Sex Discrimination Essay Research Paper Sex DiscriminationDespite

Sex Discrimination Essay, Research Paper

Sex Discrimination

Despite Legislation for Equal Opportunities, sexism is still in evidence in

the workplace.

Sexism is a particular concern for society when considering it’s effect in the

workplace. Sexism has always been a particular problem in the labour

market especially with the formation of capitalism. In the last half of the

20th century this has been especially highlighted due to the increase of

woman entering the labour market. This aroused the need for a legislation

for equal opportunity for both sex’s to be passed in 1975. It stated that

discrimination of a persons sex whether male or female was unlawful in

employment, union membership, education, provision of goods, services,

advertisements and pay.

In this essay the discussion will cover subjects such as why woman hold a

large percentage of the work force in companies but hardly any seem to

have any power. Obstacles in the way of woman in careers, ifwomen

prefer different jobs to men, equal pay for both sexes and what’s changed

since the law was made an Act of Parliament. This essay will only

concentrate on the problem of sex discrimination in the U.K.

Sex discrimination means that a person gets treated in a less favorable

manner because of their sex. A good example of this is to take two fictional

characters, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. The Jones’s want to go swimming, they get

to the swimming baths where they find that Mrs. Jones is charged an O.A.P.

price while Mr. Jones has to pay the full price even though they are both the

same age. This is because woman become pensioners at the age of sixty

while men cannot gain the benefits until they are sixty five.

Sex discrimination is not only present within the older generation but is also

evident throughout the entire age range. Before legislation was passed in the

1960’s most young girls left school after O-levels to receive a strong social

message that their careers where already setup for them as marriage and

motherhood (Pascall 1995: 2). The only jobs they would be getting were

tedious low paid jobs (a Secretary) and be only looking forward to when

they would meet a man, have a family and settle down. Statistics show that

in 1971, 51% of married women did not work compared to 29% in 1993

(Pascall 1995: 3). Women now hold 46% of the labor work force, with

young women seeing housework more of a part-time rather than a full time

job. This is an enormous social change for the family giving women less

dependence on marriages which are increasingly falling apart day by day

and a greater command over the increasing area of technology and resources.

With more women getting jobs, it encourages other woman who were reluctant

to move into the labour market to do the same and become more career

minded.

Although woman now make up 46% of the English work force only 3% of

woman hold chief executive positions. This has only increased by 2% in the

last 20 years (Mildrew 1992: 17). A point to be raised here is that as the

hierarchy of management positions increases, the amount of women in these

positions decreases. This quite clearly means that woman do not hold the

prestige and influence that men do, as their sector of high ranking jobs is so

small. We’ve all heard men say at some point, “I just don’t understand

women”, yet there are only 5 woman High Court Judges out of 91 men and 28

women circuit judges out of 496 men in the Judiciary in 1993 (Pascall 1995:

2).

Thanks to media attention women do have access to careers. In 1980 woman

made up 12-14% of professional and managerial jobs. In 1990 the figure had

raised to 32% managers/administrators and 40% professionals. On the other

hand women seem to fall into different sectors to men, they make up 62% of

teachers and librianship but only 25% of business and financial professionals

and shockingly only 5% of engineers and technologists. Teaching is a qualified

position, 90% of primary school teachers and 60% of secondary teachers are

women but 50% primary and 80% secondary school heads are men. This is the

same right the way across the specturm, in university only 5% of professors

are women (Pascall 1995: 3).

This segregation of gender in different jobs can be separated into two

dimensions, vertical and horizontal. Vertical segregation is the segregation

of gender in the hierarchy of power in a certain job. Woman tend to be found at

the low end of vertical segregation in professional occupations. Horizontal

segregation is the segregation of gender in the spread of different

occupations.

Woman are usually found dominating teaching while men dominate

engineering. Data from the Eurostat Labour survey shows whenwoman break

horizontal segregation by increasing their presencein a particular

occupation, vertical segregation bec

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