The provost hosts an annual conference on diversity and gender equity, for which I was invited as the co-speaker with the vice provost and financial director. The main question for me was what kinds of research on gender equity has been translated into policy and what are the challenges and success. The following s a simple outline. I guess they have videoed my talk anyway. Gender equity in workplace I would like to open with one phrase: the personal is political. This is indeed the article title wrote by feminist Carol Hanisch in 1969 and has been a slogan among at least feminist groups. It is not to say that all personal choices women make are political, but to say that personal problems are political problems. For instance, childbearing is one of many women things. Studies have shown that childbearing often holds women back in their career development. While it is an individual choice, but collectively, it becomes a political problem entailing actions and efforts in the public domain. One more interesting finding is that in more egalitarian countries, women are doing less household errands than women in less egalitarian countries. It is not just couple’s choice, it more or less reflect social and cultural factors. Much has been undertaken over the past few decades in the workplace regarding gender equity and more broadly regarding diversity. 1: there is consensus that institutional factors are responsible for gender inequity. Women are unhappy or not faring well in their careers, not because they are genetically problematic, hysterical or stupid. People come to recognize that institutional factors are to be blamed, not women as a group. For instance, Studies show that sex has impact on who gets the job. Experiments show that with the same credentials (same gradation GPAs, same professional certificates etc) but with different names, the chances of landing a job is significantly different. Women are more likely to be hired in women dominant positions and men are more likely to have offers from male-dominant positions. Unfortunately, those high-paid jobs are often perceived as male-dominant positions, therefore women often have tremendously hard time to step their feet into certain positions Nature published a article titles as nepotism and sexism in peer review. Again with the same CVs, but different names, say one is Julie and the other is Matthew, the results are shocking that women scientists receive consistently lower scores than male scientists, even though both are hypothetical figures. 2. More specifically, what kinds of practices and policies that institutions have been engaged: A. structural commitment: one of most effective policy instruments to promote gender equity is to develop structural commitment, which often refers to women offices, affirmative action offices, chief diversity offers, and offices dealing with inequity grievance, sexual harassment etc. Most of these agencies have been developed within the past two or three decades. You may take them for granted or even feel indifferent, but they represent progress toward gender equity. B. family friendly policies are adopted and wide spread across organizations. For instance, Family and medical leave act in 1993 provides job protected and unpaid leave for qualifying medical and family reasons. United states is possibly the only one among all industrialized countries that do not offer entitlement leave for new parents. But things are changeing. The California became the first state to pass a paid family and medical leave law, providing six weeks of paid leave for new parents. institutions often provide care assistance, leave bank, spousal hiring and even child care facilities to create a level playing field for women. These are often packed in employee benefit plans. Studies do show that family friendly policies increase organizational attractiveness to professional employees C. Diversity management. institutions are now offering a great deal of diversity and equity training, mentoring programs, professional development programs, which target to reduce the isolation and marginal status of women professionals. 3. More needs to be done Unfortunately, while institutional efforts are important and make substantial progress, the commitment needs to be further strengthened as you can see now we still have a wide gender gap. This year’s data show that women earn 77 cents of a dollar earned by men. Women are not in par with men in career opportunities, particularly senior, high paid positions. The shift, however, is seen from addressing overt form of discrimination to nuanced behavior and environmental factors A. subtle discrimination, while often occurred by individuals toward individuals, proves no less detrimental to women, further demoting women’s chances to be truly equal. For instance, some people hold dear the belief that women are vulnerable and needs more protection. Scholars often call it benevolent sexism, which proves equally harmful to women’s career B. some taken-for-granted process or culture may hurt women than people even might think of. Interaction among people often automatically sex-categorize others, and use gender stereotypes to make decisions. For instance, male with children are often perceived as a symbol of high responsibility, while women with kids are often perceived as irresponsible as women have to take care of them. c. Also consistent pattern has been found that positions occupied by women leaders are often undervalued. You may not be surprised to know that some female leaders are so bossy, so pushy and so this and so that.
标签: WorkPlace经管大学堂：名校名师名课
京公网安备 11010802022788号
论坛法律顾问：王进律师
知识产权保护声明
免责及隐私声明
