Women in Workplaces: Tackling Inequality Through Transparency and Accountability - Essay Sample

Introduction

Inequality has been one of the main challenges that have gotten thought to affect most of the women in workplaces. To tackle the issue, the policymaker needs to ensure practices regarding payment are transparent to all workers, the process of decision-making in pay should get disclosed to increase accountability, all employers should get made to provide full details for any payment decision they make. Additionally, workers should get given a free platform in case they want to enquire about anything regarding their pay. The policymakers should also ensure they discover any barriers that various diverse groups face. There should be equal treatment in the workplace where workers performing the same tasks in varying settings should get equal pay, and workers should be empowered, among others. The study of this paper is limited to finding solutions to the pay inequality problem that affects most workplaces today. The main issue here is to develop new methods that get thought to bring equity among employees.

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There is much substantial evidence of women getting unfair treatment in the workplace. For instance, a restaurant in Alabama paid the men workers more than women, although they were performing the same jobs and performed an almost equal amount of tasks. Male workers were even said to get the most preferred schedules and assignments than females. A cloth manufacturing company in Texas had two male directors who were in charge of the operations. It happened that one left, and the female got chosen to replace him. Instead of the woman getting offered the same amount of salary that the directors were getting offered, her salary was slashed by 30% without her consent. There is also a case that happened in Florida where a woman got denied a chance to apply for a well-paying job in the name that that kind of job got exclusively meant for men. The woman got told that the job was unfit for women since it was involved with many travels that would make them neglect their roles as wives. These are some of the stories that get heard in most of the workplaces where most workers, mainly women, feel they are paid less than men despite them performing the same type of tasks.

However, when such cases occur, the discriminated employees have a right to press charges against their employers and get compensated for their money stolen (Gwartney-Gibbs 264). It is thus unfortunate that most employees keep their salary a secret that others fail to know what they earn. Other times employees think when they complain about their pay, they would be risking their jobs and thus opt to suffer silently. In the end, they get to lose the hard-earned money that they could use to support and improve their families.

Most nations, such as the United States, are committed to implementing fairness and equality in workplace pay. That has failed to get achieved due to the disparities that have continued to get witnessed in women's salaries. The discrepancies have thus affected their financial stability and economic security. The gender pay gap is what most people have pointed out to be the reason for inequality in pay. The recent pay gap between men and women is 21 cents, i.e., per 1 dollar paid to a man; women get paid 79 cents for the same job (DeLauro 9). In the United States, black women get paid as low as 60 cents for the same type of job (DeLauro 10). However, the policymakers have been doing their best to ensure there is fairness in the workplace pay, but their efforts have seemed to bear no fruits.

To effectively improve the underlying problem of inequality in workplaces, policymakers like the commission body of US dealing with equal employment opportunity need to get rid of the wage gap policy which seems to discriminate against women, policy on fair pay should get implemented, and some measures taken to whoever tries to go against the policy. Pay discrimination should get combated to ensure fairness (Eisenberg, 18). To achieving that, the policymakers, i.e., the commission body of dealing with equal employment opportunities, get needed to have a clear understanding of the problems at hand, and try to develop effective solutions. They must also be willing to generate new reforms that focus on the actual needs of families, which is much attainable.

To make any progress regarding disparities in pay, a good understanding of the pay wage gap, and equal pay for the same work is needed. The two terms must be differentiated well, and the concept behind them understood. The principle of equal pay for the same work gets used to underpin the equality concept in payment. There are some laws of federal employment like an Act of equal pay, which prohibit discrimination among worker's pay. The 1963 EPA also supports equality for all genders in terms of pay (Chandler 914). The principle of pay wage gap among gender, on the contrary, provides the difference that is in men's and women's earnings.

Many factors are said to contribute to this concept, like seniority, working hours, education differences, experience, and discrimination. How the two principles are work in the actual world portrays the various challenges in addressing them. The objective of ensuring there is equal pay in the workplace by eliminating any form of discrimination remains hard. Most employees complain of having less access to information regarding payment (Conry 73). There have been various efforts policymakers have been using to address the two principles but in vain. The policymaker, despite them being at the forefront of advocating for equal pay in the workplace, they fail to agree on the needed steps to be taken to help curb the issue.

There are, however, many competing views from their side regarding the wage gap among gender and equality in pay. Some individuals argue that there should be little focus on the issue of equality since the existing disparities in pay are explainable (Conry 72). The explanation is that the gaps are brought up by choices women make, women spend more hours out of the workplace and work for fewer hours as compared to men. On that basis, they argue that those factors contribute much to disparities and why women receive low wages. Therefore, it becomes unnecessary for them to raise the earnings of women in the workplace since it results from their choices. The laws for advocating for equality in workplace pay have thus lacked any impact in doing so since the whole idea has been made pointless by how the courts interpret the cases.

To respond to the challenges of equal pay, the commission body dealing with equal employment opportunity has passed two bills, i.e., the Act of fairness in paycheck and Act of fair pay. The bills, however, have been reported to support discrimination instead of improving the situation. For instance, the Act of fairness in paycheck gets thought to place more emphasis on other main problems rather than solving the equality issue (Iverson 33). The bill gets believed to reinforce the defenses that are there for employers, for example, those enquiring them to pay employees only for business-related tasks, report their data involved in payment to officials regularly, and prohibit any form of violence in cases where an employee raises concerns with their pay.

Statement of Policy

To change and improve the current situation, the commission body dealing with equal employment opportunity is responsible for ensuring the wage gap between genders gets eliminated, and each employee secures equal pay. To help curb the issue, various steps need to be taken by the commission body which includes fighting against discrimination in the workplaces, inflate wages in occupations with lowest wages, advocate for paid leaves for the women in which enable them to be able to continue taking care of their family even when on leave among others (Iverson 35).To achieve this, the policy commission body needs to adapt to new policies that can get implemented to make equality in pay work. The new policies are as illustrated below.

Steps to Be Taken

Promote Transparency in Workplaces Pay Practices

In most cases, workers encounter some barriers while trying to display pay disparities and illegal practices. There are also some workplaces where employees get prohibited from speaking or discussing anything to do with pay. Thus it gets quite hard for them to spot any problem when it happens. Additionally, it has been a custom to negotiate and discuss pay matters in closed doors where there is minimal visibility (Alkadry and Tower 888). However, adopting certain protections that try to discourage secrecy and make the employees have the freedom to discuss their pay with the absence of them fearing to get caught would aid in eliminating inequality issues in payment. It is so because, when the employees get given the freedom to discuss pay, employers would be cautious not to pay some little amount than others (Parcheta et al. 240). However, the policymakers should be strict and ensure all employers get to follow and obey these laws without any extinctions.

Promote Accountability in Pay Disclosure

When policies that uphold accountability for any decision regarding pay an employer makes get put into place, employers get to review and be extra vigilant on pay practices. In cases where any disparities in pay get noted, the employers should be answerable to the commission body. Consistency and uniformity in workplace pay should be maintained by all employers to help cut-off the pay gap (Heilman and Caleo 88). To ensure the two get attained, employers should get made to report the pay data to the officials of the commission body regularly or should get prepared to include initial salary while advertising for job vacancies. By doing so, employers will be made more accountable for their pay practices by initiating benchmarks and clear guidelines that get to use in the evaluation process.

Pay Decisions Should Be Job-Related

The commission body policies should limit employers on making pay decisions that are not job-related. Employers may, at times, be opportunistic and try to take advantage of the organization's money. They may take advantage and issue extra pay to some individuals that are not job-related, which may lead to disparities (Gutek 46). For instance, an employer may consider the employee's previous salary to allocate them higher pay than the rest. In such a case, the previous wage has nothing to do with the current job qualification and thus results in pay disparities. The commission body can address these type of problems by placing strict rules and policies which prohibit acts that may result in pay disparities. Only current job roles should be considered while allocating for pay.

Worker’s Protection Against Adverse and Retaliation Actions

Workers should get given the freedom to inquire anything they wish to regard their pay without them getting penalized when they get caught discussing it. There are some existing laws such as the regulations Act of national labor that discourage and prohibit workers from discussing their pay, and thus bypassing the policies may get eliminated (Gutek 46). However, the policymakers should establish new policies that are robust and clear, and any employer who penalizes any worker for just discussing their pay should get taken actions.

Barriers Recognition Among Diverse Groups

There has been pay discrimination, especially in the Unite States, where people of color get paid pitiful wages. Disparities in pay affect all gender, which gets thought to be vast than that of gender. There is less scrutiny on the wage gap when ethnicity is involved. Women, lesbians, gay, transgender, disabilities people are also said to get affected by the substantial pay disparities. Policymakers should thus place their focus more on these groups to ensure they receive equal pay as the others (Heilman and Caleo 85...