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Gender Balance In The Workplace

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The development of women improving gender balance in the last few decades has made substantial progress. This advancement of gender equality can especially be realized in the growing involvement of women in the global labor force as women today, make up 40 percent of the global workforce (World Bank, 2012). Women’s entry to higher education and training are increasing every year (International Labour Organization, 2015; Wirth, 2001). Thus, providing several women with the required qualifications to aim for careers in senior management positions. However, women can be seen as being significantly under-represented at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Women hold just ‘24 percent of senior management roles globally’ (Grant Thornton, 2013: …show more content…
Women have a higher proportion of responsibilities of parenting duties in most dual parent homes and control the bulk of domestic tasks in single parent homes (Hoobler et al, 2011). Finding the right balance between commitments at home and work is challenging for women who carry larger portions of caregiver and family responsibilities. Therefore, moving ahead in the workplace hierarchy may be additionally difficult for women, as they attempt to undertake the needs of both their family and job (Wirth, 2001). Due to women’s domestic responsibilities at home it is commonly inferred that they will therefore have a smaller amount of time to dedicate to their career. As a result, women will fall flat of becoming the model employee, according to the way the working culture is organized; staying late at work, coming in early and devoting oneself to the company (Hoobler et al, 2011). This typical working arrangement forces women to choose between work and family. Many women have a strong commitment to their careers, but they are more likely to choose their family at the cost to their job (Slaughter, 2012). The extended hours required of senior management makes it nearly impossible to juggle family life with career, still the lack of available part-time or flexible work accessible to senior roles is infrequent (Wirth, 2001). In addition, the women who have the opportunity to work fewer hours may hinder their chances of future promotional opportunities since the males in the organization have invested more time to building their career (Wirth, 2001). According to Slaughter (2012), the timing sequence of when to have children is especially important as having children is seen as a disturbance to one’s career. These ‘disturbances’ tend to indicate to bosses that they may leave again, therefore are provided with less

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