Sexism in the Workplace: Paper vs. Practice

Sexism in the Workplace: Paper vs. Practice

For years, women have fought for gender equality both in and out of the workplace. Many complaints from professional businesswomen include pay discrepancies between themselves and their male counterparts as well as other discriminatory practices that cheat them of important opportunities. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed a bill that required government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that… employees are treated without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Today, federal laws enforced by the U.S. Employment Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) supposedly ensure that women do not face gender discrimination in an office setting; unfortunately, while these laws seem effective on paper, the harsh reality is woven into complex social constructions that perpetuate gender bias.

When women first began to enter the workforce in the U.S., they were paid substantially less and worked through much harsher conditions than their male colleagues. What’s more, they were often subject to sexual harassment and other degenerative antics that led to decreased productivity and morale. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that both men and women be judged not by their gender, but by the quality of their work when employers consider wages. However, a 2008 study by the U.S. Department of Labor reported that women earned, on average, about 80 percent of what men of the same seniority and level of responsibility earn. It seems the problem has been fixed on paper but not in practice.

However, a similar study conducted in the same year (2008) by New York based firm Reach Advisors concluded that women aged 22 to 30 with no spouse or children earned higher median incomes than comparable men in 39 of the United States’ largest cities. The explanation may be found in that women are now earning more college degrees than men, which makes them more qualified (on average) than the average male applicant. It seems women feel a need to “compensate” for their gender by working harder than their male counterparts. A recent study in the Psychology of Women Quarterly stated that, when asking for a raise, women workers must “pay closer attention to their strategy than men.” So why do women feel like they need to work harder? Why is it that, despite anti-gender-discrimination laws, women are not given equal opportunities?

The answer is found in the numbers. A study done in February of last year by Catalyst, a research firm aiming to increase business opportunities for women, determined that women make up only 4 percent of the S&P’s 500 CEOs, 10 percent of big company CFOs, and that more than a third of public companies had no women as senior officers. In addition to the harmful pay gap, women are also more likely to be hired into low-paying work. According to the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, sixty percent of minimum wage workers are women as are two-thirds of part time workers.

When those in charge are primarily of one gender, it is difficult to see the other side. Furthermore, gender norms point these men of high positions of power to believe popular fallacies that restrict women’s progress in the workplace as well as decrease productivity. According to a 2012 Forbes article entitled “Masculine Norms in the Workplace Could be Holding Women Back,” the “unwritten rules of the office” tend to favor men. So what are these masculine norms?

First, subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) biases and unintentional stereotypes. For example, not asking a woman to relocate for better pay because she has children. Less subtle practices would include not distributing responsibilities equally because certain tasks are considered “men’s work.”

Next, as Sarah Kendzior points out in her article “Mothers are not opting out,” office culture often places an impossible amount of stress on balancing family life with work life, so many mothers who leave the workforce find it incredibly difficult to find a new job or earn similar pay to when they leave. Although this difficulty could be associated with frictional unemployment—that is, a mismatch of skills (it is less difficult to hire a young, trained applicant than bring up to speed someone who has not been working for several years)—I believe social norms and the demanding office setting make it more difficult for mothers to seek and maintain work.

Finally, Deborah Small, a professor of both marketing and psychology at Wharton, stated that women face more difficulty in initiating negotiations than men do. This lack of negotiation could also be a possible factor as to why women are held back in the work place.

So, while anti-discrimination laws serve to protect women on paper, practices within the workplace often prove to be much different as a result of social norms that stimulate gender bias. Small also points out that, in today’s society, “workplace norms are not just male norms; they are norms.” Identifying these norms and either working to conform to the beneficial ones or to combat problematic ones could be a potential solution. Understanding that gender discrimination still exists both in and out of an office setting is an important first step, and fighting to defy broader, negative gender norms could help with the inevitably gradual change of workplace norms.