Introduction and Background

Discuss about the Impact Of Gender Discrimination In the Workplace Productivity.

Gender discrimination is discrimination based on gender, depending on whether you are a male or female. It is the inequality experienced by women or men in social, economic, political or even religious lives(Shen, Chanda, D’netto&Monga, 2009). The discrimination comes, as a result, a belief that one gender is superior to the other. The term used together with gender discrimination is sex/gender inequality.

Gender/sex discrimination in employment relate to unfavorable treatment of someone based on their sex during application, recruitment or even while being a current employee.  Failed political maneuvers and unfair wage practices are the forces behind gender discrimination. The history of workplace gender discrimination in Australia can be traced back prior to 1963 when it was legal to pay women fewer wages than men for the same amount of work. The Federal government passed “The Equal Pay Pact” law in 1963 and required equal pay of wages(Syed &Pio, 2010).

Several other laws have been enacted to protect gender discrimination and they include The Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made illegal any gender discrimination at workplace, a 1991 Civil Rights Act which was the amendment of 1964 civil rights act when Federal government needed to include sexual harassment in the act(Syed & Murray, 2009). With this law, women were allowed to sue their employer for punitive damages and compensatory in court if they allowed any form of sexual harassment in the workplace (Probert, 2012).

Some form of gender discrimination in the workplace include suffering harm during employment, firing/hiring/promotion, sexual abuse, employment opportunity denial, pay, job classification and lack of spouse benefits etc. sometimes there is no involvement of certain gender in management decision making(Syed & Murray, 2009).

Management of NAB bank attaches a lot of importance to increased productivity in the banking sector. For this reason, the management came up with a plan to increase productivity by through promotion of gender equality(Shen, Chanda, D’netto&Monga, 2009). In 2011, NAB publicly announced its plan to promote gender equality during the international women day and included,  increasing the number of female non-executive directors on the Board of directors aiming at achieving a representation of not less than 30% , increasing the number of women from 23% to 33% by 2015 in executive management roles, create a 50/50 gender balance in our graduate program – while making sure women and men are equally represented in their core talent development programs and increasing the percentage of NAB Group subsidiary board positions held by women from 14% to 30% by 2015.

Management Problem

This research aims at finding out whether the assumptions made by the management of NAB is going to reduce gender discrimination while promoting equality and increasing productivity(Syed & Murray, 2009). Some solutions that the management can adapt to reduce gender biases includes representing the list of the gender composition at management and board level to the authorized entities in accordance to an amendment to listings rule of 2010 and 2012 respectively(Shen, Chanda, D’netto&Monga, 2009). Also, the management should encourage healthy competition across the female and male gender in order to encourage full participation in the daily running of the organization as well as boost creativity(Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann&Banaji, 2009).

The organization should encourage women and men to work as a unit and define legal consequences that may result from gender inequality practices in the organization (Probert, 2012). Giving an equal chance to men and women in leadership positions and decision making will boost the self-esteem of the gender that feels less important and that would mean even women will be in a good position to exercise their abilities and realize their potential(Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann&Banaji, 2009).

Researchers in organizations should work with teams of managers in order to produce concrete, implementable actions that produce visible results. This will help boost the involvement of all the stakeholders within the organization for better results.

Financial institutions continue to experience critical gender divide with regards to salaries and leadership which records below Australian average gap(Probert, 2012). The banking goals aim at creating an environment that guarantees women and men same freedom, choice of employment, and equal treatment in both genders. Research shows that even though there have been efforts to try equalizing women and men in terms of salary in the workplace, it is important to note that women earn between 10% to 30% less than their male counterparts across the globe(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012). The female participation in the workplace has remained low even after two decades efforts to reduce poverty and increase the number of girls given an opportunity for education. Studies show that female employment has remained static at 57% between years 1990 to 2005 and even dropped to 55% across the globe, with an exception of Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region which records an increase of working women by 35% from 1990. This growth has been seen more among women who are low-income earners(Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann & Banaji, 2009).

Literature Review

According to a new study (Finsia), women compared to men are less and are underrepresented in leadership roles even if they make 50% of employees at the undergraduate level. The study was prepared by Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) under the title “The significance of the gender divide in financial services, which surveys its’ members and the wider financial community in a span of two years (Syed &Pio, 2010). The institute aims at finding out how gender equity issues are perceived in the workplace(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012).

There are many divisions in financial and banking sector in Australia when it comes to women but chief among gender discrimination is leadership and remuneration (Metz, 2011).

An online survey that involved Australian and New Zealand financial professionals answering some questions recorded a number reflecting increased attention given to inclusion and diversity issues. A wider gender gap pay in financial and insurance institutions showing differences between the average of all male and female earnings in Australia was at 30% and 18.2% as of August 2014. Female CEO Representation was also very low at 4.6% compared to men at 13.5% for all the industries but shown women significantly higher than men in management positions at 36.2 percent and 35.4 percent in all Australian industries(Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011).

Reasons have been cited as to why women would not get better opportunities in management positions one being according to Beattie “the inability of workplaces to map out career options and learning, development, and promotion options that allowed women to balance their careers and family commitments meant women were generally out of the workforce during a critical period in their careers”(Metz, 2011). She says, failing to jump into this career facilitation bandwagon at the crucial time, women miss opportunities to learn and develop, for promotion and training which would fuel them to management positions which later propels them to upper-level opportunities in later times of career(Probert, 2012). According to Beattie, the new workplace reforms should focus on the mandate that promotes elimination of discrimination against gender in relation to family and responsibilities and employment matters(Bratton & Gold, 2017). 

On the other hand, Wood states that, that there is a need for the attitudinal shift within companies with regards to work flexibility arrangement for both men and women if policies were to stick in the long term(Syed & Murray, 2009). Wood cited a research that showed that men were mostly denied access to flexibility in work or they themselves avoided taking advantage of offer knowing that would not reflect well in the eyes of their seniors(Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011).

Male Discrimination in Australia

Gender discrimination in the workplace has been associated with Individual Mental Health Issues, Increased Conflict, Poor Company Morale, Reduced Productivity, and legal issues among other things (Syed &Pio, 2010). Mental illness comes as a result people feeling disturbed, feel anxious or even develop depression. Depressed people have reduced morale and reduced morale leads to low company productivity(Bratton & Gold, 2017). There are lots of dramas in an office where workers shift their focus to doing their duties and focus on the said dramas. On the legal issues, the company management should as they take serious gender discrimination issues serious also take serious legal issues surrounding any form of harassment to avoid the lawsuit directed towards them(Syed &Pio, 2010).

1. Overall research design and justification.

This study will use case study research design. The study will be using this research design because it aims at narrowing down a broad field of research into a single one researchable example. This research design will be useful for testing whether this model will actually apply to phenomena in the real world. It is a useful design because there is not much that is known about gender discrimination in banking sector(Cole, 2009). This design will try to bring out an understanding of gender discrimination in banking sector of Australia through detailed contextual analysis of very limited amount of data(Cole, 2009). The will be description of rare case of men discrimination in workplace etc. This design will help the researcher in examining contemporary real-life situations and provide the basis for the application of concepts and theories as well as the extension of methodologies. Last and not the least on the usefulness of this design to the study the design will extend experience or add strength to what is already known through previous research. However, in this research, there will be limitation with the design(Cole, 2009). There may be biases   in the report because there is use of very little information. The information may not be a representative of a typical or the larger problem under investigation. The interpretation of the case will only be limited to the case itself, since the criteria for selecting a case was based on its uniqueness of problem for study.

This research will use data from secondary sources, books, journals, questionnaire, magazine, news articles, internet, etc. all secondary sources. The information from these sources will be useful for instance news articles and newspapers will provide with real happenings that are reported in certain periods of time making them reliable.

The secondary data sources will be obtained from internal sources of data and external sources of data. Internal sources include those data within the organization itself (NAB) and the external sources are the information outside the organization. Internal sources of information that the research will rely on are articles or publications from internal experts who have written on the issue on the question, miscellaneous reports, sales reports, managerial reports. The use of internal sources will only be avoided if they are biased or not seem to meet the requirements of the research question.

Books are even more reliable since they are revised and edited several times even between 6-8th times by professionals. The content of books and other sources are up-to-date hence more reliable since they contain facts in them written by well-known and trusted authors(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012). The research participant will be drawn from students around the university taking business courses.

The research question in this study what are the impacts of the gender discrimination in the workplace and will involve a case study of Australian National bank(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012). The research question will extend to answering the question whether there is male discrimination in the workplace and the effects of the discrimination to the company productivity(Maxwell, 2012). There is a need to focus on what extent of discrimination is experienced by men in the workplace and what are the causes of the gender discrimination among male gender(Probert, 2012). Men have not been a topic of interest in the workplace is they have viewed superiors and advantaged than women when it comes to getting opportunities and having high positions in companies(Maxwell, 2012).

The method used for the data collection will be interview methods. The common interview methods that will most effective in this study will be individual interviews, focus group interviews, and dyadic interviews to facilitate courage in people giving information in pairs(Yin, 2009).. Morgan, 2012; Morgan,Ataie, Carder, & Hoffman, 2013, state that, few researchers do documentation of the data usage where people are interviewed in pairs(Maxwell, 2012). This form of interview is referred to as dyadic or joint-interview. This form of interview involves two people with knowledge about the research topic in question. This would include people such as couples, co-workers, students in same class etc. This type of interview will make this research a unique one since there are a few researchers on gender discrimination which has applied this form of an interview(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012).

The data will utilize primary qualitative research method with a quantitative method included in order to identify subject for qualitative study, and to asses extent at which the subject represented a specific group which is different from the general population(Yin, 2009). Quantitative methods will also be used to provide additional confirmation of the subject’s self-reports in regards to their gender relationship satisfaction and identity(Bradshaw & Stratford, 2010). Qualitative study method will be however used to obtain in-depth, rich data on the breadth of experiences of shared parenting and its effects on gender relationship satisfaction and gender role identity(Bradshaw& Stratford, 2010).

Long interview method will provide a clear example of the rich, in-depth data that can be drawn from qualitative research and the kind of analysis that would be conducted. McCracken’s 1998, own words, the method give an opportunity for us to step in other person’s mind to see and experience the world in their own ways (p.9)(Ramsey & Schafer, 2012). The data in the qualitative arm in this study will consist of the narratives of the participants who will respond to general directive questions in an interview format(Bradshaw & Stratford, 2010). The topic of the interview will be the impact of gender discrimination in the Australian national banking sectors and particularly how the discrimination affects the productivity within the banking sectors(Bratton & Gold, 2017). The reason why qualitative research will be useful in this study is that studying the relationship between gender discrimination and productivity in the workplace has not been fully covered(Bradshaw & Stratford, 2010).  There is also not enough data on male discrimination in the workplace as it is not clear how men are discriminated in a working environment(Maxwell, 2012).

Every project and its team face some limitations that make it difficult or challenging to successfully complete the project and achieve the objectives of the project. In this project, the expected limitations would  include some like;

Uncooperative community members. Some people may not be ready to participate or give feedback to the project in reference to their workplace discrimination. The reason behind this is the fear of being victimized by their employers and community at large(Maxwell, 2012). This means many of them would prefer to keep their work discrimination against themselves which is the main challenges why this problem will persist in workplaces.

Insufficient funds to carry out the project

Lack of clear and current gender discrimination records from the banking sectors

Proposed time frame and budget of the research.

Project team members’ compensation- $250,000

Consultation fees- $15,000

Telephone expenses- $2,000

Travel fees- $80,000

Project advertising expenses- $5,000

Community seminars and training costs- $150,000

Miscellaneous expenses- $250,000

Resource purchasing expenses- $230,000

TOTAL BUDGET- $982,000

TIME PLAN

1st to 7th June 2018- Project topic(Activity A)

8th to 14th June 2018- Project background introduction (Activity B)

15th to 21st June 2018- Project need (Activity C)

22nd to 29th June 2018- Project objectives and implications (Activity D)

30th to 6th July 2018- Literature review (Activity E)

7th to 13th July 2018- Methodology (Activity F)

14th to 20th July 2018- limitations and evaluations (Activity G)

Reference List.

Bobbitt-Zeher, D. (2011). Gender discrimination at work: Connecting gender stereotypes, institutional policies, and gender composition of the workplace. Gender & Society, 25(6), 764-786.

Bradshaw, M. B., & Stratford, E. (2010).Qualitative research design and rigor.

Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017).Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.

Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology.American Psychologist, 64(3), 170.

Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., &Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity.Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(1), 17.

Maxwell, J. A. (2012). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (Vol. 41). Sage publications.

Metz, I. (2011). Women leave work because of family responsibilities: Fact or fiction?. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 49(3), 285-307.

Probert, B. (2012). Gender workers and gendered work: implications for women’s learning. In Understanding learning at work (pp. 103-121).Routledge.

Ramsey, F., & Schafer, D. (2012).The statistical sleuth: a course in methods of data analysis. Cengage Learning.

Shen, J., Chanda, A., D’netto, B., &Monga, M. (2009). Managing diversity through human resource management: An international perspective and conceptual framework. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(2), 235-251.

Syed, J., &Pio, E. (2010).Veiled diversity? Workplace experiences of Muslim women in Australia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 27(1), 115-137.

Syed, J., & Murray, P. (2009).Combating the English language deficit: The labor market experiences of migrant women in Australia. Human Resource Management Journal, 19(4), 413-432.

Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (applied social research methods). London and Singapore: Sage.