"If you talk to people today in the workplace they construct the workplace as gender neutral, assuming that gender no longer matters because the issue has long been solved, " (Kelan,2010).
Need to focus on innovative approaches to getting gender back on the agenda : re-evaluate our strategies on how we can move from “gender fatigue” to gender energy(Kamberidou 2010, Kamberidou & Fabry 2011)
Women are overlooked in decision making positions in the business sector globally,Women lag behind men in compensation (gender pay gap) and advancement (glass ceiling) and are less satisfied with their careers than men.
Till 8th of march, The Economic Forum-blog has been covering the global gender gap from a variety of voices. You can read their entire blog series here: http://forumblog.org/tag/international-womens-day/
As the responses above reflect, this is a systemic problem, not one which is isolated to the workplace. As such, any responses to address this problem must occur simultaneously in all facets of society. In any patriarchal society, gender inequity will run throughout all social institutions from the family to education to marriage to the workplace.
Certainly government and workplace policies are one place to start, for example strong maternity and parental leave policies.
Indeed Angela, in patriarchal societies it is a problem that is not isolated to the work place, but in all social institutions. Now with regard to the western or rather anglo-saxon conception of gender or the term gender vs. sex, the main goal is that of gender equity/social equality for both women and men. Integrating a gender perspective is an issue of integrating diversity into the system, as opposed to wasting it. Gender issues (in western societies, in the developed world) do not only concern women! Men have a gender as well. Men also confront social inequalities and discrimination. Gender studies, for example, are not women's studies, they do not focus exclusively on women, as men have a gender as well. Integrating a gender perspective refers to the process of assessing and reassessing the implications for both women and men of any program and action plan at all levels: social, economic, and political. It requires gender-specific interventions, policies, and practices that may target exclusively women or interventions that target men exclusively or even men and women together. In fact, the goal of integrating the gender dimension into the equation is to transform exclusionary or unequal social and institutional structures into equal and just ones for both women and men. For example, an intervention that targets both women and men is Get Online Week 2013, a pan-European awareness campaign empowering people to use technology and the internet- which ties in with the GrandCoalition for Digital Jobs officially launched at a conference in Brussels in early March 2013 - as over 20% Europeans of both genders are young, unemployed, and mostly unaware that by 2015, up to 900,000 vacancies for ICT-related jobs may remain open if jobseekers (men and women) do not acquire the right digital skills. (Kamberidou 2013) So we need to work together to achieve economic growth and sustainable development. Integrating a gender perspective means eliminating the wastage of talent –utilizing all human resources, the entire talent pool - and as a result, boosting innovation which is a prerequisite for economic growth and sustainable development.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication