Gender Segregation In The Workplace

The workplace has been a center for discrimination for many people for many decades, in particular for women. Women have struggled to break the barriers of work place discrimination and climb the ladder of success that comes much easier to men. Many studies have been directed towards this topic due it’s high prevalence over time and some people fear that there won’t be a day when women don’t have to struggle for work place equality. Although things have changed and over time women have gained more respect, there is still much room left for improvement. Today, there are many more occupational educational opportunities for women and many of them hold careers in high status areas such as law, business, and accounting like men. However, research …show more content…
One article I found talks about the fact that discrimination and segregation happens in businesses because of differences in productivity in jobs, training, or differing tastes. The other factor that researchers try to figure in is referral hiring through segregated social networks (Tassier 2008). The article goes on to explain that many people hire employees because they were referred by some social contact and that can have implications for segregated workplaces. Organizations like to use this referral hiring process because it can ensure the quality of the employee, it can be less expensive, and the new employee might already know a lot about the organization from the person who referred them (Tassier 2008). Many studies conclude that social networking sites are often full of the same kinds of people, so the idea that someone different might come on or be referred for a job is not necessarily realistic (Tassier 2008). Due to the homogeneous nature of social networking, segregation is easily brought into the workplace, thus creating …show more content…
The article discussed the affects of occupational sex segregation when it comes to family businesses. Apparently, family businesses make up 90 percent of all businesses in the US, which is quite significant (Larsen 2006). The difference with these kinds of businesses is that the co-workers are related and have a different set of boundaries than regular co-workers and that can have different implications for the business. For this specific case, the author studied American harness racing, which is often owned by husband and wives as teams (Larsen 2006). Men tend to be the ones who preform more of the big tasks and are often seen performing more tasks then women even though they are both usually trainers. The article argues that married couples who work together have trouble separating their work-related conflicts from their personal life and that in turn causes them to take on more traditional roles in the workplace (Larsen