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Feminist Theory In The Workplace

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Use a Feminist Approach to show how organizations maintain hierarchy and inequalities today Introduction A feminist is defined as a person who supports feminism and feminism is simply the quest or the belief in the social, political and economic equality of sexes. In this essay i am going to dwell on how different organizations demonstrate inequality against women in the working environment and other different organizations such as churches, Law firms and business companies using different feminist theories. Feminist theory uses the conflict approach to examine the strengthening of gender roles and inequalities, highlighting the role of patriarchy in maintaining the oppression of women. Nowadays selection of a candidate for a position in an …show more content…

In an organization, the hierarchy usually consists of a singular or group of power at the top with subsequent levels of power beneath them. This is the commonly used way of delegating staff or members of the organization in most organizations. Corporations, governments, and religious organizations are hierarchical organizations with different levels of management, power and authority. The workplace has sometimes been referred to as an inhospitable place for women due to the multiple forms of gender inequalities present (Abrams, 1991). Some examples of how workplace discrimination negatively affects women’s earnings and opportunities are the gender wage gap (Peterson and Morgan, 1995), the scarcity of women in leadership (Eagly and Carli, 2007), and the longer time required for women compared to men to advance in their careers (Blau and DeVaro, 2007). In other words, workplace discrimination contributes to women’s lower socio-economic status which hence lead to women having to settle for low payed jobs or having the secretory-boss kind of relationship in order to be promoted. Most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral but gender inequality in organizations is a complex phenomenon that can be seen in organizational structures, processes, and practices. For women, some of the most harmful gender inequalities are acted out within human resources practices. This is because human resources practices which include policies, …show more content…

Kanter clarified some of the problems women face in organizations that are still present today. Kanter used a structuralize model, on where she discussed how women are a class without power who performs routine services while the men in viable positions constitute the real power to reward themselves and shape the system as a whole, one good example is a research done to show inequalities in organizations such as farming into which rural livelihoods shows that food security will not be achieved unless women farmers are treated as economic agents in their own right. While farmers often seek to increase their influence through collective action, this avenue is only of limited use to women, since most rural organizations are male-dominated and marginalize women’s voices (MG, Beatriz& M,

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