Sociology of Gender Essay: Challenges Faced by Women in the Workplace

This sociology essay examines the multifaceted challenges women encounter in the workplace and society. It highlights issues such as lack of flexible work arrangements, unequal pay, gender and race bias, sexual harassment, and discrimination, emphasizing how these issues hinder women's professional advancement. The essay stresses the importance of equality, reproductive health rights, and economic and educational empowerment for improving women's positions. It references the movie "Her Brilliant Career" to illustrate the struggles women face in a patriarchal society. The essay suggests workplace and societal changes, including wage audits, pay transparency, and evaluation of recruitment and promotion systems, to combat gender bias. It also discusses the controversial "Bully Broads" program and concludes that comprehensive societal changes are needed to improve women's standing, emphasizing that women can compete equally and achieve power. References include academic sources on gender, workplace issues, and women's empowerment.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER ESSAY
SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER ESSAY
Name of the Student:
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Author Note:

1SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER ESSAY
Even in a modern world like that of today, women have to face challenges when it comes
to facing challenges for advancement in their workplace. Not only in workplace, are women
noticed to face more challenges in every aspect of their lives but every facet of the society as
well. There are numerous issues which are fundamental for the women especially for those who
are trying their best to advance in their profession (Fredman, Kuosmanen & Campbell, 2016).
Lack of flexible work arrangements, equal pay, bias regarding gender and race, lack of
sponsorship, being prone to sexual harassment, being a victim of a non- inclusive workplace,
LGBT discrimination are some of the issues that women have always faced in their workplaces.
However, these issues are not entirely impossible to overcome; both the society and the
workplace have their own parts which can help in the improvement of the position of women in
the society (Harris, 2013).
As the movie depicts, that every issue that women face in their workplace is not an issue
created for intake problems; there are issues which are actually troublesome for the uptake
problem (Mallampalli & Carter, 2014). It is not that the women are not always included in a
workplace, the real trouble lies in the fact that they are not utilized as per their potentiality as
compared to men. Failing to provide workplace flexibility which prevents the women to manage
their career and their personal priorities is what an uptake problem looks like (Cornwall & Rivas,
2015). The issue with equal pay is also a huge issue that women frequently face in an
organization and this issue straightaway hampers the basic human right of every individual. On
top of everything, being discriminated at workplace on the basis of gender is an obstacle that
most of the women would agree that they had to face at least once or more than once in their
lifetime; these issues are something that needs to be overcome if a woman thinks of making a
progress in her work life.

2SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER ESSAY
For the improvement of the position of women in the society, equality is the utmost
significant concept that the society needs to implement in the minds of its people. Equality does
not indicate being equal in terms of gender, but equality indicates a matter of provision of equal
human rights and a condition of social justice that would be fair to every individual irrespective
of gender, caste or race (Kimmel, 2000). In order to improve the position of women, the
reproductive health is a fact that should be put into greater emphasis; women need their
reproductive right to be protected and promoted; they should be the ones who would be able to
decide on the number and timing of her children. Women should also be empowered
economically, something which is a huge issue at the current scenario; women face twice as
much of hardship than men and it might be because of unconscious bias as well, but women do
suffer a lot at the workplace for belonging to the ‘fair sex’ (Calabrese et al., 2015). The wages,
the sponsorship and several other benefits seem to fall short when a woman is involved in the
criteria. There is also the factor of educational empowerment; there are numerous places where
the culture prohibits higher education to the girls and if the position of women needs to be
improved in the present day modern society, this kind of degrading culture that demeans the
position of women needs to be altered and updated to a more positive perspective.
As the context of the movie Her Brilliant Career shows, about how each of the 10
women struggle to get a position in the society that they have desired for a long time, in spite of
being held back by the patriarchic society, it provides an insight that there are ways in which
women can have their experiences in the work changed, or rather improved, if the society agrees
to contribute in its own ways (Chinomona & Maziriri, 2015). The society needs to be more
flexible just like the workplace of an organization where women works and also like the
workplace, the society needs to be more inclusive when it comes to the progress made by a

3SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER ESSAY
women. Sometimes it seems difficult for the society- and not just the male gender- to fathom that
women can also be in a place of power and dominance and run an organization or business or
any other thing properly; the way women in powerful position are treated is usually brutal (Ceci
et al., 2014). They are thrown sexist comments which the women have to dodge in order to be in
the place that they worked so hard to be in. there are little contributions required from the society
in order to make it a little bit easier for the women. The society needs to stop thinking that
women are just a child bearing machine and someone to take care of the household works. The
society needs to stop creating such circumstances where a woman always has to adjust and most
importantly the society needs to accept that a woman can lead and hence follow her whenever
she earns such a place of power.
All the women around the world face through an issue of wage gap, which is created due
to gender bias. In any organization, the leaders can take care of this fact by ensuring there are
equal wages through an analysis of a wage audit; they can also implement a policy of “no
negotiation” and support the concept of pay transparency. It is important that the recruitment,
promotion and talent development systems are evaluated for checking if any kind of gender bias
has taken place (Abidin, 2016). These are the changes that an organization can undertake and
once the organization acknowledges such changes, it will be having an impact on the society
somehow which will help the other organization to see the motive and thus implement necessary
steps to ensure that women are not discriminated on the basis of their gender in their wages.
However, a woman also has to be loud and clear about her demands and tolerate no such
biasness in the workplace or anywhere else in the society.
A new type of coaching program known as the “Bully Broads” have been popularly
growing since this program trains high- powered women to be less bullying as reported by others

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and help them to engage in softer behavioral patterns. In my opinion, there are too many
contradictions regarding this program; I understand the growing popularity because it is a strong
step taken against bullying and in a strange way it is acknowledging the power of women
(Jordan, Combs & Smith, 2014). Yet from my understanding, the training that some high –
powered women have to go through in order to avoid being a bully in the workplace is
contradictory, since no boss, regardless of their gender, have the right or the authority to be rude
or to bully others; therefore it is sort of discriminating when only women are sent in this training
program.
It can be concluded that the society is in need of too many changes if the position of
women needs to be improved. The workplaces can help in the improvement of the position of
their women workers through certain simple steps; once the change starts from a certain point, a
gradual impact would impact the overview of the society and it would also change its
perspectives towards this particular gender. Moreover, as Her Brilliant Career showed, every
women can compete equally and have the potentiality to earn power.

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References:
Abidin, C. (2016). “Aren’t these just young, rich women doing vain things online?”: Influencer
selfies as subversive frivolity. Social Media+ Society, 2(2), 2056305116641342.
Calabrese, S. K., Meyer, I. H., Overstreet, N. M., Haile, R., & Hansen, N. B. (2015). Exploring
discrimination and mental health disparities faced by black sexual minority women using
a minority stress framework. Psychology of women quarterly, 39(3), 287-304.
Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D. K., Kahn, S., & Williams, W. M. (2014). Women in academic science: A
changing landscape. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 15(3), 75-141.
Chinomona, E., & Maziriri, E. T. (2015). Women in action: Challenges facing women
entrepreneurs in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. International Business &
Economics Research Journal (IBER), 14(6), 835-850.
Cornwall, A., & Rivas, A. M. (2015). From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’to
global justice: reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development. Third
World Quarterly, 36(2), 396-415.
Fredman, S., Kuosmanen, J., & Campbell, M. (2016). Transformative equality: Making the
sustainable development goals work for women. Ethics & International Affairs, 30(2),
177-187.
Harris, A. (2013). Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel
Cooke – review. Retrieved 11 March 2020, from
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/17/her-brilliant-career-rachel-cooke-review

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Jordan, C. E., Combs, J. L., & Smith, G. T. (2014). An exploration of sexual victimization and
academic performance among college women. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 15(3), 191-
200.
Kimmel, M. S. (2000). The gendered society. Oxford University Press, USA.
Mallampalli, M. P., & Carter, C. L. (2014). Exploring sex and gender differences in sleep health:
a Society for Women's Health Research Report. Journal of women's health, 23(7), 553-
562.