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1. Outline and explain how gender can affect paid work and the workplace environment. Give examples....

1. Outline and explain how gender can affect paid work and the workplace environment. Give examples.

2. Family dynamics have changed drastically in the late 20thand early 21st centuries. Identify and outline these differences and the various components. Give examples.

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1. Outline and explain how gender can affect paid work and the workplace environment. Give examples.

What is gender inequality?

A company that practises gender equality treats men and women the same.

This has many implications that your business can easily overlook due to, for example, a longstanding company culture, personal attitudes, or confusion about current laws.

But your business should understand that men and women must receive equal treatment. This includes:

  • Equal pay and benefits for comparable roles.
  • Equal consideration of needs.
  • Equal opportunities for progression and promotion.

Employees shouldn’t face any sort of discrimination because they are male or female, or are undergoing gender reassignment.

Promoting gender equality at work

Gender inequality in the workplace might include hiring or training only one gender for a particular role (perhaps because it’s seen as ‘men’s work’ or ‘women’s work’).

Female employees may also worry about treatment during pregnancy or motherhood, or being sexually harassed.

To help foster gender equality, you could:

  • Give training to raise awareness and promote fair behaviours.
  • Provide childcare facilities, family-friendly policies and childcare vouchers.
  • Shine a spotlight on successful women in your company, both internally and through media channels — and ask senior women to act as mentors.
  • Establish policies for fair pay and work/life balance, and ensure managers fully support them.

Facts about gender inequality in the workplace are clear. To this day, the statistics make for uncomfortable reading. A poll by Young Women’s Trust in 2018 found:

  • 23% of women at work have faced sexual harassment.
  • Only 8% of them have reported it.
  • 43% of mothers faced maternity discrimination.
  • 52% of women face mental health issues at work, compared to 42% of men.

Such a difference indicates there are still issues of inequality at work, which the government has stepped in to address in recent years.

Gender pay gap reporting

The fight for equal pay is a prominent gender equality issue. New laws ensure the gap between men’s and women’s pay is smaller than ever.

As an employer, you must ensure men and women receive equal pay for work that’s equivalent in terms of skill, effort, or level of responsibility.

Your employees can lawfully request a discussion or comparison to establish whether they are being paid fairly under the Equality Act 2010.

This includes clear information about pay structure, how you calculate bonuses and overtime, and access to pensions.

Gender inequality examples

For clarity on the above, you can refer to the below instances for reference on how wide a topic this can be.

  • Unequal pay: As we mention above in gender pay reporting, this is one of the most pressing examples of sexism in the workplace. You now must follow government guidelines regarding this matter.
  • Unfavourable recruitment strategy: This can include questions about whether a female candidate intends to have children, or suggesting in your job spec that the role is more for men.
  • Different opportunities: If your business has career progression opportunities that favour men over women.
  • Redundancies: Terminating a female employee for making a claim of unequal treatment at work.
  • Bias: Showing preferential treatment towards male colleagues over female ones, such as in promotions or day-to-day conversation.
  • Sexual harassment: An act of gross misconduct, this behaviour towards men or women can have serious consequences.
  • Holding sexist views: Promoting outdated views about men or women, such as outdated gender stereotypes.

Types of gender inequality can vary dramatically between men and women.

So it’s important to stay vigilant have clear policies on how you expect your employees to behave in around your working environment.

How to promote gender equality in the workplace

Why is gender equality important in the workplace? As well as promoting a fair working environment, it also ensures overall business productivity is as high as possible.

In turn, this ensures the national economy can grow naturally. There are no unfair barriers in place restricting progress.

With this in mind, how can you go about ensuring there’s a policy of gender equality across your business? While this relates to women’s inequality in the workplace, don’t forget that you must also respect your male employees.

But you can use tactics such as the ones below to reconsider your business stance:

  • Evaluate your job specifications to see if you have barriers in place that stop women from reaching roles that are more senior.
  • Be transparent about your pay. If you’re a small or medium business with less than 250 employees, be open about wages to ensure women aren’t receiving less for the same roles as men.
  • Promote a better work-life balance for both genders.
  • Offer training and mentors to everyone within your business.
  • Ensure that you have an anti-harassment policy in place to stop it from occurring in your business entirely.

2. Family dynamics have changed drastically in the late 20thand early 21st centuries. Identify and outline these differences and the various components. Give examples.

Family Dynamics

Family dynamics are the patterns of relating, or interactions, between family members. Each family system and its dynamics are unique, although there are some common patterns.

All families have some helpful and some unhelpful dynamics.

Even where there is little or no present contact with family, a young person will have been influenced by dynamics in earlier years. Family dynamics often have a strong influence on the way young people see themselves, others and the world, and influence their relationships, behaviours and their wellbeing.

An understanding of the impact of family dynamics on a young person's self-perception may help workers pinpoint and respond to the driving forces behind a young person's current needs.

What influences family dynamics?

Some of the many influences on family dynamics include:

  • nature of the parents' relationship
  • having a particularly soft or strict parent
  • number of children in the family
  • personalities of family members
  • an absent parent
  • the 'mix' of members who are living in the same household
  • events which have affected family members, such as an affair, divorce, trauma, death, unemployment, homelessness
  • other issues such as family violence, abuse, alcohol or other drug use, mental health difficulties, other disability
  • family values, culture and ethnicity, including beliefs about gender roles, parenting practices, power or status of family members
  • nature of attachments in family (ie secure, insecure)
  • dynamics of previous generations (parents and grandparents families)
  • broader systems- social, economic, political including poverty
  • level and type of influence from extended family or others
  • a chronically sick or disabled child within the family

Recent Changes in Family Structure

1) The Decline of the Traditional Family

One parent households, cohabitation, same sex families, and voluntary childless couples are increasingly common.

  • One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-parent families.
  • Cohabitation is an intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without the benefit of legal, cultural, or religious sanction.
  • While homosexuality has existed for thousands of years among human beings, formal marriages between homosexual partners is a relatively recent phenomenon.
  • Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children.
  • cohabitation: An emotionally and physically intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without legal or religious sanction.
  • Voluntary Childlessness: Women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children.

2) Change in Marriage Rate

Over the past three decades, marriage rates in the United States have increased for all racial and ethnic groups.

  • Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people, called spouses, that creates kinship.
  • Marriage laws have changed over the course of United States history, including the removal of bans on interracial marriage.
  • Of all racial categories considered by the U.S. Census, African-Americans have married the least.
  • Of all racial categories considered by the U.S. Census, Hispanics have married the most.
  • The average family income for married households is higher than the average family income of unmarried households. However, marriage rates have increased for poverty -stricken populations as well.
  • wedding: Marriage ceremony; a ritual officially celebrating the beginning of a marriage.
  • Marriage Laws: The legal requirements that determine the validity of a marriage.

3) Unmarried Mothers

With the rise of single-parent households, unmarried mothers have become more common in the United States.

  • One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-parent household.
  • The expectation of single mothers as primary caregiver is a part of traditional parenting trends between mothers and fathers.
  • In the United States, 27% of single mothers live below the poverty line, as they lack the financial resources to support their children when the birth father is unresponsive.
  • nuclear family: a family unit consisting of at most a father, mother and dependent children.
  • Primary Caregiver: The person who takes primary responsibility for someone who cannot care fully for themselves.

4) The “Sandwich Generation” and Elder Care

Elderly care is the fulfillment of the special needs and requirements that are unique to senior citizens.

  • The Sandwich generation is a generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children.
  • Elderly care encompasses such services as assisted living, adult day care, long-term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and in-home care, as well as less formalized caretaking, such as by an elder’s grown child.
  • Given the choice, most elders would prefer to continue to live in their own homes rather than move to an elder home or caretaking facility.
  • Respite care allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care. Without this help, the elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility.
  • sandwich generation: The generation of persons who are the children of baby boomers, whose lifestyle is governed by the fact that they must simultaneously care for the needs of their children and their own elderly parents.
  • Respite Care: Temporary care that allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care, for without this help the elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility.

5) Childless Couples

Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children.

  • To accomplish the goal of remaining childfree, some individuals undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their children for adoption.
  • The factors involved in voluntary childlessness include age, income, unmarried status, and higher education.
  • Most societies place a high value on parenthood in adult life, so that people who remain childless intentionally are sometimes stereotyped as being “individualistic” people who avoid social responsibility and are less prepared to commit themselves to helping others.
  • Childfree: Childfree (sometimes spelled child-free), also known as voluntary childlessness, is a form of childlessness. Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children.
  • sterilization: A procedure to permanently prevent an organism from reproducing.

6) Change in Household Size

Household models include the single family and blended family home, shared housing, and group homes for people with special needs.

  • A shared house is a household in which a group of usually unrelated people reside together.
  • A group home is a private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities or special needs. This type of home usually has a maximum of six residents and a trained caregiver available 24 hours a day.
  • A boarding house is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years.
  • People who live together in a shared house are called roommates.
  • A single room occupancy is a single room dwelling or a multiple-tenant building that houses one or two people in individual rooms.
  • Single Room Occupancy: A multiple-tenant building that houses one or two people in individual rooms (or to the single room dwelling itself).
  • roommate: A person with whom one shares an apartment or house (UK: flatmate or housemate).
  • Group Home: A private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities. Typically there are no more than six residents and there is a trained caregiver there twenty-four hours a day.

7) Women in the Labor Force

Women in the workforce have faced barriers, though they have greater access to education and employment in the contemporary era.

  • Women have participated in the workforce for as long as men have, yet women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce.
  • Historically, women’s lack of access to higher education effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations.
  • Access to higher education remains a significant barrier to women’s full participation in the workforce in developing countries.
  • The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings.
  • The feminization of the workplace is a label given to the trend towards greater employment of women and of men willing and able to operate with these more ‘feminine’ modes of interaction.
  • Wage Gap: The difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings.
  • occupation: A regular activity performed in exchange for payment, including jobs and professions.
  • Feminization of the Workplace: A label given to the trend towards greater employment of women and of men willing and able to operate with these more ‘feminine’ modes of interaction.

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