Gendered Work Conditions in India: Experiences and Lessons

Researchers Stier and Yaish (2014) have stated, “men’s employment is more stable, their salaries are higher and they have more opportunities for advancement and access to lucrative jobs” (p. 1). Indeed, men have more advantages in the society to gain power than women. Therefore, men are still dominating over women in occupations. Furthermore, “women are denied access to good and rewarding labor market positions by employers and because of their inferior power position in society their work is devalued and they are often ‘pushed’

In Everyday injustices for working women: The slights add up website, even though today women have the freedom of association and press, men are feeling less powerful than women at work. When women present problems are an issue at work, they are seen weak and not a strong person who wants to find solutions to the conflict. Although, when men present their problems, they are seen strong, uptight person who is able to take charge to find a solution not like the women. Unfortunately, women are not accredited for their hard

Women are burdened with many obstacles to achieve equality in the work place. In the corporate and

This article brings the topic of discrimination to light especially for women. The unfair treatment that women face every day in the workplace is one of the crippling factors to our society. In the workplace

“Frailty, thy name is woman.”(Hamlet) is a statement that Shakespeare must have made in a weak moment. However, since Shakespeare’s times, people have slowly begun to understand the importance of the role of women in society. During World War I, women entered the work force due to the shortage of men. Ever since this phenomenon, there has been a significant change in the number of women in the work force. However, this does not discount the fact that women are still subject to gender discrimination, lower salaries, and lack of respect in the professional industry. Improvements to the equality system have been made, but the problem is far from being fixed. Though the number of women joining the work force is increasing, the level equality between the two genders in the workplace seems to be far from perfect in many different ways. There are many different reasons as to why inequality exists in spite of an equal ratio of women to men in today’s work force,

Mohandas K. Gandhi once proclaimed, “There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men” (Gandhi n.p.). Women all throughout the world have been forced to endure innumerable hardships and struggles. Merely accepting women as a rightful component of society and a necessary aspect of culture has taken countless numbers of years. And to this day, unfortunately, gender equality has yet to become a reality for many. Certain judgments and stereotypes have been placed onto women from the very beginning of time. The belief that the female gender should only be seen in society as homemakers is something that is widely accepted by people in a multitude of countries and places. Despite the setbacks, various

Since the mid 1800’s women have been fighting for equality and while many issues have been accomplished it seems that women still have a long and difficult battle before them especially in the workplace. Today, women still face difficulties in the workplace and many times a woman must be leery about how she approaches the situation, if she approaches it at all. For most women in the workplace are at risk of losing their employment when confronting such issues. In this time of age, women face the issues of gender bias, sexual harassment, limited career advancement, equal pay, and much more. On a more personal note, I also, have been battling my rights to equal pay compared to another male co-worker. Therefore, this paper will focus the issue women face

In Provoked and “The Disappearance” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, they describe how the Indian women leave their native country and immigrate to Western countries due to the arranged marriage that they have no rights to choose. Although the Indian women try to learn and integrate into Western culture, their husbands expect them to be a traditional Indian woman who should stay home and take care of the children, certainly isolated from mainstream society. If the Indian women try to rebel or challenge their husband’s authority, they are subject to their husband’s abuse in the fact of their machismo culture. This is because men try to retain their authority in the household as well as their status in the house. Men sometimes needed to take a step back and make a concession toward women by learning to respect women’s choice. This is because everyone has a different cultural background that shapes how one behaves and acts in the society based on his or her social group. If men offer freedom to their women, they will be able to retain their authority in the household.

ways. Glass ceiling, gender inequality and gender discrimination are issues females are forced to encounter through different facets of life, even though it became a crime to do that in 1964. The use of education is one way to teach individuals what behavior should look like. In the advancement of most females career most are aware that education is one of the tools that can be used to address this issue, unfortunately the corporate world has yet to learn that females are equal to males on all levels. Dedication, commitment and practicing the corporation’s policy is one way to negate discrimination of any kind in the labor field.

In India, regionalism, class, and communalism had become the fuel of politics. In such a diverse yet democratic country all aspects of economic development were enormously contentious. This can be seen from a glance at two central issues in development, birth control and women’s rights. Women’s right was also caught up in the maelstrom of Indian politics. There has a proliferation of women’s groups encourage by the UN Decade of Women in 1970s, which suggested that the status of women had actually declined since independence. One success of the activists was a campaign against “dowry murders”, which is killing young wives in domestic fires started by their in-laws for financial gain. 1

Women have experienced a historic situation of inequality in the social as well as professional aspects. Women were normally the ones that would take care of children, do the chores in the house, and in rural areas; they would work in the field with the rest of the family. However, today’s women have become more self-sufficient and independent from the predominant male figure within every historical family. Gender inequality in the workplace is becoming less common; yet, gender is a factor that affects men and women. Especially women have been subjected to a historical discrimination that has influenced society to decide which job is more suitable for women than men. However women have confronted and tried to break down the barriers that

They face organizational and supervisor biases that hinder their performance. These biases have been termed as the glass ceiling effect” (Lenka, U., Sahoo, D, K, 2016). In this case the social barriers are the men in power who are preventing the ambitious women employees from positions of power. They do so by preventing the women employees the opportunity of advancement to management positions or salary increases based on their gender or sex (Grotti, R., Scherer, S, Sept. 2016., Javdani, M, 2015). This ceiling acts as an invisible wall that is stopping women to be able to pass a certain point. In order to combat this I think we need to demand that the best employee gets the advancement, not just the man, in each situation. We also need to put women on a equal playing field by providing women with the same rate of pay as the men. Without this change this is further reinforcing the gender wage gap; by allowing the men in power to give more money and power to those who will continue this vicious cycle and by doing so is not only forcing women workers to been seen as inferior or the lesser sex in traditional work, but is also plaguing women with discrimination in the workplace as temporary workers or seen as domestic caregivers first and workers second.

Believe it or not women have had rights in the work force for over two hundred years. Women should be treated as equals with men in the work place, but that is not always the case. Companies need to be careful with gender issues; they could lead to law suits and cost millions of dollars. People whether it is men or women should be hired, promoted, or given raises based on their experience not their gender. Dealing with gender issues in the work place can create many problems that can be solved by treating all employees equally.

Women are shown to be highly “idealized” throughout Indian culture (Leonard). This statement exemplifies that they are an important aspect to Indian society because of everything that they put into their everyday life. It is absurd that women can be valued, yet treated so poorly by their own families. At the spiritual level she is found to be coequal meaning she is honored and viewed as a goddess (V. Bauer and J. Bauer). Consequently, in Indian culture women are not allowed to do anything on their own. A woman is only allowed to visit her natal home as a guest and under any circumstance; she will never be allowed to move into her natal home again. Some women are not even allowed to go to the market or socialize with their friends because their husbands say no and the women are forced to act as the husband commands. In any other society, if women were highly valued she would be able to do anything she wants and run her own life.

There have been innumerable debates about gender in (Banerjee 2012) Punjab over last 60 years. Most of them were about women’s positions in society, their education, health, economic status, gender equality. What we can conclude from these discussions is that how women have always held a certain contradictory position in our developing country in past years. In recent years women held a very less respectful position . they were not treated as human.On other hand, Punjab has an increased percentage of literacy among women . now women are allowed to enter into professional fields now. However, in the 1950s my grandmother tells women were just made to do household chores. They were not allowed to get higher education or even go out without the permission of parents. They were supposed to be at home . while on the other hand the practices of female foeticide, poor health conditions and lack of education persisting still continue. Even the supportive ideology of the home being women’s real domain and marriage being her ultimate destiny has not changed much in last 60 years.