Gender Discrimination in the Australian Workplace Essay

Gender equality in Australia as a nation is mixed. The Australian population has realized high achievement in the education sector. However, the country's performance in the Global Gender Gap Index is relatively low. The involvement of women in the Nation's economic growth lags behind in relation to the participation of women in other countries. Despite the progress of the Australian people in education attainment, women representation in various industries is still low. For instance, science, technology, engineering and math are fields which are still experiencing male domination. On the other hand, men also reveal under-representation in female-dominated economic sectors. The women dominated include small business enterprises such as retail, hospitality, and eldercare.

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The gender imbalances in the Australian workplaces are controversial to the fact that the country serves as a member to various human rights treaties. For instance, Australia is a member to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAWA). CEDAWA has the role of providing legal structure for the enhancement and accomplishment of human rights for women. Despite the membership to the numerous conventions on gender balance, current studies reveal that gender segregation is still common and the reduction is still low. Reports from recent research further indicate that various male dominated sectors show a decrease in the representation of women. Although there has been an increase in the key management responsibilities held by women workers, a majority of the senior roles are given to the male employees. The representation of women cuts across all sectors of the Australian labor market such as the public, the private and the community fields. The under-representation of the women in the country's employment sectors is a clear implication that the gender disparity is still persistent.

In addition to the gender representation at the workplace, there is a gap in the choice of women and men for certain responsibilities. Job allocation in several industries depends on the structural arrangement of the management. Majority of the female employees' posses' administrative functions while their male counterparts get operational roles in certain sectors of the economy. Such responsibility allocations imply that the society perceives women as ineffective in performing some duties and as such, the executives allocate such roles to the men. There was a period where several groups of the Australian job applicants had strong desire to occupy positions in the male-dominated sectors. The effort to reduce gender gap in responsibilities, however, rely upon the employers as it is their role to advertise, hire and set work schedules. The women verses the male segregation remains persistent since a majority of the employers channel the women to casual and temporary responsibilities while assigning permanent duties to the male applicants.

Conclusion

The government and other organizations strive to reduce gender discrimination that occurs in various sectors of employment. In my own understanding, I perceive that gender equality shall remain unachievable due to various factors that relate to the female employees. The representation is likely to reduce when the women get children. Segregation may also arise when the female workers get pregnant or during their maternity leave. Some of the women in Australia play a role in unpaid domestic activities especially children and other dependant individuals.