Business Ethics

Business Ethics
Gender Discrimination
The evolving role of women in the workplace is not readily accepted in society. Despite the illegality of gender discrimination, women are being discriminated against in hiring practices, advancement opportunities, and income in the workplace.
In the case study given to us, we were asked to suggest best possible ways to control or eliminate gender discrimination.
To begin with we started to root causes of discrimination, most commonly known to us. One of them is stereotyping a human being by its race, gender or sexual orientation. Stereotypes are generalizations or assumptions that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group, based on an image (often wrong) about what people in that group are like.
Women have evolved by leaps and bounds in the workplace but a troubling trend is still blaringly obvious in the workplace. Women are still judged by their appearance in the workplace rather than by their merits alone. While we may think we have come a long way since the oppression of women in the workplace in the 50’s and 60’s…that might not be entirely true. This trend doesn’t only affect women though women are judged more harshly based upon personal appearance. Men are also judged based upon their looks with more attractive men and women generally earning more than less attractive employees with the same responsibilities. Physical appearance plays a very important role in life and in some ways is discriminatory to both men and women.
Such an act can affect an employee and organization in several ways but to name a few
Lost Productivity
Victims of gender discrimination lose motivation and morale necessary to perform their jobs effectively. Things that may lead to this loss of morale and motivation could include jokes about an employee’s gender that imply inferiority, offensive jokes of a suggestive or sexual nature and jokes implying that an employee’s work is sub-par due to his or her gender. Federal law prohibits this type of workplace harassment, whether by superiors or coworkers.
Promotions
Stereotypical views regarding gender can cause supervisors to engage in the illegal practice of passing a person over for promotion due to gender. While this can happen to both genders, supervisors most often pass over women for promotion due to preconceived notions about their roles and abilities.

Family Responsibilities
Women who have young children at home may experience push-back when interviewing due to family responsibilities. Although law prohibits a prospective employer from asking about family responsibility outright, it often comes out during the interview process anyway. This may provoke the hiring manager to pass over a qualified female candidate if he feels she will be torn between her home and job responsibilities. If the woman makes it into the position, her supervisor can view her employee file to see that she has young children signed up on insurance or other benefits. He then may choose to give her less responsibility or assign menial tasks to her that do not fit her job description. Although illegal, this practice still exists in offices today.
Destruction
Those discriminated against may feel such strong resentment and loss of self-worth that they resort to destruction as a way to get back at the discriminatory employer or coworkers. Destructiveness may manifest itself as physical violence against others, destruction of property or propagation of malicious rumors about people in the company and the company itself.
Way to go forward and tackle gender discrimination at workplace:
Workplace discrimination is a reality for thousands of workers every year and not only can the effects on employees be both mentally and physically devastating but it also bring a halt in targeted employees’ career advancement, increase their health issues, slow their productivity level and lower their self-esteem.
Hence to avoid such unethical practices to take place in my company, I would reiterate the law of the country and issue a memo stating company’s policy regarding code of conduct of employees. Such a memo will highlight to respect colleagues irrespective of their race, gender, class or religion and if anyone’s conduct is reported to be in breach of such policy or country’s law, there will be strict disciplinary action taken. Harassment towards colleagues or team members is considered as gross misconduct and will result in dismissal of their employment. A signed copy of such a document would be placed in employee’s file.
Furthermore, I would bring diversity in the department and try to eliminate the cause of such discriminating sparks. Instead of moving my female new joiner to another department where she feels more comfortable; I would rather move few of my male employees within the company and hire more female employees to bring in a good gender balance within the team.