The Immortal Gender Stereotype and Its Implications on the Workplace

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The Immortal Gender Stereotype and Its Implications on the Workplace

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Sary Rizk (RIZS23119301)

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Falkenberg (1990) defined stereotype as “Within a social cognition framework, stereotype function to reduce information processing demands, define group membership and/or predict behavior based on group membership”. To simplify it more, it is the process in which we classify individuals into specific groups according to visible criteria, and in disregard to their true personality and traits (Falkenberg, 1990). Heilman and Eagle (2008) stated that the negative aspect of stereotype lead to antipathy and not discrimination. On the other hand, Falkenberg (1990) added that stereotyping is a neutral subconscious process that help us in analyzing and understanding our environmental information in an efficient and effective way. In addition, Deaux and Lewis (1984) extended our understanding of stereotype by saying that stereotype is a neutral view that emphasizes process and content rather than "rightness" and "wrongness" and instead of considering it as a negative prejudgment process that can be coming from a true state. Falkenberg (1990) explained why we consider stereotype as a negative aspect in our society. Stereotype is a source and an excuse for social injustice that come from little information, doesn’t change even if new information was presented and rare are the times when stereotype is accurately applied. We can consider that stereotype is like an umbrella that covers a cluster of information about one component that can influence the others (Deaux & Lewis, 1984). In addition, when we know the personality of a person, stereotype cannot affect our judgment anymore, in contrary to what other studies suggest.

Stereotypes can take many forms, but in this paper, we will describe Racial, Age and we will focus more on Gender stereotypes.

Racial Discrimination

Techniques to manager diversity and address racial discrimination are quickly becoming an essential practice in companies. This is particularly essential given that the diversity of the workforce is increasing and the proof that prejudice is ordinary inside workplace environments that is related with a scope of negative financial, social and wellbeing results (Lorbiecki & Jack, 2000).

Organizations are focusing on increasing workforce diversity because of the proven positive results that can yield to. A diverse workplace can increase employees work performance, increase creativity, increase teamwork, increase employees’ satisfaction and increase customer’s retention. On the other hand, racism in the workplace can yield to negative results such as low employee’s performance, higher turnover rates, increase the feeling of unfairness, increase stress and affect negatively the mental health of the employees which will also reduce employees creativity (Trenerry & Paradies, 2012). Diverse workplace can have highly positive effects on the organization, but bad diversity management and racial discrimination can also yield to highly negative effects on the organization’s performance. For this reason, companies are urged to find the appropriate solutions to cope with the changing nature of the workforce.

Age Discrimination

Moving to Age stereotype and discrimination in the workplace. The importance of studying and managing age stereotype, stems from the actual workforce state where it is aging in many developed countries and the need to keep them in order to achieve higher economic growth with the actual fast-changing business environment (Feyrer, 2007). Age discrimination and stereotype is growing, and it is disturbing our business and personal environment. Employers believe that older people:

• Have low work performance due to their age that can yield probably negative mental and physical health.
• They are resistant to change because they have been doing their work in a certain routine way since a long time ago and they are not compatible with the new emerging technologies that are conquering our workplace.
• Because of the fatigue that comes from the harsh life that old people might have lived, employers think that they don’t have the ability to learn new techniques because of their tendency to be more stubborn.
• Old employees do not yield to high ROI (return on investment) for the company because they have a shorter tenure. If a company invests in trainings, old employees will not be in the company long enough to benefit the company with these trainings.
• It has been believed that old employees have higher absenteeism rates, higher salaries, they get more benefits and are close to retirement which can increase the costs on the employer. (Posthuma & Campion, 2009)

Age stereotype can be done more subtlety than gender and race discrimination which calls to more research and corrective actions.

Gender Discrimination

In this section, we will focus on Gender discrimination specifically in the workplace. It’s been more than 35 years that equal pay and sex discrimination act has been applied in Britain and there is still lack of women’s representation in top positions, pay discrimination, glass ceiling, etc. Not only in Britain but all over the world (Charles & Aull Davies, 2000). Although studies have shown that women’s presence in executive positions can yield to positive effects on the companies. In a study done on the span of 19 years for 215 Fortune 500 companies, showed that 25 of the firms that have the highest representation of women in executive position showed more profitability than the other Fortune 500 companies. This is a proof that basing promotion decisions solely on performance regardless of the employee gender can yield to positive outcomes not only for the company but also an equal society. (Adler, 2001)

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Furthermore, women’s participation in labor force and executive roles, has increased from 33% in 1950 to 61% in 2010 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2010). But women are still doing most of domestic work and typically stereotyped as feminine jobs such as nurses, secretary, administrative work, school teaching, sales, etc. This means that even with such a visible increase, women are still undergoing gender stereotypes and discrimination in the workplace and in the society (Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011). Heilman (2001) said that women who hold a managerial positions are seen more skilled than women in general. But women holding executive positions are also seen less competent than men holding the same positions. By saying this, he agreed with Koenig & al (2011) that even with the success of women in management positions, it didn’t eliminate gender stereotypes against them.

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