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.