“Girls are the world’s most squandered gift. They are precious human beings with enormous potential, but across the world, they are generally the last to have their basic needs met and first to have their basic rights denied.”
The struggle for equality has been one of the major concerns of the women’s movement all over the world. An individual is a human first. It is society who differentiated sex in terms of social, biological, and physical constructs and developed a new terminology, ‘gender’, to assign different positions and roles to each sex. This differentiation in terms of role allocation, access, availability, and control over resources resulted in the inequalities that women are experiencing.
Recently, there has been an upsurge of women who are being bullied in the workplace. The phenomenon of females being bullied has been discussed in recent years in the media, but little has been done to combat or try to deal with the problem. Thus, there is a need to understand this toxic situation in hopes of putting an end to it.
Owing to the numerous types of gender inequality present, the workplace has been referred to as an inhospitable environment for women. The gender wage gap, the lack of women in leadership, and the longer time taken for women (as opposed to men) to progress in their careers are all examples of how workplace discrimination adversely affects women's earnings and opportunities. Workplace inequality, in other words, leads to women's lower socioeconomic status. Human resources (HR) practices and HR-related decision-making are primarily to blame for such discrimination against women. Furthermore, as workers communicate with organizational decision-makers during HR activities or are informed of the results of HR-related decisions, they may experience personal discrimination in the form of sexist comments.
Women who work in predominantly male environments can face tokenism-related performance pressures, social isolation, and role encapsulation. Tokenism may be used to mask discrimination and maintain male workers' competitive advantage in the workplace. There is no relation between the percentage of women who work in a business and the improvement of their working conditions. Ignoring these sexist issues may exacerbate women's occupational problems.
Wage discrimination is another type of workplace sexism. Although female employment rates have increased and gender employment and wage disparities have narrowed virtually everywhere, the organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that women still have a 20% lower chance of finding work and are paid 17% less than men on average.
Respondents to the 2005 World Values Survey were asked whether wage work should be limited to men only. The number of people who approved in Iceland was 3.6 %, while it was 94.9 % in Egypt.
One of the most prominent examples of bullying against women in the 21st century is the glass ceiling effect.
"The widely held belief in glass ceiling effects is that gender (or other) disadvantages are higher at the top of the hierarchy than at lower levels, and that these disadvantages worsen as a person's career progresses.”
Women make up about half of the workplace, but just 3% of corporate CEOs and top executives. The root cause of this situation, according to some scholars, is "the historic absence of women in top positions" and "the overt discrimination based on gender" perpetrated by current top executives and corporate directors (mostly men). Women of color are said to be particularly affected by the glass ceiling effect. "Women of color experience a 'concrete ceiling,' not just a glass ceiling," according to a survey.
The drawbacks of lower pay, rank, and opportunities at work, as well as the subjective perceptions of stigmatization, have an effect on women's psychological and physical stress, mental and physical wellbeing, job satisfaction, organizational engagement, and, ultimately, their performance.
Workplace bullying is a matter of concern and must be confronted immediately. We have to focus on bringing an end to toxic workplaces and strive to create workplace environments that cultivate teamwork, cooperation, and positive interaction instead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ever since I was a little girl, I always had a passion for reading books. Now that I'm older, the idea of creating my own stories appeals to me more. When I’m not engrossed in reading or frantically writing like a maniac, I can be found watching chick-flicks and old, sappy movies or singing my favorite songs at deafening volumes. I’m not sure of what I want to do in the future, but I do know what I want to be- an outspoken, headstrong and bold individual, who constantly challenges herself and lives life to the fullest.
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