Sideways Society

According to “Gays and Lesbians Face Persistent Workplace Discrimination and Hostility Despite Improved Policies and Attitudes in Corporate America,” the findings conclude that two out of five homosexual adults in American workplaces report facing harassment or hostility on the job.  Another unfortunate statistic from a national study by Witeck-Combs Communications and Harris Interactive states that almost one in ten lesbian and gay adults say that they were dismissed or fired from their position unfairly or they felt pressured to quit because of their sexual orientation.  A survey asked over 2,000 Americans which people in our society experience discrimination in the workplace, 73% answered “lesbians and gays,” followed by older adults, people with disabilities, women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslims, Asian Americans and Jews.

It is suggested that sexual orientation and gender have an influence on annual outcomes.  For example, a random sample of United adults concludes that gay and bisexual men earned 27% less than their equivalent male counterparts with comparable experience, education, region of residence and occupation.  These earnings statistics suggest that workplace discrimination may be the single factor affecting the wage differentials associated with sexual orientation

Sexual orientation can be defined as enduring emotional, sexual or romantic attraction towards other people.  While people may confuse it with biological sex, gender identity and the social gender role, sexual orientation varies from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality and forms of bisexuality.  Bisexual people experience emotional, sexual affection and attraction to their sex and to the opposite sex.  There are many theories about sexual orientation, and many scientists agree that it is a likely result of a complicated interaction of cognitive, environmental and biological factors.  It is often shaped at an early age, and evidence suggests that biology plays a significant role in a person’s sexuality.  There may be many reasons for someone’s sexual orientation and they may differ for everyone.

Research about sexual orientation began in 1948 by Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey.  “At the time, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, and most social scientists who paid attention to the issue at all were engaged in the development of treatments to change into heterosexuals those who expressed gay of lesbian feelings,” (Stocksdale & Crosby, 207).  By the mid 1940s, Kinsey recruited and trained a team of interviewers and he opened the Institute for Sex Research, which is now called the Kinsey Institute.  Kinsey created a seven point scale which attempted to describe a person’s sexual history.  The scale went from 0, which meant exclusively heterosexual, to 3 in the middle which depicted bisexual behavior to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual.  His 1948 book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was the first best seller about sex.  Even though sex was still a taboo topic during this time, his book made it acceptable to read about.  After Kinsey, other scientists continued to research homosexuality to prove that it is not due to a mental illness.

Mental and physical disability in the workplace is the most extensively misunderstood subject in discrimination. In a workplace, the disabled are one of the most undervalued employees and the most underutilized in the United States. Furthermore, they are less respected as an employee because of their mental or physical condition. When people think of the word handicapped, most people assume “handicapped” equivalents to people limited to a wheelchair.  However, this is not the case. Approximately 10% of the world’s population or about 600 million people are disabled. Within the United States itself, approximately about 1%, or about 2.5 million people have mental or physical disabilities. Unfortunately, people with mental or physical disabilities currently are the largest group of minority. According to work trends study conducted by Rutgers University’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, he stated, “People with physical and mental disabilities continue to be vastly underrepresented in the American workplace…” A person with a disability is said to have a physical or mental impairment to one or more major life activities, have a record of impairment, or is regarded as having such impairment. Some examples include someone in a wheelchair for life, someone who needs to wear a hearing aid for a majority of time, and someone with psychological impairment. People with disabilities were poorly discriminated in the workplace in the past as well as in the present. Back in 1990, the Americans with Disability Act, also known as ADA, passed a law called Americans with Disability Act in 1990. This act prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. Sequentially, there are many disabilities which are not always included in the Americans with Disability Act in 1990. People with intellectual disabilities must have one of the following conditions listed by ADA to be fully covered and protected in the American Disability Act of 1990. According to the ADA, one of the requirements is, “An individual’s impairment must substantially limit one or more major life activities. Major life activities are activities that an average person can perform with little or no difficulty. Examples include walking, seeing, hearing, thinking, speaking, learning, concentrating, performing manual tasks, caring for oneself, and working.” Secondly, “Even if an impairment does not currently substantially limit a major life activity, if the person has a past record or history of a substantially limiting intellectual disability, the person is covered under the ADA.” Finally, one of the last requirements an intellectual disabled person may or may not satisfy is, “The ADA also protects persons who do not have a substantially limiting intellectual disability, but are treated by an employer as if they do.” (http://www.ada.gov/adahom1.htm)  As long as an individual fits one of these requirements; they will be covered and protected from discrimination. The ADA covers people with mentally and physically disabled. However, how is harassment at a workplace covered?  “Approximately 20% of the employment discrimination claims brought by persons with intellectual disabilities under the ADA allege harassment based on disability.” The ADA strongly forbids any kind of harassment, whether it is based on gender, sex, religion, and the kinds of different disability one may have in the workplace. Some examples of how harassment can occur to an impaired person is by name calling, degrading their value as an employee for the business, and excluding them from normal everyday office functions. No one is perfect, but everyone should be respected as an individual and as an employee. Prevention of harassment could lessen if and only if employers take the right action to help eliminate the risk and chances of harassment.

And they should do it automatically, affirming that the most important obligation of their employees’ lives–parenting–is a fundamental value, rather than ignoring or dismissing that obligation as a professional liability. I believe they could afford it–and would also be open to some other solutions, such as job-sharing and long-term maternity leaves and more flexible professional tracks for parents in general–if the job of child-rearing were not still a “woman‘s problem.”

Much as home was once a haven for the tired male worker to return to at theend of the day, the workplace has become a refuge from a demanding family life for manyworking parents, especially working mothers. While many authors have chronicled the increasing hours worked by Americans and speculated upon their impact upon the family, Hochschild’s real contribution lies in herdemonstration of the ways in which the rewards and camaraderie of work pull people towork more hours, while the lack of recognition and emotional stresses of the home pushparents to work even more than is needed. 

The reasons for this role reversal are several, with the most prominent being a cultural climate in which long hours and dedication to a career are looked upon with admiration, while the difficult job of raising children is givenlow priority. Parents have devised a number of ways of coping with this set of priorities,such as believing that their children need to learn to be independent (even as early as threemonths of age) and developing a ‘‘potential self’’ that plans quality time with children, whileleaving an ‘‘actual self’’ to toil long hours at the office. Very few workers adopted part-time schedules, and a small minority took advantage of flextime and other programs designed to be family friendly. This reluctance was complicated by gender: women faced more intense scrutiny of their commitment to work than did their male counterparts, and ‘‘with a gender war on, shorter hours felt like surrender.

_{Today is election day.}

 Read about this recent article about Diversity within the election:

For the first time in history, a black man is going head-to-head with a white man for the U.S. presidency. Make that white man elderly and add in a woman, and you’ve got an election like one never before seen.

“And consequently, it has really brought to the floor race, age and gender in very unique and interesting ways,” said Kate Kenski, assistant professor of communications. Kenski researches factors affecting voters’ perception of presidential candidates.

Issues in gender diversity can date back all the way to the 1840′s when the first women’s rights convention was held, telling everyone that women were not happy with the way they were being treated and that it was time to make some changes. One of the first large organizations formed was the National Woman Suffrage Association, formed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1869. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony)           

 In 1893, Colorado was the first state to adopt an amendment allowing women voting rights. Dealing with gender diversity in the workforce, the National Women’s Trade Union League, which fought for better pay and working conditions, was formed in 1903. Finally, in 1920 (A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers.), the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution granted women the right to cote- a huge step. (Failure is Impossible!) But gender discrimination was still rampant in the workforce.           

In 1961, Eleanor Roosevelt was appointed as chairwoman to the President’s Commissions on the Status of Women. (Women’s Rights) This organization found that there was “substantial discrimination against women in the work place”. It was definitely seen as time for yet another change.            Three years later, in 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in employment based on one’s gender. (Employment Non-Discrimination Act S. 1284/H.R. 2692) With this, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was also established to investigate any complaints and to impose any punishments or penalties. Not until 1968- less than fifty years ago!- did the EEOC rule that help wanted ads that were gender specific should be made illegal. (Siegelmen, 725)           

For over one hundred fifty years women have been battling gender diversities. So much progress has been made, but there is still issues of gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace. These present-day issues are not just effecting women though. Perhaps it is because of women moving up in the work place, or maybe it is because society is much more open now, but men have recently been coming forward with complaints of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. There is still more work to be done when it comes to gender equality in the workforce, but we must also remember that it is not solely a female issue any more. Both men and women need- and deserve- to be treated equally at work.Gender diversity and gender differences are problems that we continue to see in today’s society.  It affects everybody and is not exclusive to any specific people regardless of culture, geographical location or race.  It is often prevalent in the workforce and it doesn’t matter if it is within the walls of a corporation or the workers of a construction company.  We see gender diversity in schools and as early as in kindergarten.  People are being labeled and stereotyped based on gender. It is an issue that has no end in the near future.             Additionally, seen today are the forms of gender stereotypes.  A typical stereotype that often can be heard about in ignorant jokes is “Women should be in the kitchen and men should be at work”.  These are generalizations and really don’t make a whole lot of sense, because in today’s age we see that more women today would actually prefer to be at the workplace and not be labeled as “homemakers”.            One of the more frequent problems within a gender-diversified workforce is sexual harassment. “Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” (Sexual Harassment) Though many may make the assumption that this is a female- victim injustice, it is not. Men and women both can be effected by sexual harassment in the work place. These “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of sexual nature” (Sexual Harassment) are looked into by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2007 alone, there were 12,510 charges of sexual harassment and 16% of those were filed by men. (Sexual Harassment)            Like sexual harassment, gender discrimination is also an issue that is common in the workplace.  It is typically women that feel that they are discriminated against based on their gender. According to an article from 2005, “Men seem to also have greater influence on group discussions and decisions. Women commonly complain that ideas they generate are often ignored. Yet, when the same idea is re-introduced later by a man, it is accepted.” (Distelhorst 24-28)
            With women understanding they have just as much opportunity as the next male, how can this still be the case? Women have been progressing since the first women’s rights convention in 1848 and they are still feeling that they do not receive fair treatment in the work force. It isn’t hopeless though. “Under the right conditions, mixed-gender teams can and do significantly out-perform single-gender teams.” (Distelhorst 24-28)            There are countless explanations as to why there is this idea that men are supposed to dominate in the work field. “Some are biological, while others are based on socialization and culture programming. Some focus on power differentials and dynamics. (Others) identify status and expectations as the heart of the matter.” (Distelhorst 24-28)            So after well over a century of striving for gender equality and not achieving it, why not just give up? “Why bother with all this? Because research shows that striving for gender equity actually enhances group and organizational performance, as well as quality of work life, for both men and women. It’s just the right thing to do; it’s the effective thing to do.” (Distelhorst 24-28)            So, a lot has changed in the last 150 years when it comes to gender diversity in the work place. Women have gone from not being able to vote to, in some instances, becoming the CEO of a company. There are still battles to be fought- for both men and women. Harassment and discrimination continue to take place with both sexes being victim. With continued work from the EEOC and other organizations like it, these issues will, in time, hopefully be resolved. It seems as time goes on that both men and women are becoming more accepting of the opposite sex. Hopefully this can continue on to create gender equality in the workplace. 

“A Curriculum of United States Labor History for Teachers. .” Illinois Labor History Society 2006 11 Oct 2008 <

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm.  

Distelhorst, Daniel. “Dominance and Deference: Status Expectations of Men and Women.” The Diversity Factor 13(2005): 24-28.  

“Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony .” America’s Journal 2008 13 Oct 2008 <http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/activists/stanton/friends_1>. 

“Employment Non-Discrimination Act S. 1284/H.R. 2692” ACLU 26 FEB 2002 11 Oct 2008 <

http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/discrim/11853leg20020226.html>.  

“Failure Is Impossible!.” UUVWHS 1995 13 Oct 2008 <http://www.uuwhs.org/worfailure.php>.  

“Sexual Harassment.” The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 4 MAR 2008 15 Oct 2008 <http://www.eeoc.gov/types/sexual_harassment.html>. 

Siegelman, Peter. Shaky Grounds: The Case Against the case against Antidiscrimination Laws. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991.  

“Womens Rights – 1961 Eleanor Roosevelt is appointed to chair the commission on the Status of Women.” JusticeLearning 2007 11 Oct 2008 <http://www.justicelearning.org/justice_timeline/Issues.aspx?IssueID=13&TimelineID=54&TimelineEventID=190>.