Thursday, 16 January 2014

Task: How is gender stereotyping being practiced in the corporate sectors?



         Gender stereotyping refers to the expectation of the roles and abilities of men and women in the society. As we all know, men are usually expected to be stronger and become the leaders of the society. Therefore, many people seem to underestimate and question women’s capabilities in their works. This issue may happen and being practiced in the corporate sector all around the world, like China, United States, and other European countries. Undeniably, the problems do exist in our country, Malaysia.
         Firstly, this issue is probably found during a job promotion. For example, in an insurance company, there are two workers holding the same post and qualification. A is a male, and B is a female. There is a newly high vacancy in the company and the boss wishes to raise one of them as the new manager. Therefore, the boss calls them in a meeting and tells them about his will to promote either one of them. They are being given three months to reveal their abilities and performances in works. In the observation, the boss realizes that worker A is very hardworking and capable as a leader. She manages to convince many customers to buy her insurance and brings a lot of benefits to the company. On the other hands, worker B is an extremely lazy and shows ordinary reputation in his works. So, the boss probably has to promote worker A as the manager. Ironically, the boss choose worker B to hold the post. The reason is he thinks that the leader of the company should be a male, not the other way round. He gives excuses like women will have to take care of her family and certainly not able to balance up the pressure between the family and the working place.
           Secondly, there may have many corporate bosses refuse to hire women as their workers. The reason is very simple. This is because they think that they might face a lot of troubles handling with their health problem if they ever hire a married woman to join the company. For our information, when a female worker has a newborn baby, the boss must give at least one month holiday to her. As a result, he has to pay the new mother who has no contribution to the company during that particular month. Therefore, he rather hires a young man worker who has very ordinary reputation but free from the health problems and family burden. Moreover, the boss, especially a male boss often has the traditional thinking that women should consider their family’s responsibilities as the first place. So, she may perform badly in her works. As we all know, women are viewed to be a weaker and emotional gender compared to men. When they feel overstressed, they might give up easily and definitely fail in their works.
        Thirdly, one of the genders stereotyping which possibly will happen in a corporate company is the unfair treatment of the male bosses towards the female workers. In this 21st century, many modern families have no time to look after their babies. However, they are not willing to spend money to look for a baby-sitter or place the babies in a nursery center. In this case, many modern mothers begin the new trend to bring their babies to the working places. However, many male bosses are not really understanding and do not even provide a room for the mothers to breast feed their children. Instead, some of them start to degrade the female workers who bring their baby along their works and even cut down their salary for the reason that she is not concentrated and professional in her works. Furthermore, the male boss will try to find as much as trivial mistakes made by her and humiliate her until she is willing to quit from the company.
            In conclusion, women are still being left out of decision-making due to reluctance and stereotyping of gender. We all have to work together to put a stop on this issue. The society should change their mind along with the evolution of time. Men and women should be treated equally to work to success. Neither one sex should be discriminated. We have to prevent this issue to deteriorate and eventually create an unbalance problem to the country. 

by Soon Ming Hui

No comments:

Post a Comment