real sense, the CEO should have supported the claims of the female
employees and should have discussed her concerns in details. He should have taken steps to
develop the organizational culture where such discrimination biasness does not take place. This
would have resulted in increase of the productivity of the organization and would have increased
morale and job satisfaction of Danille. Rather he turned a deaf ear and neglected the issue. In a
way, he was also a supporter of the issue and he did not protest against the issue. Such

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mentalities needed to be changed both in order to avoid legal obligation and to influence
employee morale, job satisfaction and meeting organizational goals effectively. (Helms and
Mills 2017)
One of the strategies that Danielle can undertake is maintaining a transparency of what
she feels about the recent scenario and thereby discusses the same with the male employees as
well as the female employees in an open discussion session in a meeting. She should establish
her point about how being called with such titles affect her dignity and affects her morale
(Basford, Offermann and Behrand 2014). She should also establish the fact that she is
accomplishing all her assigned duties successfully and are conducting the same work as that of
the males. All these should be discussed not in the arrogant tone but in a polite yet confident
manner so that a transparency can be maintained.
The second initiative that Danielle can undertake is to have a meeting with the human
resource department and discuss the issues with her. Without taking particular name of the
employees and exposing them to the human resource department, she should suggest the HRM to
introduce a number of steps in order to make a better organizational culture for both the genders.
She might suggest the department to hold training sessions for development of the organizational
culture, introduce various policies that might make the male employees more careful, proactive
in providing job roles to all irrespective of their gender roles (Cortina, Rabelo and Holland 2018
The third strategy that Danielle can undertake is that she can disclose all the issues she
has faced and her feelings to those male employees who are supportive of her and do not possess
any negative feelings. Taking such an initiative will have two better outcomes, this would help
the other male members to know about the issues that their female colleagues are facing and

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thereby would be helping them by supporting them in different initiatives. Moreover, the
supportive male members would be actively advocating from the part of the female employees
that can bring out changes in the behavior of the organization. They can also transfer the feeling
of Danielle to the male members making them realize their negative approach (Malos 2015).
Scenario 2:
The first strategy that should be taken is to call the members of the team separately into
the meeting room and thereby be indicated about the observations that had been made regarding
the bullying behavior of the employee towards others. Each of the incident would be discussed in
details giving the employee as much of the information or the data that can be given that had
been observed. Discussions would be done about how such behaviors would affect the morale of
the other employees and affect the organizational culture and aesthetics. Chances should be
given for development of better professional behaviors (Olsen, Bijalid and Mikkelsen 2017).
The second strategy would be to handover the handbook of the human resource
department regarding the behaviours that are not accepted. The Zero tolerance policy should be
well understood to him regarding the sections that are covered. He should be given the
opportunity to tell his side of the incidents ad accordingly warning should be set (Gillen et al.
2017).
The employee should be told about how his behaviors are affecting the organizational
culture and proper ways would be discussed with him that he needs to follow as office decorum.
It should be clearly stated that such bullying behaviors would not be tolerated . he could be also
placed in probationary periods for 30 days and monitoring of the employee during this time
should be done to ensure that such issues are not faced again in the organization (Johnson 2015).

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Scenario 3:
It is very important for every healthcare professional to develop cultural competency as
they need to practice their skills and knowledge not only with their clients of indigenous origin
bit from other cultures as well (Paradies 2016). Therefore, I have developed myself in ways by
which I can not only practice cultural sensitivity while treating native patients but also overcame
my biasness. Therefore, such comments from fellow collages never affect my morale and
principle of healthcare that I have ingrained. In turn, I try to discuss the negative outcomes of
such behavior to my fellow colleagues telling them that it is entirely against the bioethical
principle of justice. I advocate for the native clients and try to influence my co=workers to learn
ways of developing culturally competent services skills by overcoming cultural biasness. I have
never broken any rules and I follow all the guidelines of Equality act of the nation.
Such comments from the non-native workers create situations of workplace
discrimination that have negative outcomes on the morale of the native workers. Intercultural
climate of the organization gets affected. It tends to create an invisible rift between the native
and non-native workers and this might affect the workflow in the organization (Ewing et al.
2017). This cultural intolerance also affects the job satisfaction of the native workers and
productivity of organization would be affected. Therefore, I believe that workshop sessions need
to be arranged so that the non-native workers develop good knowledge about how the native
have been exploited generations after generation by the /Europeans which have resulted them in
such living conditions in the preset generation. The gap in health status need to be discussed and
according importance of funding them should be discussed. This would help in changing their
viewpoints and they would develop indepth knowledge about their history.

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I would talk with the native coworker in person empathetically and compassionately. I
would try to explain to him that such comments are mainly due to the lack of in-depth
knowledge of the other coworkers regarding the torturous history they had. I would request him
to participate in a meeting one day and discuss about the various aspects of the history of their
struggle with the Europeans and hence make them understand the rationale of the health status of
the natives in the present generation. This would help the non-natives to understand the natives
and this would make them stop the comments that they were making to him (Ferdinand et al.
2014).

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