Understanding gender discrimination and biasness in the workplace: voice from women segment

Abstract

Purpose

This article focuses on research carried out on gender discrimination and biasness in the workplace in order to understand how gender discrimination can have far reaching consequences on the careers of working women. It looks at five aspects of this issue, namely workplace harassment, hiring, maternity leave, women in leadership roles, and the experience of marginalised women. Although a global issue, this article looks at gender discrimination from Indian Context.

Design/methodology/approach

This article is descriptive in nature, that studied the arguments of other researchers and elaborated understanding from those articles considering gender discrimination and gender bias at the workplace.

Findings

It was found that despite an intense and growing call for gender equality at the workplace, to provide its female workforce with adequate freedom to work and protection from conservative opinions and biases that keep women out of the workforce. Several women have taken over top positions in companies; regardless, a lot more work remains to be done. Bringing in legislative changes is of utmost importance, as it will ensure that women have legal routes to protect their rights. There also needs to be more research undertaken in the field of gender discrimination to understand how structural changes can be established in companies.

Originality/value

The current study is unique, every industry faces this challenge, which is considered one of the critical challenges. Practitioners, experts, strategists, also fall into the game of gender discrimination and biasness.

Citation

Chatterjee, A. and Shenoy, V. (2023), "Understanding gender discrimination and biasness in the workplace: voice from women segment", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 126-130. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-04-2023-0023

Introduction

According to the Global Gender Report 2022 (World Economic Forum, 2022), gender parity is not recovering. Due to the pandemic and its impact on societal expectations, company policies, laws and inadequate availability of caretaking infrastructure, educational opportunities and therefore career choices, are limited for women. Gender discrimination is a widespread problem that occurs everywhere and very often. A sizable population of women who face this issue, do so in the workplace. In general, it can be said that people are treated differently or less favourably in the workplace or during job interviews based on their sex or gender. If an employee has undergone gender discrimination, they may register a complaint through any of the routes available to them. India adopted the Equal Remunerations Act in 1946, the Minimum Wages Act in 1948 and the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act in 2013 to criminalise gender discrimination. However, more than 72% of women still believe that gender discrimination is commonplace at work (Kumar and Rao, 2021).

Most nations globally exhibit a positive trend in women joining the labour force; India is one of the exceptions. Bangladesh has a 57% labour force participation rate for women, compared to China’s 63.9% and India’s 27% (Nair, 2015). According to the 68th set of National Sample Survey Organization data, the labour force participation rate (or percentage of the labour force to the total population) for women in urban India declined between 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Urban women’s participation dropped from around 36% in 2004–2005 to 14.6% in 2009–2010, before increasing to about 15.5%, in 2011–2012 (Sumanjeet, 2016; International Labour Organisation, 2014), before rising to a promising 30% in 2021–2022 (Press Information Bureau, 2023).

The 60% of women globally who do not have access to maternity leave are affected by the lack of statutory rights to maternity protection. Tax breaks and flexible work schedules are helping to increase female labour force participation in OECD nations. According to a 2016 poll by Gender at Work of Indian women working in the workforce, women’s primary reason for quitting their formal jobs was the stress of two jobs (Rao, 2016) with the second, of course, being childcare. Feminists have long recognised the separation between commodity production and human reproduction as a basic component in women’s subordination.

The Maternity Benefits Act of 1961 and the Employees’ State Insurance Act of 1948 both stipulate a 90-day maternity leave period. For its employees, the government has expanded this to 135 days (Sankaran and Madhav, 2011). A female employee is entitled to maternity leave under the 7th Bipartite Settlement of 2000, which covers bank workers, for a maximum of six months at a time and a maximum of 12 months over the course of her employment. With the organisations that make up the public sector, paternity leave is still not widely accepted. Also, trade unions have not frequently brought it up in talks as a top concern. The issue of improving maternity leave and perks for female employees has received far greater attention.

Throughout the past 20 years, gender equality and non-discrimination have gained ground, yet there are still persistent inequities and gender power dynamics that maintain women’s subordination. Women are still underrepresented at the top levels of authority and decision-making across sectors and countries, despite legislation and programmes to address gender inequality. Of India’s 328 not-for-profit organisations, Dasra’s 2015 survey revealed that while women make up 53% of the workforce, their representation in executive roles plummets sharply (Manku, 2016). According to Guide Star’s 2015 Non-profit Compensation Report, 43% of CEOs are women (Rao, 2016). Moreover, women continue to hold many of the lowest-paying positions and make 77% of what males do internationally.

There is also a need to study the impact of further social stratification on gender discrimination. In India, this includes looking at how a woman’s caste defines her professional career (Bapuji and Chrispal, 2020). Due to generational privilege, it has historically been upper-caste women who have been allowed to work in professional settings outside the home, while their lower-caste counterparts were pushed to do unpaid manual labour and forbidden to advance to paid jobs. Despite affirmative action taken in the form of legislature and reservations, lower caste women are still denied formal education, and thus are restricted from joining the formal workforce.

Why does this disparity between male and female workers still crop up, despite the long years of the feminist movement advocating for formal work for women? According to Shenoy and Kumar (2021), there are many different types of workplace biases. Some of these can be used to identify gender bias and explain the discrimination faced by women in the workplace.

Affinity bias is the tendency to gravitate towards someone from a similar background. Corporate culture is often said to be dominated by the “old boys’ club”, referring to how the most well-paying jobs and top-most positions are restricted to small groups of men who are well-known to each other. This stops others, especially women, from getting into leadership roles at their companies, which is yet another form of the glass ceiling.

Conservatism bias is when individuals conform to tried and tested practices because of familiarity or a sense of conservatism. Some companies may try to avoid hiring women to avoid changing workplace policies that do not accommodate women.

Identity bias refers to having double standards for individuals based on who they are, not what they have done. Women on maternity leave will often be considered as having done inadequate work and will not be considered for promotions.

These biases can be unconscious and can seriously affect the chances women have of progressing at work. It is also not just women working under male bosses who are at risk of facing discrimination; oftentimes, it can be women in managerial roles who have higher standards for their female subordinates and thus can set them up for failure in the long run.

Studying the underlying causes of workplace gender discrimination is crucial to weed out the issue and make workplaces safe for women. Understanding workplace biases is one of them. We must target unconscious biases in employees and ramp up training and affirmative policies that address the root of the issue of gender discrimination.

Discussions

Workplace interventions are necessary to focus on gender discrimination and biasness and build a workforce that is safer and encouraging for women. Some discussions for these interventions are given below.

Sensitivity training: Unconscious biases being prevalent at a male-dominated workplace, sensitivity training can help in employees rethinking these biases and actively work towards eliminating them. Managers will also benefit from sensitivity training as it will help them prevent discriminatory biases and make informed decisions regarding gender equality.

Gender pay gap: The wage gap between male and female employees has been well-documented. Conducting audits and making salaries transparent can not only bring women to the same wage level as men, it can also foster growth in their personal lives and boost their confidence.

Diverse hiring practices: Using gender neutral words in job descriptions tends to attract women more to apply for such jobs. Hiring managers from diverse backgrounds will ensure that a more diverse workforce is put in place.

Flexibility of working hours: The pandemic proved that remote work is possible in many sectors, and this has proved to be a boon for many women who are primary caregivers for their children or the elderly. Having flexible working hours also gives men opportunities to do their share of childcare, thereby taking the burden of two jobs off their working wives.

Women in leadership: Establishing mentor–mentee roles between women in leadership roles and their female subordinates can ensure that women get trained in leadership skills. This can enable them to get promoted to leadership roles and increase the gender ratio.

Mental health resources: Companies can provide resources to help with mental health and well-being of their employees. Employees with stress, anxiety or depression due to workplace discrimination can avail of these resources. It will also foster a happier and mentally healthier workplace.

Conclusion

The push for gender equality and anti-discrimination at work has intensified as more women join the workforce and trade unions. The task for policymakers is to build enabling mechanisms that will allow women’s views to be heard and an equal workplace/environment for women. New identities within a shared experience of uncertainty in this changing context may open up new formations and opportunities. Yet, these new islands of change are not permanent and can change as a result of changes in power dynamics. The rise of female leaders that we are now witnessing in many organisations is a welcome development, but individual accounts of triumph over patriarchal cultures do not necessarily alter culture for all; rather, they merely demonstrate that under certain conditions and for a variety of reasons, individuals can defy expectations.

Nonetheless, we continue to see interventions that seek to address deeply ingrained injustices that emerge in violence against women, and favour overt, quantifiable legislative change and access to resources at the expense of the structural inequalities that are the basis of the issue. We require legislation and increased funding for risk-taking research and learning in a range of settings about how to confront and alter deeply ingrained forms of injustice.