“Discrimination, Harassment, and the Glass Ceiling: Women Executives as Change Agents”
...al harassment and the glass ceiling. Overt discrimination is defined as the use of gender as a measure for employment-related decisions including behaviors such as refusing to hire women, paying them insufficiently or leading them to typical “women’s jobs” such as secretaries, nurses, and cashiers. Women in these positions are often under male supervision, which may in the end lead to sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is also a gendered problem often used to intimidate and prevent women from entering traditional male jobs with fear of being harassed by their male co-workers. The glass ceiling refers to an artificial barrier that prevents women from advancing in the workplace including gender stereotypes, insufficient experience opportunities and lack of top management commitment to reduce gender inequality. Thus, these forms of discrimination continue to place women at a disadvantage in today’s male dominated business world. Potential causes for gender inequality in the workplace Various factors contribute to behaviors of sexual harassment and gender inequality in the workplace. Such factors include supervisor tolerance of sexual harassment; awareness of harassing behaviors through gender differences and women executive’s experience with sexual harassment. For instance, research shows that the supervisor’s gender and behavior, influences the perception of organizational tolerance for sexual harassment. Women who work in male-dominated environments or have a male supervisor are more likely to experience sexual harassment. On the other hand, there exists a difference in how men and women perceive behaviors such as sexual joking and rude comments, where women are more likely to interpret such behaviors as harassment than are men. Furthermore, women in top-level positions feel that harassment results from men’s efforts to restrain advancement of women. Therefore, these factors encourage sexual harassment, which in turn originantes gender inequality in the workplace. Harassment prevention strategies In order to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, both male and female executives have to openly continue all efforts to restrain harassment in the workplace. Such efforts may include stricter prohibitions against harassment are directly related to fewer sexual harassment reports and many harassed women simply want the behavior to stop rather than getting some type of compensation from the complaint. Using concentrated organizational efforts to help reduce sex segregation (employing both ...