¶ … start of the new millennium is a true privilege, especially for previously oppressed social and ethnic groups such as women and African-Americans. A new social paradigm of equality and tolerance has begun to ensure that anyone can do anything useful with their lives if they want to. This makes the 21st century an exciting time, but also a challenging one. Although the above-mentioned new paradigm does exist, centuries of conditioning makes it difficult for the professed ideals to come true in practice. In focusing on gender roles and conflicts in the workplace then, it is my aim to investigate the extent to which an environment that is professed to be diverse, actually does cater for the variety of needs experienced by women. I also wish to find out how gender roles are perceived and to what extent these still dictate a certain amount of prejudice in the workplace.
It does appear that sexism is still prevalent in the professional world today. Women for example seem to be underrepresented in managerial positions. Men also appear to assume that working for a man would accomplish more than working for a woman. Furthermore the roles that women traditionally play - the emotional, understanding quality - is perceived positively in women, while traditionally male roles, such as that of discipline, tends to be received more positively from a man than from a woman. A number of insightful studies are examined below to determine the extent to which the above assumptions are true.
Conditioned Perceptions of Gender Roles
Statistics cited by Atwater shows that there is a dramatic increase of almost 20% of female representation from the 1980's to 2000.
There are however factors restricting women's progress to managerial levels; although women comprise almost half of first-line supervising jobs, the higher-level management positions are still mostly reserved for men while women remain in lower-level staff jobs (Atwater, 2004).
A shortcoming in studying this phenomenon is identified by Atwater to be that management has been assumed to be a predominantly masculine role, with women as "intruders." Atwater however presents management as a role divided into a number of subroles, which can be perceived as either masculine or feminine. These perceptions are inherent in the above-mentioned conditioning practices of the centuries before the ideal of tolerance was born. Perceptions are coupled with expectations of what Atwater (2004) describes as gender-consistent behavior. Expectations from men in North America are for example to be assertive, confident and ambitions, while women in the same society are expected to be helpful, kind and supportive. These expectations in terms of social roles, reinforced through centuries of practice, have then translated into the workplace in general, and into managerial positions in particular. The traditional roles of the male in society have been seen as the particular qualities needed to be a requirement for efficient management.
Atwater (2004) however identifies a number of subroles inherent in the management position. Interestingly, despite the popular traditionalist approach, many of these can be seen as feminine, while other subroles are again predominantly masculine, as opposed to the entire occupation being predominantly male-orientated.
Managers are for example expected to be good at problem solving, while at the same time being helpful and considerate towards their staff. The problem of what Atwater terms the "glass ceiling" comes in with the actual perceptions of traditional top management roles. These positions, in addition to being traditionally held by men, also require what is perceived as male qualities.
Planning, strategic decision-making and resource allocation for example are seen as roles handled better by men, and involving fewer of the emotional and supportive qualities that women traditionally inherit. Lower level managers again are more directly involved with employees, and thus need a larger amount of the interpersonal skills required to for example monitor employee performance.
Another issue related to this is the potentially negative perception of women who show themselves competent in performing more masculine roles. This "role congruity theory" (Atwater, 2004) may for example manifest itself when a female has to discipline a worker, or enforce rules. This may lead to perceptions of incompetent management, whereas the same behavior in a man will lead to a more positive perception of competence. Conversely, negative perceptions can be attached to a male manager of traditionally female behavior is manifest. This has specific consequences regarding the perception of competence. Females performing female roles in management are seen as competence, while the same is conversely true if males perform male management roles.
Diversity Workplace religio Annotated Bibliography Borstorff, P., Arlington, K. (2010). The Perils of Religious Accommodation: Employees' Perceptions. Proceedings of the Academy of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 14 (1), 1-6. The Perils of Religious Accommodation: Employees' Perceptions attempts to analyze, and to a certain degree to quantify, the effectiveness of employers in the workplace in their allowance for differences in faith in terms of religious observance for their employees. The primary methodology
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