Gender Diversity in Business: Exploring Its Meaning and Impact - Research Paper

Introduction

According to Kreitner (2001), diversity stands for the differences that exist in various individuals as well as the similarities that exist among them. Different business organization defined gender diversity through the focusing on attributes that are legally protected such as gender, race and age and the broader spectrum, which involves human difference that exist in the leadership of the different organization. To understand the meaning of gender diversity in business, the discussion was able to try and differentiate it with other related concepts such as government policies and programs such as affirmative action and equal employment opportunities. Therefore gender diversity differs from affirmative action in that affirmative action program tries to remedy the actions of discrimination that have taken place in the past (Dike, 2013). Affirmative action remedy is done through taking on proactive measures that are based on gender and race so as to prevent any future discrimination. Another related concept to business gender diversity is the equal employment opportunities which mainly ensures that decisions on employments such as pay, promotion, and hiring are not made regarding religion, color, sex, and national origin. Through the study of the relationship between affirmative action and policies such as the equal employment opportunities, it is clear that both focus on the legal protection of the organizational employees while gender diversity majorly focuses on the broad scope beyond the legal protection to a larger pool of difference within individuals in a business environment.

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Organizations differ in how they practice gender diversity in business operations. According to Foldy, (2004) Organizations in the public sector tend to be more ethnically and racially diverse as compared to the private sector the problem that had led to the challenge of enhancing group works heterogeneous effectively. This shows that the integration of people in the business environment is of greater importance since they affect the organization positively in that cultural identities can be taken as the sources for new ideas generation and work experience. According to Mazibuko & Govender (2017), gender diversity helps in the improvement of organizational effectiveness and performance. This is through the creation of room for appreciation, innovation, and creativity that helps the business function an edge to deal with diverse markets. The practice has been able to be effective in areas such as South Africa with a diverse population and when the people meet they bring a unique set of characteristics and through the socialization process the unique characteristics and knowledge are assimilated to be the culture of the organization.

Carlozzi, (1999) gave out various benefits of gender diversity in business, whereby he argues that organizations that balance up gender in the business bring valuable results during working in a wide spectrum of customers. At the same time, the possibility of business to expand through maintaining the role of ethics due to the practice of gender diversity is possible. This shows that gender diversity contributes to the uniqueness of the business operations since customers will be able to be served since the opposite genders will be able to describe more of the resource they have been used to without worry of their privacy (Herring, 2009). Gender diversity also is essential since a nation that does not consider gender diversity in the work environment will be going to lose half of the population talents and abilities which will affect the business function.

According to Avery & Tonidandel (2007), the presence of both women and men in the team helps the business benefit from the wide approaches and views that comes to different members experiences in the organization. This is because the multiplicity helps in sparking innovation and creativity. Through creativity and innovation, business functions seize and spot new opportunities. The positive results that accrue from gender diversity will be essential ion the challenging of gender stereotype by the activist that will help to foster for equality practices around the world. Also having both genders in the team helps foster collaboration as some gender have been gifted differently.According to Badran & Khalifa (2016), women have strong skills in non-verbal cues reading than men. It also helps, in turn, making through the sharing of ideas; therefore, knowledge can be easily be shared.

Companies that practice gender diversity attract investors since it signals out that the company is competent and well-run. Moreover, businesses that investors favor practice diversity due to diverse hiring that will affect the jump in stock prices in case of award-winning related to initiative diversity. Therefore an investment in gender diversity has been taken as an instrumental activity to be practiced in the business environment.

Conclusion

In the review of the gender diversity literature, gender diversity plays a more significant role in the acceptance of the individual differences as well as observing the ethical rules and policies. In the greater contest, gender diversity has been an instrumental aspect in both the public and the private sector, even though in the discussion, the private sector is still lagging in practice. The business has been beneficial through the practice has it has improved collaboration, attract investors and innovation that helps jump in stock prices in the business entity.

References

Avery, D. R., McKay, P. F., Wilson, D. C., & Tonidandel, S. (2007). Unequal attendance: The relationships between race, organizational diversity, cues, and absenteeism. Personnel Psychology,60(4),875-902.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1744 6570.2007.00094.x

Badran, N., & Khalifa, G. (2016). Diversity Management: Is it an Important Issue in Hotel Industry in Egypt?. International Journal of Heritage, Tourism, and Hospitality, 7(2). Retrieved from http://journals.fayoum.edu.eg/index.php/Tourism/article/view/85

Carlozzi, C. L. (1999). Diversity is good for business. Journal of Accountancy, 188(3), 81.

Dike, P. (2013). The impact of workplace diversity on organizations. Retrieved from https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63581/Thesisxx.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Foldy, E. G. (2004). Learning from diversity: A theoretical exploration. Public Administration Review, 64(5), 529-538 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00401.x

Herring, C. (2009). Does diversity pay?: Race, gender, and the business case for diversity. American Sociological Review, 74(2), 208-224. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000312240907400203

Kreitner, R. (2001). The Gift beyond the Grave: Revisiting the Question of Consideration. Columbia Law Review, 101(8), 1876. doi:10.2307/1123710

Mazibuko, J. V., & Govender, K. K. (2017). Exploring workplace diversity and organizational effectiveness: A South African exploratory case study. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 15, 10. (2017). workplace diversity.