User:Jxstine/Feminisation of the workplace

Article body
Labor market

Women face discrimination in the workplace, such as the “glass ceiling,” although female participation in the labor market has increased markedly during the past twenty years. However, even with increased participation in the labor force and the high levels of commitment that women give to their workplace, women's work is still undervalued. Additionally, many times a woman's work schedule is structured in such a way that it conflicts with her care-giving responsibilities. The women who are also union members at work feel “side-lined” and “downgraded” about the workplace issues that they face that are apart from the union's agenda. However, high levels of unionization strongly correlate with a lower wage gap as well as a lower gender gap. One way in which people have tried to help working women is through legislation. In late 2003, Norway passed a law that advocated for forty percent of representation of gender public board companies. The main objective for this was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the top sector and decrease gender disparity. The result, however, had very little impact on women in business, especially those who made it into corporate sectors.

The "Glass ceiling" has proven to prevent women from attaining higher levels of professional success. The development of the glass ceiling has influenced gender discrepancies within the labor market. The development of the phenomenon is affected by several factors, such as gender roles, gender bias, and sexual harassment. In addition to outmoded institutional structures, conscious and unconscious biases play a substantial role in hindering the promotion of women within the labor force. Additionally, the difficulty of achieving senior and executive level positions is due to the practice of utilizing "male" characteristics as the standard expectation when assessing, hiring, and promoting women workers. Despite the phenomenon, women have proven to be beneficial in business leadership. Researches have found that improvements within firm value, financial performance, economic growth, innovation, and philanthropy has been due to the inclusion of women leadership within companies.

Science and technology

There is an under-representation of women in the STEM fields. According to a study done by the U.S. Department of Commerce, in the United States women account for approximately twenty-four percent of the STEM workforce, while making up forty-eight percent of the overall workforce. There are a variety of factors that contribute to this discrepancy such as lack of female role models, gender stereotypes, and sexism in hiring. The roots of under-representation are in grade school, where girls fall behind boys in math because they are led to believe they are not as intelligent as boys and therefore incapable of being good at math. Other influences include teachers, family, culture, stereotypes, and role models throughout school. Women are earning the same number of bachelor's degrees as men but only account for thirty percent of STEM degrees. Women who earn these degrees are more likely to go into healthcare or education rather than STEM professions.

Women are adequately represented in healthcare professions. Women constitute for 44% of doctors and 89% of nursing, health visitation staff, and midwifery. However, women are disproportionately represented in different specialties in comparison to men. In surgical specialties, women represent 3.5% compared to 16% representation of men. In general practice, women represent 47% compared to 37% representation of men. The discrepancy between men and women in certain specialties are due to factors of inherent differences and discrimination within the workplace. Researchers argue that specialties within the medical field for women are influenced by personal affairs that include family commitments, work-life balance, and sense of selflessness. Additionally, researchers claim that women are deterred from pursing certain clinical specialties due to difficulties of indirect discrimination such as a male dominated work culture, sex stereotypes, and unsocial hours. Despite these barriers, women in healthcare professions have proven to provide better clinical care and health care system savings in comparison to their men counterparts.