SEX DISCRIMINATION: SEX STEREOTYPES

Apr
07
2009

Posted by: admin in Categories: Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction.
Using Tags: Men’s Health

Key statistics reveal that women still are not fully integrated into the mainstream of the American work force. Although they now comprise nearly half of all wage earners, they continue to be grossly under-represented in occupations associated with power or status. As recently as 1970, for example, only 5% of all lawyers and judges, 6% of all industrial managers, and 9% of all physicians were women (Council of Economic Advisors). Thus, despite federal legislation, consciousness-raising activities, and women’s caucuses, disparities persist.

Obstacles to women’s advancement in non-traditional areas derive both from forces within women themselves and from forces outside them. Women’s fear of success (Horner), limited self-confidence (Lenney), low achievement motivation (Veroff, Wilcox, and Atkinson) and role conflict (Hall) are some of the internal factors detrimentally affecting their own achievement. Discussion of these phenomena, although they act to support and maintain sex discriminatory practices, is not within the scope of this essay. It is designed to explore only the externally imposed barriers that thwart women in their quest for equality.

Because they are so central to the issues of women’s advancement, the focus of our concerns will be the experiences women encounter in the work world. When considering work-related discrimination it is necessary to distinguish between its two different forms (Levitan, Quinn, and Staines; Terborg and Ilgen). One is the non job-related limitations put on members of a subgroup influencing their attempts to enter an organization. This is called access discrimination. Funneling of women to some jobs and not others, failing to hire women applicants for certain positions, and offering a lower salary to women as compared to men all are examples of access discrimination on the basis of sex. The other form of discrimination, treatment discrimination, is the differential treatment of members of a subgroup once they have gained access to a position and are at work on the job. Promoting women more slowly than men, giving them fewer opportunities to learn new skills, or giving them lower or less frequent salary raises all are examples of treatment discrimination involving sex.

Because beliefs about women and how they compare to men are widely shared within our culture and are assumed to apply to nearly all men and women as members of their respective groups, these beliefs are called stereotypes. According to Terborg, sex stereotypes have two components. First, they specify the characteristics of each sex. Second, they dictate which behaviors are appropriate to men and women. Either of these can form the basis of sex discrimination, one based on faulty beliefs about what women are like and the other based on normative expectations about what women should be like.