Gender Trends In The Workforce

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2.3 Society and individuals
Society continues evolve due to the forces of demographic changes, globalisation, and human migration therefore the context of society and the current forces at play are important to consider when trying to understand the future of work. This next section will focus on how the key trends in demographic shifts, growing diversity, and new needs for flexibility and work-life balance will shape this future. We seek to investigate what the workforce will look like, what are the driving needs, how will they interact, what tools will be used in order to effectively manage this workforce. Demographic change Unpredicted and unprecedented economic, cultural, social, public health and public policy challenges, have resulted
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Women are becoming more recognised as key drivers of growth due to their economic power, and increased participation in labour (World Economic Forum, 2016). However, the key barriers, unconscious bias and gender stereotyping, has maintained gender pay gaps and lack of opportunity or recognition of talent for women in the workforce (Beeson & Valerio, 2012; Bukhari & Sharma, 2014; ILO, 2016).

Traditional organisational structures have favoured males over female workers (WEF, 2016), which contributed to challenges for female workforce in terms of employability between men and women, with the latter rating 26 per cent lower than male (ILO, 2016) Women are also met with challenges in career advancement such as promotions or higher position in directorship across various industries (Opstrup & Villadsen, 2015). As a result gender pay gaps remains over 20 per cent across different industries and the focus on gender parity remain low across industries (ILO, 2016; WEF,
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This involves creating an atmosphere that permits different people to reach their full potential (Campling et al., 2008). Therefore, in order to fully utilise the opportunities of diversity while avoiding possible negative outcomes, organisations need to actively manage diversity (van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). The attitudes of organisations to diversity must move from resistance, or tolerance to full inclusion. Not only do organisations need to manage the explicit issues and challenges, but also the different expectations of each individual, their needs and also keeping them engaged in the workforce (Joshi Pant & V, 2015). The future of work calls for a recognition that the management of such a diverse workforce cannot be done in one way but rather by understanding and meeting the specific needs of each employee (Joshi Pant & V,

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