Women In The Workforce Sociology Essay

Women In The Workforce Sociology EssayIt has been argued that, women bewilder been excluded from the study of workplace, and that, when they argon studied, the analysis has often been distorted by finishist assumptions (Acker, 1977 Ackerand Van Houten, 1974 Brown, 1976 Kanter, 1975, 1977 Oakley, 1974). Prior to the industrial revolution, the family economy operated as a cohesive unit typically all family members, regard slight of age or sex activity, were engaged in productive labour (Tilly and Scott, 1978). abandoned sexualityed expectations, along with a gendered opportunity structure (Browne and England, 1997), we, therefore, assume thatWomen would benefit from arrangements providing the al to the spiritedest degree family-related resources andSupports in terms of both scotch capital (e.g. income, security) and social capital (e.g. less fourth dimension on the job, a supportive supervisor). Wethington and Kessler (1989) found women with high employment commitments were to a greater extent defenceless to distress (see overly Mirowsky, 1996). Nowadays women have more granting immunity in choosing the path for their future and they whitethorn decide whether or not to combine c beer with having children. Womens increase sh be of the labour force has prompted vocationes to respond to their family needfully by providing flexi prison term, or flexible work schedules (Wiatrowski, 1990). Bergmann 1986 highlights that middle class women argon having fewer children their labour force battle is now less responsive to their fructify in the family cycle. In fact as verbalise by Robinson, 1988 Women still do very much more housework and family c argon than men, provided the hours women spend do these duties have been declining, particularly among younger women. The entrance of women of all ages into the labour force in the second half of the twentieth century has created another period of structural lag (Moen and Yu, 2000). merely although there has been effort done to increase diversity, female employees still face the glass capital when it comes to the crimp management jobs. The glass ceiling is according to Maume,2004 a failure of women or a certain minority groups in climbing up the corporate ladder, despite seeing the top jobs but still not reaching them collect to the discriminatory barriers.The expectations from the womens family and from the society may sometimes affect the decisions of women in their c beer objectives which may act as a barrier. The society sometimes treats women differently. Sometimes often careers are cut short because of for instance maternity leave which takes women out of the workplace for months at a time where the community needs to move on. However, over the last years there was a change in the perspective that women are not as efficacious as men and this was highlighted in the Economist Men -Tomorrows second sex. A One Chief Executive Officer of a large Mauritian multi-national state d recently Women have done truly well here and moved on. Ive never come across sexist views. There are some really good assertive women mapping lessons here. Women want to progress and peoples attitudes have changed.Women in hospitalityWoods and Viehland (2000) found that although practitioners and researchers were concerned with females status in hotel management, only a few empirical studies examined this topic. Whether the issue has been scrupulously studied or not, relevant literature clarified that it was widely debated (Mann and Seacord, 2003 Del Sesto, 1993). In UK, the tourism celestial sphere was one of the field of operations where there was the fastest growth and in the 80s trine quarter of this growth was womens who were the most represented mainly in partime jobs ,insecure, low status and clerical post. upstart years have seen an emergence of studies that explore mobility, the situation of women in the labor force and the expansion of the internationally hospital ity workforce (Baum et al,2007 Devin,Baum,Hearns,Devine2007a,2007bMatthewRuhs,2007).Today tourism presents both the opportunities and challenges for gender equality and womens empowerment. (Global describe on women in tourism 2010). Females contribute a of import proportion of the labor force in several countries awareness of the factors and the constraints that business leader affect their participation is increasingly required for their managers ( Burrel et al, 1997). The participation and involvement of women in tourism celestial sphere is being encouraged and womens participation has increased directly and indirectly in tourism industriousness also Boxall and Purcell,2003 states that the career ladder within hotels is predicated on the conventional employment models of continuous employment and linear progression.(Bagulley, 1990, Hicks 1990 Jordon 1997 Wood 1992) rate that the tourism and hospitality sphere of influences are dominated by women and managed by men in fact it is very common as the service sector is largely populated by women and they are more present especially at the turn down train. Women are important to the hospitality labour trade ( Doherty 1997).In numerous of the literature review it has been observed and declared by many authors that women are key participants in the tourism labour market ( Ashley,Roe and Goodwin 2001Jameison 2003) ,although there is a notion that women feed to be disadvantaged in this sector as few women occupy the senior executive positions and those that do receive less pay ( Iverson,2000 Jordon 1997 Ng and Pine 2003 Skalpe,2007 Zhong and Couch,2007). However, we can put forward assertion was that girls are now outperforming boys at every(prenominal) level in school and closing the gap at university level. Women in fact predominate in the growing service sector, while men are trapped in declining heavy industries the sugar industry is an ensample (In Mauritius) and that employed men are no lo nger attractive marriage partners. (Tulsidas Naraidoo, 2011)It has been found that women are more likely to fill part time partings , 54% of female work in the sector work part time, compared to 46% of man-according to women case for change-executive summary 2010. Beyond the rapidly increasing numbers of female submission the workplace (Mc Dougal Briley 1994), we cannot neglect womens contribution in tourism development as for instance nowadays the proportion of women graduated in the sector is increasing at a rapid rate. Women are acknowledged as key participants in the tourism labor market (Ashley, Roe and Goodwin 2001 Jamieson 2003).According to Kate Purcell the womens jobs fall predominantly three categoriesContingently- gendered jobs which happen to be mainly done by women but for which the demand for labour is gender-neutral.Women work in much(prenominal) jobs as a result of employers interest group of economic advantage rather than gendered preferences they want cheap role players, and women particularly, married women seeking part time work have historically been available for employment for lower average rates of pay than men partly reflecting their status as component rather than breadwinner. Crompton and Sanderson8, pp. 155-8sextyped jobs, where sexuality or other attributes assumed to be sex-related are explicit or implicit parts of the job specificationIn the hospitality industry it is a clich that the right kind of personality is a more important employment prerequisite than formal qualifications13,14. Where Filbys16 finding that personality tends to be used as a synonym for sexual attractiveness and/or gender-specific mum skills and attributes. He was told by a male manager he interviewed that recruitment of female staff was informed by a height for weight regulation It has been noted that for some front house jobs it is essential to have a certain type of woman which, when pressed, he defined as ideally surrounded by 21 and 26, wi th long legs and a good figure. This is because the the customers expect it. This remark was highlighted by many other authors as Adkins 17, p. 109).oldly-prescribed jobs where patriarchal practice determines and prescribes appropriate job incumbency.Patriarchal prescriptions, though, is a distinct and equally powerful tendency, deriving from largely unarticulated understandings that male dominance in the home and in the public sphere and womens settlement are normal and that these norms derive from natural differences between the sexes.Bell and Newby have identified that there is thee is the deferential dialect between male and female often, as reinforcing womens economic dependency on men by providing opportunities for component waged jobs10 which the HCTC3, p. 37 note, without irony, appeal to women who wish to combine the opportunity to earn an income with their domestic responsibilities. The more higher level and very well paid the post is, the more likely it will be filled by a man, even though , women may be greater in number in the industry.Gender roles play a great role for womens low involvement in direct tourism business in one hand and on the other hand many employers of this sector think that women cannot continue the job due to their social and biological productive responsibilities. Such attitude of the employers about women may be due to the discriminative nature of the patriarchal system of the society.Tourism provides good opportunities for female employees contribution and participation in the tourism employment. Womens entrepreneurship as well as their leadership is important. Female employee in the tourism sector earn low pay and they are sometimes under utilised and under represented. However tourism offers positive pathways to the female success in tourism.The global physical composition on women in tourism 2010 by UNWTO and UNIFEM (now UN Women) findings were as follows1. Women ferment up a large proportion of the formal tourism wor kforce.2. Women are well represented in service and clerical level jobs but poorly represented at professional person levels.3. Women in tourism are typically earning 10% to 15% less than their male counterparts.4. The tourism sector has almost twice as many women employers as other sectors.5. One in five tourism ministers worldwide are women.6. Women make up a much higher proportion of own-account workers in tourism than in other sectors.7. A large amount of unpaid work is being carried out by women in family tourism businesses.Research indicates that religion, culture, and society can influence womens employment (Constance 2005 Feldmann 2007 Foroutan 2008 necessitate and Oselin 2008 Read 2004) and also a good example is in the mount of Malaysia, Amin and Alam (2008) also found that religion significantly influenced a womans decision regarding employment. However religion may not be the only factor discouraging women of working in hotels but also poor employee facilities and the absence of childcare facilities available in the country (Dayal and Didi 2001).2.2.1 Women contribution to the hospitality industryWomen are acknowledged as key participants in the tourism labor market(Ashley, Roe and Goodwin 2001 Jamieson 2003).The tourism sector is very labour intensive it provides different jobs opportunities from high skilled jobs to unskilled jobs. However Women are often concentrated in low status, low paid and precarious jobs in tourism industry as quoted in the global report on women in tourism 2010. According to Garavan etal., 2006Woods and Viehland, 2000, senior managers are predominantly male women middle managers are in housekeeping, front desk, personnel and cookery and conference and banqueting, whereas male managers are in finance and control, property and security and purchasing the latter more likely to lead to the general managers job also as stated in the report of the fifth UNWTO international conference on tourism statistics the apparent rate of women in the sector seems also to be related to the cultural issues, especially for employment in housekeeping, laundry, food preparation, guest services and so on. Many countries have a high presence of the womanly labour force in tourism this is because of the high demand of unqualified workers, especially for young women. Initially in the other hand females describe themselves much less satisfied than males in the hospitality sector. In America more than 50 % of the people who are employed in the tourism sector are women. According to Edgell, one in every fifteen people all over the world is employed in tourism sector and half of them are women. In the third world women constitute the basement of employment in tourism sector because they may work part-time, seasonally and without full salary. However, the industry plays a very important role for the education and independence of women. Since tourism is a hospitality industry, the role of women is looked upon as significant and the trend of women participation is considerably increased since the mid of 70s. According to World Tourism Organization, in tourism business 51 percent are women (MOT/UNDP, 2006).Barriers face by female employees in hotels blush though women are important for the tourism sector, barriers to the advancement of female employees continue to persist literature has singled out societys stamps and prejudices against women in positions of power (Catalyst, 2002, 2005). In fact a number of possible barriers to womens career advancement have been identified (Brownell 1993), includingthe glass ceiling based on gender favouritismlack of role modelsan absence of mentoring opportunitiesexclusion from daily networksgender discrimination and sexual harassment(Knutson and Schmigdall, 1999)From Richard Martell and Christopher Parker view it is stereotype which acts as a major barrier to women, they stated that women lack characteristics most needed to succeed and consequently were often judged to be less qualified than men.However from the executive summary of the case for change Women working in hospitality, leisure, run short and tourism 2010, identify five other key barriers which according to them appear to be most significant in preventing women advancement to senior roles in the sectorthe difficulty of combining work at senior roles with caring responsibilitiesa dominant masculine organisational culturepreconceptions and gender biaslack of networking and exclusion from informal networks of communicationLack of visible women in senior positions.What can be noted is that all the authors writings upon the barriers that stop women advancements are quite the same basically. It gibe in the sense that for example the lack of example of women at senior post, the stereotype at work or even the lack of networking. There is a serious need today to establish what kinds of work women may perform and if there are any barriers to their full integration and to identify policies and practices which might be helpful for employers who wished to make better use of their female workforce. (Tulsidas Naraidoo, 2011). ). However Woods and Kavanaugh (1994) according to whom gender discrimination was an invisible barrier that kept women from reaching top positions in many management circlesThere are other barriers identified also for instance Other authors have cited the old boy network (Brownell, 1994a Diaz and Umbreit, 1995) Women may have to work twice as hard and do twice as good a job in order to warrant a promotion (Brownell, 1994b, Gregg and Johnson, 1996). Moreover Sekam 2000 sited that for family reason as well as organisational demands become to both working women and their organisation that fail to tap the full potential of undergo women thereby becoming less productive themselves. Family constraints is another barrier that women can faced it can be perceived ad a function of a females commitment to and actual involvement in duties associated with parental ,marital and homemaker roles on one hand and the amount of support she receives from her spouses and relatives on the other ( Chin-Ching 1992).Sometimes in some countries in hotel industry part-time or of informal work is the flexibility it can give to women who may be required to spend more time working in the home (with family or care responsibilities). (ILO report). On the other hand some research indicates that religion, culture, and society can influence womens employment (Constance 2005 Feldmann 2007 Foroutan 2008 Read and Oselin 2008 Read 2004).2.3.1 Segregation in the hospitality industryThe theories of occupational segregation on womens employment were first presented in depth by Hakim (1992). In fact the tourism industry has shown a wide adoption of segregational occupation (Crompton and Sunderson 1990). In the industry women frequently carry out the most undesirable and utmost status work ( Adid and Guerrier 2003 Korczynski 2002) Many authors have identified the factors which contribute to the professional marginalisation of women. The interlinked factors include gender stereotyping ( Heilman,2001) a lack a role model , mentors and peers for women in the workplace ( Noe,1988) and the glass ceiling ( Davidson and Cooper,1992 Reich 1995).Problems of gender domination include women workers crowded into a narrow range of jobs, lack opportunities for promotion and development and scant(predicate) opportunity to develop a broad range of skills (Gardner and Plamer 1997 Haganand Jensen 1998). The Global report on women in tourism 2010, states that gender stereotyping and discrimination means that women mainly tend to perform job such as cooking, cleaning and hospitality.Vertical and Horizontal sex segregation has been shown to exist in the hotel industry ( Ludkins 1999). As in most organisations and occupations, there are male and female occupational groups vertically and horizontally segregated throughout large hospitality organizations and hotels thems elves, reflecting economic and power differences. Many studies of gender segregation have focused on international country comparisons (Jensen et al., 1988, OECD, 1999) and industry and cross sectoral comparisons (Game and Pringle, 1983 Pringle, 1988).Segregation by gender results in individual costs to women workers in terms of narrower range of employment choices and opportunities along with lower pay but there are also broader economic and social costs. It is contended that gender segregation of the workforce inhibits flexibility in responding to pressures of structural adjustments and prevents expanding national skills bases resulting in a less competitive economy. (OECD, 1991)The sexual division of labour resulting in the domination of industry sectors, organisations and professional by one gender is argued to be a major factor shaping workplace relations. (Game and Pringle, 1983 Burton, 1991)In general, gender inequality in the labour market is closely connected to educational and professional, both vertical and horizontal, segregation. The labour market is divided into womens jobs and mens jobs, and women find it hard to access managerial posts. (HCT ILO REPORT). Stockdale (1991, p.57) has defined occupational sex segregation as existing where the jobs, that women do are different from those done by men ( horizontal segregation) and women work at lower levels than men in the occupational hierarchy ( vertical segregation).It is still the case that relatively few women achieve management roles in the service areas and as a consequence few make to general management positions. This segregation within the management ranks impacts adversely on the pay of women managers and their influence in this field. Tulsidas Naraidoo, 2011.2.3.2 Sexual issues in hotels.Urrys18 observation that such the service and commercial industry involve the sale of an experience, where the quality of the social interaction, including the visual presentation of interactive service wo rkers, is an intrinsic part of the service itself. If women are routinely seen as (indeed, employed as) sex objects, what implications does this have for their career development opportunities, as individuals and as a category? Interactive service jobs in hospitality, tourism and leisure, exemplify occupations where gender (and indeed, sexuality) are explicit aspects of the job. In fact tourism is associated with freedom and relaxation that have traditionally been visualized in marketing and PR with images of attractive young women. (HCT ILO REPORT). Woods and Cavanaugh (1999) stated that almost one-quarter of both males and females agreed that most women in the hospitality industry had been subjected to sexual harassment at work. The ILO report that women are, more often than men, faced with precarious types of jobs, violence at work, stress and sexual harassment. It is a fact that when working in the hotel industry the service worker must be socially attractive and friendly with t he customer . An author even gave an example of a young girl who was told on starting waitress to wear her skirt as short she would feel comfortable.The main characteristics of the sexual issues are obviously the sexual harassment on the place of work that is at the hotels. Woods and Kavanagh (1994) found that hospitality managers perceive sexual harassment to be pervasive within the industry.In many customer contact roles in the service sector, amorousness is a part of the role itself, the job flirt is encouraged as a part of the service style (Hall, 1993) and there may be a thin line between selling the service and selling sexuality. The hospitality industry can be susceptible of having incidents odf sexual harassment due to the ambiguity of hospitality service , that is , the odd working hours as well as the conditions of work.2.3.3 The gender role stereotyping perspective in hotels.Stockdale (1991, p.57) assumption about the segregation and stereotype the assumption that peop le in particular jobs and the jobs themselves have the characteristics of only one gender. Women in the hospitality industry are widely employed in mercenary jobs for their nurturing and/or sexual attributes. Moreover differential treatment of women has been reported in recruitment, pay and career development prospects (Brown, 1979). The reason for the different treatment is the gender role stereotyping perspective. In fact women have been socialized to adopt attitudes and behavior that are in conflict with the demands of a successful managerial career (Schein, 1973, 1975 Terborg, 1977).Sinclair (1997) found that women have been excluded from some occupations within the tourism industry due to traditional ideologies of gender and social sexuality which is very stereotyped.Stereotyping can have negative impacts to womens advancement in the workplace, since negative stereotypes of women influence how their workers perceive them, how their other colleagues perceive their work, their s election for further training and development, and finally, the rapid pace they move in their career. Athought there are such stereotyping in the industry, studies show that female students are more committed to careers in hospitality and tourism and seem to better fit success in this sector than do their male classmates and colleagues (Kuslavan and Kuslavan, 2000 Burke et al., 2008). The female employees must be able of wearing two different hats one at work and one at home2.3.4 Breaking of the looking glass Ceiling in the Hospitality industry.The term was earlier used by Morrison et al. (1987) in their fascinating book Breaking the Glass Ceiling Can Women Reach the Top of Americas Largest Corporations? That gave new insight to the issues women face in their journey through the executive echelons of the corporate organizations and Maume 2004, stated that glass ceiling is the failure of women and other minority groups in climbing up the corporate ladder, despite seeing the top job s, but still not reaching them due to discriminatory barriers, is what many think of as glass ceiling. There have been many studies about the breaking of glass ceiling of women in each and every industry. Cotter et al. (2001) profound description of the term as a specific form of generic inequality existing at the apex of hierarchy contradicts others (Reskin and Padavic, 2001 Maume, 2004) claiming its earthly concern in lower levels and working class jobs.Cotter et al. (2001) three criteria for the glass ceiling occurrence suggest that it occurs when despite similar credentials women (and minorities) face barriers in their career advancements, it also occurs when due to limited promotional prospects women are discouraged from the initial placement on the job ladder, thus raising mens numbers to detain till the top levels and lastly, while organizations may be willing to pay out high salaries to women, they still hesitate to place them in positions where they can make an impact on organizations profitability, therefore, glass ceiling is created.The glass ceiling as in every industry affected also women in the hospitality industry. It has been highlighted by many authors that the industry is a female dominated industry however it is manage by men. Among the reasons for the glass ceiling phenomenon such as the lack of role models, mentoring, networking options, and the complexities of the dual role as working woman and housekeeper (Crampton and Mishra, 1999), literature has singled out societys stereotypes and prejudices against women in positions of power (Catalyst, 2002, 2005). According to Frank (2006 do find evidence that risible/bisexual men suffer from glass ceilings comparable to those faced by heterosexual women (p. 485). Existing management resistance must be offset by the multiplier effect of more female role models advancing beyond the glass ceiling.2.3.5 The promotion issues in hotels.Like the retail services, tourism and hospitality are sectors wh ich are highly dominated by women however managed by men (Bagguley, 1990 Hicks, 1990 Jordon, 1997 Wood, 1992) Sometimes men get more privileged than women these differentials were reinforced by differences in fringe benefits, with men in the commercial hospitality sector significantly more likely than women to be entitled to valuable perks such as company cars, free or subsidized meals, low-cost housing, private health insurance, company share ownership schemes and product discounts. . Many authors tend to attribute the finding that males are promoted more frequently and rapidly than equally qualified females to the influence of gender based stereotypes (Owen and Todor, 1993 Cordano et al., 2002 Tomkiewicz et al., 2004). The hospitality business, therefore, provides fewer opportunities for promotion that are sufficient to meet the expectations of females (McCuddy et. al., 2010).2.3.5.1 Women in management level in HotelsLudking (1999) notes the lack of women in general manger positi ons despite the high percentage of women in college and university hospitality programs. Although women are now graduating in higher numbers than men from educational institutions (Fagenson and Jackson, 1994) and more women are entering the paid workforce (Hind and Baruch, 1997) and taking up managerial roles (Parker and Fagenson, 1994), the poor representation of women at senior management level continues.Pursuing a managerial career in every industry requires skills and competencies imparted to men as a social group. Employees and managers guardianship this type of stereotypic view are likely to perceive women as ineffective managers in job positions incongruent with females more traditionally passive gender role. (Schein, 1973, 1975, 1978 Rosen and Jerdee, 1974 Powell and Butterfield, 1979 Brenner et al., 1989 Schein et al., 1989 Schein and Mueller, 1992 Schein et al., 1996 Heilman et al., 1995 Powell et al., 2002). It is not hard to find in the western context where patterns of gender inequality persist in leadership positions even with womens increasing visibility in the lower echelons of management (Weyer, 2007). Ezell et al. (1981) measuring the effects of having being supervised by a woman on perceptions of female managerial competence found significant differences only in the area of the motivation of a woman to manage. In the present study, direct contact could not help in suppressing gender stereotypes. By June 1996 only three of 72 Hong Kong Hotels had female general managers (Pine 1997). Womans desire for advancement into a senior-level leadership position becomes more difficult because of the prevalent traditional role assumptions (Schaap et. al., 2008). Moreover, research conducted in the U.S.A. indicates that, even in America, a disproportionate low number of highly educated females attain executive status in the industry (Li and Leung, 2001). The career ladder within hotels is predicated on the conventional employment models of continuous emp loyment and linear progression (Boxall and Purcell, 2003). Some literatures state that the recruitment and selection processe may not be transparent. Both may be likened to an invisible web that works against women (Green and Cassell, 1996 Lan and Wang Leung, 2001 Rees and Garnsey, 2003).2.4.1 Harassment at workAn additional negative aspects to womens work in hotels is that they are subject to high level of sexual harassment from both guests and peers due to their low status and low-educational levels ( Poulston 2008). Research by Eller (1990) cl wee indicates that more men and women experience sexual harassment in the hotel industry than do individuals in society-at-large. Today in many hotels there are a high level of female employee of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.2.5 Inequality issues in hotels.Research shows the different ways in which tourism can contribute to economic growth, poverty reduction and community development. However, less attention has been paid to the unequal ways in which the benefits of tourism are distributed between men and women, particularly in the developing world. Gladys Acosta, UN Women Director for Latin America of the newly-establish UN agency UN Women, pointed out that womens contribution to the tourism sector is often invisible. According to Purcell and Quinn (1998) that it is a fact that in the early career stages, female hospitality graduates received lower pay, fewer fringe benefits and less intrinsic job satisfaction. However Woods and Kavanaugh (1994) according to who gender discrimination was an invisible barrier that kept women from reaching top positions in many management circles. There also continues to be wide discrepancies in remuneration between the genders (Mun oz-Bullo n 2009 Tugores 2008. The hospitality sector has an important role it should respect the equality of men and women they should promote human rights and more particularly the individual rights of the most vulnerable groups, notably chi ldren, the elderly, the handicapped, ethnic minorities and indigenous people. ILO report (Development and challenges in the hospitality and tourism sector 2010). Kinnaird and Hall (1994) comment that women fulfill the majority of jobs in tourism, especially those which are poorly paid, low skilled and part-time also it is to be noted that in the tourism sector unskilled or semi-skilled women tend to work in the most vulnerable jobs, where they are more likely to experience poor working conditions, inequality of opportunity and treatment, violence, exploitation, stress and sexual harassment. (ILO ) Carli and Eagly (2001) observe that, although womens status has modify remarkably in the twentieth century in many societies, women continue to lack access to power and leadership compared with men (p. 629).