Equality and Rights - Do Women Enjoy Equal Opportunities at Work in Today Organizations?

Jennifer was born and brought up from a small village in the US. She was from a middle class family.  She completed her school education with ‘A+” grade and had done her Bachelor degree from a reputed University and recently took a position from a financial institution in London. She married a guy from Ireland whom she was dating for few years. Her immediate supervisor “Mr. Martin” was a nice guy but he is jealous about her abilities. Even though she had few conflicts with Martin, her professional career was on track till she was pregnant. As per the Doctor’s advice, she applied a six month medical leave.  But her supervisor was not willing to give her six months leave and asked her to contact the HR department. As per the HR guidelines, the company could offer 3 months leave during pregnancy, and to extend her leave, her supervisor approval was required. But Martin decided to use this opportunity to release her as he thought her presence would be a biggest threat to her professional career with the company. Long story to short, she quit her job and she decided to spend her rest of her life to take care of her family. Not only Jennifer, but several women face such issues. The problem is that the problems faced by the women are not addressed properly. At times, they are not even considered as an equally efficient worker as men in today’s organizations.

A quite lot of celebrations happened around the world on 8th March 2011 to celebrate Women’s day. As some of you might know that the first International Women’s day was celebrated in 1911 in four countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark. This year is the 100 years of women’s day and it was celebrated in almost all countries.

During the past 100 years, we have seen several changes at workplace. Initially, women were not permitted to work. Later on, they slowly get in to the workforce. Now more women are working than ever before all around the world. What is special about women? Not only they go to work but also they look after the family. In that perspective they do more work than a man. However, do they enjoy equal opportunities at work all around the world? This is a million dollar question and the answer is sadly, no.

The US Bureau of Labor statistics shows that women in the United States have lower wages than men at all education levels in almost all sectors. Similarly, the recent diversity study by Ferry International shows that female representatives of board of directors in the Asia Pacific region are often compared to male representative. We can find a quite few recent research to prove inequality at workplace. However, we might find very little research to prove inequality does not exist. It is safer to say that even one half of the world population consists of women while they still don’t get equal opportunities at work place.

OK. We have a known issue which is very important and that needs to be addressed. How do we address that? I would think that attitude change of men towards women, mindset changes of women towards workplace and Legislation changes by governments would help them to get equal opportunities soon.

Most of you know already that attitude is nothing but a mental state about something. It is some sort of belief that we have about something. Let’s say if one man asks a question “what do I think (or believe) about a woman?” to himself, he might get different views. Some might think a woman can’t perform the same function as a man does. Others might think that a woman can do more than what a man do. In order to give equal opportunities to women, men should think a woman is equally capable of men. She deserves equal rights at work. Considering their roles at home, men should think that a woman is more capable than men. I strongly feel that if men ask such questions to themselves, women will have a happier world to live in.

 Mindset (similar to “attitude”) is a mental state about something. But the difference is “How do you respond (or interpret)” to a situation. Let me give a simple example. Two of my best friends had a dream to go to USA to work. They both tried very hard. Both have attended several interviews. Both have failed to get an offer during first few interviews. One decided to give up his dream, and joined as a Lecture in a college. But the other friend did not give up his dream; he self examined himself to find out the reasons why they did not select in those interviews; identified the areas he was weak; improved himself and attended few more interviews, and now he is in the US and will get his US Citizenship soon. The lesson here is that woman should have such mindset. They should gain self-confidence. They should not get discouraged and should instead strive to work harder to prove to the world that they are as good as men. They should develop the right mindset towards men, learning etc. If they develop such a mindset, I’m sure they would enjoy equal rights at work in today organizations.

We all know that nobody is above the law. It means that law applies to everybody.  The governments and World Bodies should work together to develop suitable laws to give equal rights to women at work. They should have a mechanism to implement and monitor the workplaces. They should have laws to take appropriate actions if that is not followed. This would definitely help.