The Future of Gender Equality in The Workplace

According to the UK government (2016) Women still earn 20% less on average than men. Firstly, gender equality is where Men and Women can enjoy and experience the exact same resource opportunities and rewards within the workplace. According to CIPD (2017) The Uk’s gender equality has barely moved within the last 10 years as shown in the first statistic of Women still earning on average 20% less than men. This statistic shows that The UK has one of the worst gender equality records in the EU with the UK much behind EU members such as France, Spain and Germany. This is an issue especially for working mothers as they are far worse off that people without family responsibilities, the current gender pay gap for women in the UK with no children is just over 7% whereas for women with at least 1 child this gap jumps to 21% says the.

New legislations were introduced into the UK and EU to create a gender equality society for women in 1970s. Equal pay for equal work was aim introduced to provide fair treatment for women and men in the workplace. Gender equality legislations in the UK are enforcing if no discrimination in pay and employment based treatment when it comes to gender which is stated in the Equal Pay Act 1970. In the EU, Article 119 Founding Treaty of Rome 1957, Equal Pay Directive prohibits unequal pay with equal work and Employment Protection Act 1978 concerns maternity leave in the EU. Rice (1999) pointed out that in most EU countries, court and tribunal are the main agent dealing with complaints and UK has a high awareness of equality issues since its legislation are predates the EU's.

These new laws have made people expect vast changes for the lives of women within the workforce. According to European Commission's report that concerns gender equal opportunity women have better opportunities when it comes to decision making within companies. According to Rodgers (1999), ‘’gender-related legislations focus on making Armor for women to own their right and to be in a more neutral position’’. The issue is that much of society still doesn’t believe that these legislations have been put into place and are taken seriously. Rubenstein (1996) argues that 'whether the aim of the legislation is to treat women like men when they are like men, e.g. challenge inaccurate stereotypes and labels, or to revalue and accommodate gender difference.

Therefore, the legislation as it stands does little to challenge the 'male' stereotypes against which women are rated, or to bring pressure on male lifestyles.' As shown the legislation may not be sufficient to ban discrimination in gender inequality which will not lead to an effective prohibition.to add to this , Rubery et al., (2004) claims that ‘’legislation has been long contradictory and it is breakable.’’ He believes that gender related legislations are put into place to build an equal gender society. There is no clear showing of which a company do obey the legislation or not therefore the unequal situation may hardly change.

Bellamy et al., (2006) said ‘’the reason that gender inequality is persistent in Britain is because the inadequacy of protection that current equality legislation’’. Despite the participation rate of women in labour market improving form how it was, there is clearly still obvious inequality that remains in working conditions and the pay gap may be considered as the most obvious difference between women and men in the UK. 'Women working full time earn 17% less per hour than men, and women working part time 39% less per hour than men working full time. Mothers of young children face the widest pay gap, earning on average just 67% of the male hourly wage.

And despite the Labour Government's focus on improving work-life balance for parents of young children, 30,000 pregnant women are still unlawfully dismissed from their jobs each year'. ‘’The evidence indicates that mothers still face inequality in terms of losing jobs even legislation is there for protection’’. Despite this woman who do full-time jobs are getting more and more equal with men considering that they have the same level of education and occupation level. Women that are in part-time jobs are paid in lower wages and lower occupation level than men.

Gender discrimination has been known to be one of the major reasons for the pay gap as well as ineffective gender equality legislation is another big factor. There are a lot of, arguments concerning how the legislation itself is put into practice. Other than dealing with the main causes of discrimination, the current legislation concerns itself too much on fixing the consequences of gender inequality. The idea that gender equality legislations are not taken seriously is well known by society and the ineffectiveness of it is not only for individuals themselves it is also for the organisations. One support idea of gender equality is that all the legislations focus on how to improve women's role in labour market but not mention the role that man need to contribute to this. An example of this being that if men and women highly participated in labour market this would result in no carer for the family. This links with the stereotype of men being breadwinners and that women are less likely to have a stable employment status.

One topic is that no matter the amount of time that women spend on building their career’s, men are still considered as more suitable to make decisions. This talks on the point on women going out working without concern about what the man’s role is may cause issues such as children being left with no carer. The idea of men always being the dominant earner may occur in the absence of women making economic contribution to the family as men do therefore, future generations are more likely build the same sort of family for their own in the future. This results to men and women continuing to be breadwinners and housekeepers.

This all shows that despite legislations being in place to protective women a lack of knowledge of the law means that workers and employers did not associate with the government to promote the equality legislation. Diversity within the workplace is a key element for the core of a business plan for the companies to develop their skills and practices as employing the exact same type of people for a company with continue to come out with the same ideas and methods where as employing a diverse workforce will encourage new ways of thinking and developing strategies that can be applied to enhance the business. Gender reassignment, sex and sexual orientation all comes under the Equality Act 2010.

This act legally protects people from issues such as discrimination within the workplace as well as society itself. A business will need to show that Equality and diversity are part of the core business plan by implementing a policy within the organisation, with this in place it will show employees that it is a serious matter and is taken seriously. The policy itself should include a variety of procedures such as fair recruitment, equal salaries as well as the same benefits and rewards for employees. The main benefit of a written policy within the business is that it makes for easy following for current and future employees to go by.

The benefits of a company implementing gender equality is that is will strongly enhance the reputation of the company and make it well recognised for its policies therefore will be looked high upon which then will lead to better opportunities for the company such more skilled candidates applying for job opportunities to overall improve the success of the business. Another benefit is that fair and equal treatment for women in the workplace will show better performance levels by increasing motivation which again improves the performance of the business. A diverse board of directors will offer a variety of better decision making to help solve potential issue the organisation may have as the problems will be looked at form a range of different perspectives rather than the same ideas.

Gender equality alsos improve the ability of companies to attract talent and retain employees. some of the main disadvantages with companies trying to enforce gender equality are that companies make sure that a certain percentage of their employees are women which goes against the whole point of gender equality as companies will employ women based on trying to get their own statistics and percentages up instead of choosing the best candidate for the role which may be very disheartening to women in these role as they may just feel like they are there to make up numbers rather than being the best person for the job itself. This links in wit motivation as females in the work place may not feel wanted therefore not have the best attitude when performing tasks at work causing performance levels to drop which affects the company’s results.

In conclusion gender equality has far more positive influences for companies rather than negative ones for the company’s overall performance, profits, reputation, brand image etc. Despite this gender equality within the work place involves many difficulties with current employee within a business as well as future employees applying for job roles which mostly link in with motivation and employees feeling like they belong and are wanted within the company. The biggest point within the whole gender equality situation is that although there are legislation and acts involving discrimination and diversity issues such as the equality act 2010 there is still no exact proof of companies implementing these rules which has ultimately resulted is little to no progress in the last 10 years for gender equality.