Sociology

Work basically is a social phenomenon. Whether its about dealing with bosses, subordinates, other workers or customers, work is in other words done in relation to other people. In addition, work is a crucial and significant part of contemporary life, and is intimately tied to other aspects of our lives, and these other aspects affect our own experiences at the workplace, just as our work affects them. Have you ever hated a job, been inspired by an innovative manager, wondered why nurses always seem to be women or shopped online If so, the organization of work has affected your life.

       Most of the people who work spend 60 per cent of their time at their workplace and they are constantly interacting with their colleagues. So definitely the workplace has a deep impact on a persons psyche. However, the impact of it may be a positive one or a negative one. The sociologists view the employees as one segment or part of a society irrespective of what industry they belong to. It has a minimal bearing on the whole study of it. Employees being the part of the society have to face various problems in their day to day life. So a sociologist just studies the aspects related to the working life and not how the individuals personal life is affecting their work.

        Some of the common problems which are affecting the workplace are the sex discrimination, dominance, sexual harassment, age discrimination, racial discrimination, cultural discrimination and religious discrimination. These are all considered as the sociological factors affecting a persons work life. Many of the discriminating behaviors are legally damned and no one can apply it under any types of circumstances. Sociologists play the part of determining the source of these problems and finds solutions to these problems. Also, there are after effects of these problems and those are under performance, stress, anxiety, and depression. These after effects can cause people to take extreme steps. A sociologist studies all the behavioral aspects and their findings are extremely important for psychiatrists who deal with workplace issues.

Workplace issues
Gender discrimination
       Sexism in education is clearly associated with sexism in the workplace. When the women are expected to stay at home they are then unable to access the necessary educational resources to compete with the men in the job market. If by any chance they are able to secure a position, women may be less prepared educationally for the task, and thus draw lower wages.

   In the recent decades more women have entered the United States workforce. After the world wars two about 30 percent of women were employed outside the home, today at the start of the 21st century, the figure is well over 50 per cent (Crosby, 2007). Even yet the women are not treated equally on the job. Typically, they hold lower-paying, lower status jobs than men. Women though receive only 25 percent of the upper level positions in large corporations. Half of the employees in the prestigious United States firms are women perhaps only around 5 per cent of them hold senior positions.

        The glass ceiling effect has also been considered a possible contributor to the gender wage gap or the income disparity. This effect basically suggests that the gender provides a significant disadvantage towards the top of job hierarchies which becomes worse as a persons career goes on. The term glass ceiling implies that invisible or artificial barriers exist which prevent women from advancing within their jobs or receiving promotions. These barriers exist in spite of the achievements or qualifications of the women and still exist when other characteristics that are job relevant such as experience, education and abilities are controlled for. The inequality effects of the glass ceiling are more prevalent within higher-powered or higher income occupations, with fewer numbers of females holding these types of occupations. The glass ceiling effect also indicates the fewer chances of women for income raises and promotion or any kind of advancements to more prestigious positions or jobs. As the women gender are prevented by these artificial barriers from receiving job promotions or income raises, the glass ceiling effects increases over the course of a womans career.

       Statistical discrimination is also cited as a source of income disparities and gendered inequality in the workforce. Statistical discrimination is also cited as a cause for the income disparities in the workplace. Statistical discrimination indicates the likelihood of the employers to deny the access of women to the certain occupational fields or tracks because women are more likely than men to leave their jobs when they become pregnant or get married. Women are in other cases given the positions that dead-end or jobs that have very little mobility involved.

       Women in general are under represented in the higher status, higher paying occupations, such as university teaching, medicine, engineering and law. In contrast in lower paying jobs or occupations they are over represented such as public school teaching, secretarial work and nursing. In the stereotypical female jobs, referred to as women ghettos, women are subordinate to the positions of men. For example, the executives supervise secretaries who are likely to be females, and lawyers supervise paralegals, who are likely to be women.

       The transformation of both the genders work roles stand about in the technological, economic, cultural and social changes in the last half of the twentieth century. In the year 1950 just a small number of women worked outside their homes, but in 2000 nearly three quarters of it works outside. In the year 1950 the women were only employed in jobs such as the female oriented ones but by 2000 they were spread in across nearly the entire spectrum of occupations. The female gender thus started earning 59 cents for every dollar earned by men and 73 cents in the 2000s. Despite this progress the inequality still remains, as even in 2000 men were still more likely to get better jobs and to be paid better wages for those jobs.

       Wage discrimination is the discrepancy of the wages between the two groups due to a bias towards or against a specific trait with all other characteristics of both the groups being equivalent. In the cases of gender discrimination, wage discrimination exists between the male and female gender. Historically, gender inequality has favored men relative to similarly qualified women. The gendered income disparity can also be attributed in part to that of occupational segregation, where the groups of people are distributed across occupations according to the different characteristics in this case which is gender. Occupational sex segregation can be explained to be containing two components, horizontal and vertical segregation. With the horizontal segregation, the occupational segregation occurs as to where the men and women are thought of as to possess different physical, mental and emotional capabilities. These different capabilities make the genders vary in the types of jobs they are best suited for. With the vertical segregation, occupational sex segregation occurs as the occupations are stratified according to the power, income, prestige and authority associated with the occupation and women excluded from holding such jobs.

         Women who are in the same jobs as men usually earn less, even then when women possess the same skills, knowledge and training. Women basically make only 60 per cent or less than men in comparable positions (Kramer, 2006). Why do these disparities occur Sociologists explain this by the fact that women often must take time off to have and raise children interrupts their career path. As much as even Americans hate to admit this. Women in the United States still bear the primary responsibilities of child rearing. Conflicting demands may partly explain the phenomenon why married women with kids are more likely to leave their jobs than women who are single or without any children. Also the fact that men are believed to be the bread winners so the belief is that they should be the one to be paid more as compared to women and also men need to support their families too. Whatever is the reason for all this, paying women less than men is clearly discrimination.

How gender discrimination is affecting the workplace
       Discrimination in the workplace negatively affects businesses. A business basically self limits itself by neglecting or restricting advancement to the certain groups or types of employees. Employees are more likely to be looking for new jobs when they feel they are being treated wrong.

       The most evident effect of the gender discrimination issue in the workplace reflects in the performance of the company. An organization where the gender discrimination is widespread, compromises on the quality of the work of its employees. Surely the affected individuals cannot work under such stressful conditions. For those people whose rights havent been violated may also get very demoralized on witnessing the companys lack of concern to gender discrimination. Moreover, as the negative image of the companys discriminatory policies spread, its relationships with the present and potential clients may also be troubled. This is due to the fact that discrimination on the part of an employer is a sign of unhealthy business ethics as well as relationships. Also the gender discrimination may result in poor withholding and the company may loose potential employees due to its negative image. The effects of the discrimination are mainly two parts. Firstly, discrimination directly deals to the unemployment rate which increases with discrimination. Some companies with sex discrimination do not employ women as their staff, so these women loose their jobs opportunities. Secondly, discrimination results in work efficiency decline. If the company discriminates women, they dont have any female employees, this company then would loose work balance because women are more patiently and carefully, which is a mans weakness.

Dealing with Gender Discrimination
          Gender discrimination is a great problem. The government should constitute laws to avoid it. And the society should also set up some organizations or communities to help the victims of it.

          In order to reduce the level of gender discrimination in the workplace the employers should stop playing any favorites. If you offer certain benefits to the employees, make sure that these perks are available to everyone. For instance, if you want to provide a special flexible work arrangement for your senior older workers, avoid appearing discriminatory by being sure to offer this option to everyone. There is a need to create and post an antidiscrimination policy. Keep in mind that no anti discrimination policy will be taken seriously unless concrete actions are taken against the wrong doers. After youve assessed the situation and consulted a lawyer, think about how youre going to proceed. If you discover some kind of discrimination taking place, decide if you would want to start with a warning on counseling, or formally terminate the accused.

The EPA (Equal Pay Act) prohibits the discrimination on the basis of sex in the payment of wages or benefits, where the men and women perform work demanding similar skills, effort, knowledge and responsibility for the same employer under similar conditions. In this Act the employers may not reduce wages of either sex to equalize the pay between men and women. A violation of the EPA may occur where a different wage wasis paid to a person who worked in the same job before or after an employee of the opposite gender sex. A violation of the act may also occur where a labor union causes the employer to violate the law.

          In order to prevent gender discrimination in the workplace more and more employers are adopting a policy which is the zero tolerance policy towards all acts of discrimination. This consists of an official written policy against the discrimination that is written and circulated to all employees, as well as the training and education courses for all managers. In addition, the companies have to show that they are really serious about implementing and enforcing the new policy by creating disciplinary standards for the violations of the policy created.

   Another step which can be taken by the employers is that to conduct a regular survey every time a point of discrimination is seen. If the company realizes that discrimination is taking place and the company is going to be held liable, it can ease the amount of punishment handed down if it conducts a thorough in house investigation that terminates in the appropriate action taken against the person who has committed the discrimination, up to the height of even dismissing that employee.

Benefits of overcoming gender discrimination in the workplace
         Lower or completely nonexistent gender discrimination in a company holds the advantages of a greater degree of employee loyalty towards the organization. Workers are motivated to work hard and perform their work more efficiently and effectively. The competition gradually would increase if stringent policies against gender discrimination would be taken into practice as no quality work of any employee would go unnoticed and appreciated which would lead to a greater and efficient work next time and would eventually lead to a greater competition within the employees, men and women. The company would also be deemed among those who engage in fair practice. Recruitment level increases and there is a lesser turnover in the company.

       The sociological approaches show us that although the causes of the gender discrimination are quite straight forward, the way these play out to create discriminatory effects in the workplace are complex and context-dependant. The sources of these discrimination lies in widely shared cultural beliefs about the gender that tells us what the typical thinking is about what is expected from a man and a woman. Particularly important for workplace discrimination are the beliefs about mens greater status, competence and each of the genders particular specialized skills that are embedded in these widely accepted gender stereotypes. So gender discrimination is unfair and should be abandoned by means of lawful acts or stringent policies so that the company does not have to bare the consequences of it and loose talented employees.