“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” wrote George Orwell in his cult novel Animal Farm, which is a type of satire on the communism. After more than 70 years, in today’s capitalist world, it still seems like everyone is equal, but men are more equal than women. According to experts, women earn 2/3 of what their men colleague attain (Madden, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). Moreover, they are treated differently than their male coworkers, and they are less likely to seen as a future leader because of their gender (King, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). Gender discrimination in the workplace is an important and multileveled problem. So, to be able to cope with this problem, one might start to investigate the definition of ethics and its interrelated nature. Furthermore, lack of ethics and its expectable outputs should be explored. This literature review will focus on this background information and then reveals gender discrimination under favor of statistics, surveys and insight from business field, and comes up implications and antidotes by means of using expert’s opinions.
Ethics
According to Merriam Webster dictionary ethics means, “A discipline dealing with good and evil and moral duty,” which is a helpful but not satisfying definition by default. The problem is that the boundary of ethics and its definitions may change from time to time. According to Meinert (2014), codes of ethics generally are not black or white, but rather gray. Furthermore, according to De Jager (2002), they are hard to define because they can be evaluated from more than one perspective. Moreover, the issue in examining morals is that it turns everybody into judge and jury, each believes what is nice or awful behavior-according to their point of view to life-, and unavoidably endeavoring to force that judgment on others. The author claims that if determining ethics was not so hard then there would be peace in our daily life. Another challenge of determining what is ethical or not, according to Duska (2013), is its own shadowy description. Ethics comes from “ethos,” which means custom. Customs or in other words traditions are a society’s acknowledged way of doing things, and since each family or tribe or groups has its own traditions which instruct its individuals as the proper way to act, people have a tendency to follow their groups customs, and if they are crooked, they will still think those corrupt habits are acceptable. For all that difficulties of defining ethics, is it still possible to initiate an effective understanding of business ethics to create an equal working environment for professionals? Research shows that it is possible to evade the debate. What is acceptable or not can be understood by means of distributing the code of morals that states clearly what is right and inappropriate within a particular community as characterized by that group (De Jager, 2002).
The need for ethics in business shows up inevitably since manufacturing and marketing are multifaceted and complicated operation in today’s our modern world. Today’s consumers are looking for more sophisticated services or products, which escalate competition with the companies in the same field. It requires an environment which makes it simpler to do the proper thing, while at the same time it makes harder to do the wrong thing. So that, to maximize profit, employees have to work at their maximum performance and in agreement with each other in the workplace. Business ethics are not only required for employees, but it is also necessary for employers. Nevertheless, unethical behaviors in the workplace still exist at an astronomic level (Beemer, 2017). According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in 2016 employees sued employers 90.000 times because of discrimination. Furthermore, it is stated that people with disabilities, teenagers, and women frequently experience hostile working conditions because of their vulnerability. According to EEOC, in addition to age, national origin, race/color, and religion. Women also face discrimination because of pregnancy and gender. Women are entitled to be evaluated on their merits in the workplace. They expect to be judged depending on their accomplishments, abilities, experiences, and exertion. Latest researches show how the data for women in the workplace brings out into the open of the opposite situation- the unfortunate reality-.
Gender Discrimination
It is reported that women who have a child are less likely to be hired, and even if they are selected they are offered $11.000 less when compared to childless women or men. On the other hand, fathers are not penalized. Experiments illustrate that there is a clear form of bias in the workplace. People have a prejudgment that especially mothers are inclined to be less dedicated. A notable example of this prejudgment is even females -not only males- value mothers less compared to fathers and childless women (Correl, as cited in Harvard Business Revivew, n.a., 2013). Beemer (2016) points out that federal laws are responsible for protecting women from unequal payment in the workplace. However, it is reported that women only retain 2/3 of what their male coworkers make in insurance, retail, and real estate business. This is shocking because sales marketing is considered as a classic field in which success depends on talent and results rather than the political relationship in the workplace. However, in the same article, the author also asserts that women are less likely to get amenities or help from supporting staff, which deters them from performing better. It shows that actual discrimination by design sometimes may change its face, and under the veil of rationalism it finds a way for itself (Madden, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). Another study shows that important responsibilities are usually appointed to men instead of women for no other apparent reason than gender, and men control bigger budgets and more staff when compared to women (Silva, as cited in Hardvard Business Review, n.a., 2013).
Women are seen as vulnerable and helpless by default in the workplace from their managers. Hence, they receive less criticism than their male co-workers even they get more positive reinforcement. However, they are seen as less likely to be a potential future leader because they are evaluated as aidless by their managers. There is a strong possibility that managers have lower expectations for women employees because of their genders (King, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). Despite manager’s point of view for women workers, a questionary of 7,280 executives showed that from entry level to high management level, women got a higher score from subordinates. Moreover, the study revealed women got an even higher score when it comes to top executive level, which invalidates some false motivations behind the women discrimination in the workplace (Folkman, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013).
Recent research has revealed that these types of unethical behavior have a detrimental effect on female retention rates (Stone, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). It has been recently revealed that if a woman quits her job that it is probably connected with workplace problems.
It is worthwhile to note that while women constitute 53% of the entry-level jobs only 27% of them achieved to vice president and only 19% of them hold executive level positions (Mckinsey, as cited in Harvard Business Review, n.a., 2013). This case demonstrates the need for better strategies for both protecting and promoting women employees.
As one may expect, companies which are responsible for discrimination lose time and money not only because of losing experienced women employees but also due to lawsuits. According to Beemer (2017), companies lose approximately $125.000 in every case. Thus business owners should act together with federal laws and try to prevent discrimination so as to be able to avoid losing money. Beemer insightfully suggested that businesses should establish an adequate, powerful code of ethics, which should be thoroughly understood by the employees. It is noted that creating policy by itself not enough. Hence, companies should regularly update their policies and share them with workers. Furthermore, prompt scrutiny is a must when there is harassment. Both employers and EEOC should be aware of women’s rights in the workplace and offer a fair, peaceful work environment for women.
It is worthwhile to note that bias against executive women in the workplace -from men’s point of view- has gradually decreased from 60% to 20% between 1965 and 2005. Although there has been favorable progress, women still have lower anticipation for their future, which demonstrates there is still a long way to go for women and men to achieve parity (Carlson, 2009).
Antidotes
So far this literature review has focused on the defination of ethics and gender discrimination. It is now necessary to explain the causes of gender discrimination and its possible antidotes. What is the possible motivation for gender discrimination if it generates negative outcomes for both employees and employers? Duska (2013) claims that unethical behavior depends on six main factors which are; weak will, ignorance, slippery slope, arrogance, rationalization, and docility. The author pointed out that, some organizational precautions may prevent these vain behaviors like enhancing the awareness of unethical behavior. Moreover, he suggested that companies should alter their reward based system since it encourages people to behave mercilessly to outcome colleagues. On the other hand, De Jager (2002) claims that people who behave in an inappropriate way are fully aware of what they are doing so it is not a fact of awareness. He points out that what is challenging is responding in a proper way to unethical behavior. One may wonder whether we have to depend on individual behavior or if there is a better way to create a discrimination-free workplace and environment. The answer is there are some new business models which are currently used, and they provide some antidotes for gender discrimination in addition to maximizing the profit. One of them is Conscious Capitalism. Sisodia (2011) claims that the concept of Conscious Capitalism not only consists of being virtuous. It makes a completely modern structure for its own existence by means of higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership, and conscious culture. In particular, the last factors refers to getting rid of the reward based system and creating the trustable, transparent, and caring environment. As was pointed out throughout this literature review, these are key points to preventing discrimination in the workplace.
The nature ethics has been argued since the ancient times. Business ethics, on the other hand, emerged after the industrial revolution. Moreover, in the light of increasingly gender integrated workforce, we may evaluate gender discrimination as a whole distinct part. So, there are still many questions left unanswered. Nevertheless, this literature review has aimed to reveal women discrimination, and its possible reasons and solutions. Consequently, although It is clear that there is encouraging progress for gender discrimination, there is still much progress to be made.
References
Beemer, J.M. (2017). Business Owners Must Take Steps Now to Prevent Discrimination in the Workplace. Workforce Solution Review, 8(2) 25–26.
Carlson, D. (2009) What Men Think They Know About Executive Women. Harvard Business Review, 84(9), 28–28.
Duska, R. (2013). Why Good People Do Bad Things: Applications to Financial Advisors — The “WIZARD”, Journal of Financial Service, 71(1), 25–28.
Meinert, D. (2014). Creating an Ethical Culture. HR Magazine, 59(4), 22–27.
Women in the Workplace a Research Roundup. (2013). Harvard Business Review. 91(9), 86–89
Pastin, M., Harrison, J. (2001). Social Responsibility in the Hollow Corporation. Business and Society Review, (63), 54.
De Jager, P. (2002). Ethics: Good, Evil, and Moral Duty. The Information Management Journal, 36(5), 82.
Sisodia, R. (2011). Conscious Capitalism: A Better Way to Win. California Management Review, 53(3), 98–109.
