Gender Inequality In Business

Gender equality is one of the most critical issues discussed in education, health, and business. In addition, gender equality in a country can affect the economy and development of society, reported from the global gender gap report of the 2020 world economic forum. In this report, it is also said that North America will not be able to see gender equality for 151 years.

Gender inequality is indeed a big influence and power in the world. This is evidenced by the fact that reducing the gender gap can add between $12 and $28 trillion in global GDP, according to McKinsey & Company’s Global Institute report.

In some phenomena of organizational practice, organizational structures can be judged whether they reflect gender equality. Some human resource practices (i.e., policies, decision-making, and their enforcement) are critical to gender inequalities for women, such as recruitment, pay, promotion, and training. There are many stigmas towards women’s leadership. No matter how qualified or beyond qualified that woman, people are still skeptical. Written on a famous 2005 report, men and women are negotiating for higher pay. Even when they were negotiating the same way, men were seen as more confident than women.

“Eventually, there comes the point where you can’t just rally and explain away all the behavior as creepy exceptions or pin the blame on yourself … You see patterns, systemic problems, and it doesn’t matter where you are or what industry you pursue.” — Ellen Pao sued her former employer, the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for gender discrimination
An experiment was conducted in Boston, Massachusetts. To tackle the gender pay gap issue, 11 women got together and learned how to negotiate salaries through various platforms.

Every woman there earns 83 cents for every dollar paid to men, which is 4 cents higher than national statistics. Scientists also found that disparities exist in age groups, companies, and industries even when the opposite sex has the same level and position.

Boston provides free services in the form of a two-hour salary negotiation class for female workers. Their former mayor, Thomas Menino, promised Boston could achieve equal pay.

Boston’s mission is very positive. Achieving equal pay is an economic imperative. It’s not that women really can’t negotiate well. It’s just that they rarely do.
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Before achieving the economic benefits of gender equality, we should first learn about gender equality. Gender equality can be described as follow:
Equal pay: Company/organization should pay their employee based on their skill and capability, not by gender, race, etc.

Equal treatment: This is an essential thing but always forgotten. We still find many differences between how female workers are treated vs. men workers. For example, seniors sometimes think female workers are incapable of doing difficult work. They even sometimes don’t believe women should negotiate.

Equal position: Women in leadership. It’s time for us to see that women also can be leaders.

Equal opportunities to any training and career development: Companies should offer the same opportunities to men and women, such as mentoring programs, career progression programs, etc. ​

Equal benefits: Companies can give a benefit such as flexibility to work from home so both women and men can take care of their family when they have to. Companies can also provide PTO (Paid Time Off) so employees can use their free time according to their needs.

Companies can start to address gender equality by making equality one of the company’s goals. This can be built with a culture that makes equality a part of it, followed by honest and safe communication. For women workers, they must be more courageous if they are mistreated. This may be a difficult thing to do, but try to find coworkers who understand you or find a community that can help you defend your rights as a worker. Also, try to learn to negotiate, good time management, etc. This applies to everyone no matter what gender, race, or sexual orientation you are because it is time for us to overcome the gender gap and take advantage of the great potential.

Written by: Salsabiila Baharizky Naedi & Denny Adrian

References: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2020/03/27/why-gender-equality-matters-in-business-success/?sh=6565de42669c https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01400/full https://njoanna.medium.com/the-business-case-for-gender-equality-d8c21a5bbedd https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/13/boston-wants-to-teach-every-woman-in-the-city-to-negotiate-better-pay/