What Is Gender-Based Stereotyping Sabotage Women In The Workplace

This skewed representation has raised many alarms in outside circles on why the tech industry deals with such uniformity. In the show Silicon Valley this stereotype of women not being leaders is subtly perpetuated throughout the series. In episode one we are introduced to two companies that are competing against each other. The first company is Hooli incorporated which has a male CEO, looking closely in the boardroom the only gender represented is male, however the only females present in the office are the female secretaries. The same uniformity is present in the competing firm, male CEO, male president, male board members, and female secretary. Throughout the entire first season not one woman holds a position in leadership, and when we are introduced to a female character she usually holds a position working as an assistant to one of the male characters. Silicon Valley deals with the issue of not injecting women into higher power position, unfortunately many of these stereotypes are found in many industries around the world. The portrayal of women as being incapable of being good leaders leads to a male dominated managerial system. A study conducted by the Wall Street Journal finds that “Only ten percent of directors at Silicon Valley are women.” (Wells 2) this glass ceiling keeps women from reaching position that they are fully qualified for, just because they are perceived to be ineffective

Marie A. Chisholm-Burns states that “perhaps no sector has been more publicly scrutinized for its gender disparities than the corporate world” (312). While women tend to do most of the shopping for the household, they still lack the ability to voice their opinions about what can be done to improve consumption or shopping. USA Today recently wrote an article that was boldly named “Sexism in the Workplace is Worse Than You Thought” which talks about the gender bias women face in the workplace as they progress in their career (Chisholm-Burns 312). Since white males are considered superior in today’s society, diversity is hard to find in high-paying jobs. Because women face discrimination, many businesses struggle to reach their full potential. The glass ceiling is also very condescending and causes women to act negatively towards themselves. The discrimination in pay between men and women has caused many women to form anxiety or stress disorders, such as depression. It also causes women to not strive to be the best they can and because they struggle with this, the possibilities of having great women in leadership decreases even lower than it was originally. These low levels of female leaders also lack encouragement from good role models who would help them learn how to be a leader. If equality becomes a strong focus for corporations, then they should see a positive overall

In a news article done by USA Today, written by Nathan Bomey, the article shows that women in the top levels of corporate employment, referred to as the C-suite in the article, only an astonishing 19 percent are women. These are jobs like CEOs and Chief Financial Officers, which has men as a solid 81% of C-suite jobs. This means that women are largely misrepresented in these large corporate occupations. The reason men dominate these jobs may have to do with these men already being in these high positions. You often hear of these men focusing on promoting just men, instead of focusing on job qualification. Now, there are certain jobs that for biological or mentality reasons specific genders are more capable of performing more preferably in their lines of work, but I do not see how this applies to big business occupation. A way we can fix this is to promote women more often to make them better represented in large companies. This can prove to be rather difficult, as we don’t control companies, but if we work hard, men and women can be equally represented in

Interviewing is only a net positive for the employer and the one employee that is chosen for the job, and for every position, there will be plenty of people who aren't. When you go into an interview, you may be worried that it'll be the end of the world if you don't get it, when in fact, it's statistically almost certain you won't. That isn't to say you should give up entirely, but that you should take another mental approach to job searching. You're trying to sell yourself above the ranks of other prospective employees jockeying for the job, and chances are good that they're more qualified, or more trained, or just better workers than you are. If you let the spectre of that chance get

Women are becoming the main income provider, while the men are staying home with the children and it is making it so families are changing and men and women’s jobs in the home are combining to be not so gender specific. With more women working, this is making a difference and it is allowing the pay gap to narrow. This is not changing however, the amount of men vs. women in top management among corporations. Among G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States, United Kingdom (What are the G7 Coutries?, 2017)), roughly 4 out of 10 businesses have absolutely no women in their senior management positions. There was a 1% increase in 2016, but this is an overall number. Some countries have gone down in senior management roles held by women while others have increased (Medland, 2016). When it comes to population based on gender in the United States, males are slightly outnumbered.

One might be able to make a fleeting attempt at justifying the disparately of female representation in leadership roles if opportunities for each gender were equal or if the most qualified individuals got the jobs. When one examines the qualifications of women in the workforce however, this argument quickly loses its footing. Northouse (2013) points to the research fo Catalyst (2011) who demonstrated that, “Women earn 57% of the bachelor’s degrees, 60% of the master’s degrees, more than half of the doctorate degrees, and nearly half of the first professional degrees awarded in the United States” (as cited by Northouse, 2013, p.352). Clearly the qualifications of women are not the cause of why so few have reached the pinnacle roles in organizations. One must wonder then, what are the barriers that prevent women from achieving success.

Some companies have taken initiative in correcting this issue by implementing programs designed to help women advance in their field, one great example is Johnson & Johnson. The Women’s Leadership Initiative is a program designed by Smith College for female employees of Johnson & Johnson to teach them leadership skills that will help them succeed and gain higher positions at Johnson & Johnson. This program has been extremely successful in its goal, over 1,000 women who have completed the program are in management and executive positions. They have also more recently introduced something called the Executive Forum, a networking resource where top females in the company work on their own careers as well as sponsoring junior women and recently hired women. Because of the steps they’ve taken they’re considered one of the best companies for women to work at. Just under half of Johnson & Johnson employees are female and about 40% have senior

A psychologist by the name of Dr. Jessica L. Cundiff has contributed to numerous conference talks over gender stereotypes of women. In 2010, Dr. Jessica published a book on her research- based sex roles and the psychology of women. Based on Cundiff’s job history, one can conclude that she has engaged with woman. For example, the author named Theresa Vescio is a psychologist that focuses on researching on power, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and ageism. Therefore, the people that are allowed to speak is mostly females. The majority of Cundiff’s articles are concentrated on women’s issues, such as sexual harassment. For example, Cundiff’s Gender Stereotypes Influence How People Explain Gender Disparities in the Workplace illustrates how gender

“Since the 1980s, the number of women holding managerial and professional positions has doubled, but the number of women working in corporate officer positions at Fortune 500 companies is stagnant,

Over 50% of the work force is made out of women but women are usually under represented at every level in business corporation, but why is that? Stereotypes are part of culture and while men are seen as strong, independent and ambitious with strong achievement oriented traits women are seen as tender, understanding and most importantly as nurturers which leads to them being concerned with other.

Furthermore, Heilman (1983, as cited in Heilman, 2001) suggests “the lack of fit” model to describe women stereotypes in the workforce. This model explains about the expectation on person’s characteristic that fit in with job’s stereotypic requirement. Therefore, if the perceived attributes of the person are fit with the perceived attributes for the job, then the individual more likely to get the job. However, if the perceived characteristic of the individual not “fit” to the job, then the person will not get the job (Heilman, 1983, as cited in Heilman, 2001). Similarly, Gorman (2005) introduces role-incumbent schema. The schema is defined as the tendency to classify similar objects, people into a group and create an abstract mental representation

Even though numbers are slowly rising in the United States, there are still more men in executive positions than women. According to one survey, female workers only made up 43% of legislators, senior managers, and senior officials whereas male workers made up 57%. In congress, congresswomen make up only 17% of representation compared to congressmen making up 83% (Ferrante, 2011, p. 312). Gender stratification is one explanation for the tremendous gap. Ferrante (2011) describes gender stratification as the unequal distribution of opportunities and resources amongst male and female employees. (p. 311) For example, male workers have an increased opportunity to receive a promotion than a female worker. According to Tinsley (2013), women are more likely to receive executive positions when a company is doing well, rather than when a company is suffering. Some companies stereotype that women workers will leave the workforce soon to bear children, limiting their chances of achieving executive status (Ferrante, 2011, p. 316).

One of the primary challenges is that female employees in a number of our branch offices have informally complained that our organization has more men than women in management positions. We can describe this challenge is workforce diversity which means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation (Robbins & Judge, 2010). In this challenge, it is clearly that female employees less than men employees entering senior management. Despite significant investment in diversity programs female representation in top management remains stubbornly low over the last decade. ASX Top 200 Female CEOs 1.3-3.4% and Board directors 8.1-12.3%. ASX Top 500 Female CEOs 2.4% and Board Directors 9.2% (ABS, 2014). Studies have evidence that there is no significant difference (if any, must say) will affect the job performance between men and women. For example, men and women in problem solving, analytical aspects, the driving force of competition, motivation, social skills, learning ability did not show significant discrepancies. Although many psychological studies have found that women are more willing to comply with authority, and men are more aggressive than women

Going along with the last two previous paragraphs, this gives some evidence as to why most men hold the CEO positions and work in the corporate buildings. According to Leslie, it is said that it is a lot harder for women to be hired and promoted into high level positions. The inability to fully account for the gender gap is consistent with evidence that women face a number of disadvantages that produce gender differences in career success all else being equal, including stereotypes that women lack the qualities needed to succeed, and women’s limited access to powerful sponsors (Leslie). I find this statement kind of ignorant, because a woman does not lack the qualities needed to succeed, often times she is just not given the opportunity to prove that she has those skills. I think that men make great business owners and CEO’s, but I wish those careers were more diverse among men and women. I am not saying that women do not own their own businesses or hold high positions of a company, but getting more women involved in higher positions to make more money is something that the feminist foundation is working towards.

In recent years, studies have shown that gender role norms impacts people's behavioral traits regarding how they act, think and feel leading to stereotyping or gender discrimination in all areas of life especial at the workplaces. From an extremely young age, children are taught to follow a defined code of conduct. Furthermore, these codes are mostly in the form of “gender role norms.” Historically, religion had the greatest influence on such issues. Today and in the last couple of years, peers and the media have come up as two of the most powerful influences, especially here in the United States (Eagly, 2013).