Gender Disparities Research Paper

Running Head: Gender Disparities Towards Female Workers in El Paso

Gender Disparities Towards Female Workers in El Paso

Abstract
Women have struggled to have their voice heard and recognized for many century’s. All though we have come a long way from 200 years ago women in the work force still have obstacles of gender inequality that may need to be attended to at this time. Our research proposal aims to study the disparities, between several quantitative factors of the working women in the El Paso area and those of their male counterparts with a feminism perspective. These factors include pay, work hours and benefits. We will also attempt to qualitatively record some of these women’s personal feelings about their positions
Genders differences are considered in the work place in often unfortunate ways which can have a negative impact on the people towards whom they are aimed (Carlson & Crawford, 2011). This can cause discrimination against women in the workplace and have serious consequences to individuals. Martin (2003, 2006) explains that it constructs and maintains male privilege, and causes women to feel incompetent and devalued at work. Moreover, women may adopt masculine characteristics to get ahead in their jobs. Carlson and Crawford feel the problem is that “if women do not act according to stereotypes of femininity, it may cause a backlash, decreasing their standing in the organization even more” (p. 361). This is a very difficult position especially for women because gender roles are difficult to change or overcome in society. Even in terms of authoritative roles, both women and men tend to associate higher authoritative roles as something men belong to while women tend to act in roles requiring a lower level of authority (Nadler and Stockdale, 2012). At times, even women are not able to see how competent and valuable they are or can be in their workplace because gender roles are so instituted in society. The meanings that society associates to language affect men and women in their
The majority of professional jobs in the US and other developed nations comprise of mostly women (The Economist, 2009). There is a great success of women gaining equality in terms of pay and benefits in the lower and middle tier areas of management, however there is still a glass ceiling of equality for women in top tier managements. Chin (2011) provides insight into the roles that women have and the continuing struggle in terms of leadership opportunities. He talks about the conflicts between women and men in the professional world and how there is still a stigma when it comes to women in the position of leaders because they are still viewed as something of an irregularity. Chin (2011) mentions that women are not very prevalent in leadership roles in corporations, higher education and the political sector this has allot to deal with the issues of sexism in the workplace and how this affect women, along with this idea the differences between men and women as leaders and how their behavior differs from each other on their own perceived notation of leadership. With leadership struggles there comes the constant struggle between men and women. A study done by Carnes and Radojevichs (2011) states that 50% of low and middle tier managements and professional occupations are held by Females, but only 2% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are women (p.73). There is an obvious gap difference in the prevalence of