College life just ended; your corporate ladder just showed it’s first sign in your life. Everything is a breeze, right? Apparently not. Your mental health has recently seen a dip in a flash. The stereotypes that you have heard about in your life are becoming true now. Work environment can be defined as a place where you make your passion into your career, that you decide to stay in for the rest of your life (or not). When the people around you become toxic that is exactly where your private and professional life collide.
A toxic work environment is like having all of these challenges on repeat, without a break. The thoughts and the negativity from your workplace typically follow you home. They take over your conversations with loved ones, steal away much-needed sleep, and generally cause worry and stress. If your company has bad communication methods, hold on tight. You’re likely in a toxic environment that’s only going to get worse with time. Gender neutrality refers to the way people are described in any place (like the place of their work), according to the way they identify themselves.
The misogyny, queer-phobia, even pseudo-feminism that exists in places of work is enough for people to either break out of their shells to undo the wrongs that are happening to them right now as you read, so that it doesn’t happen to anyone ever again or even take their entire morale down to stray further away from making their dream come true and sometimes take a steep decline in their personal life, cutting connections off with the world as a whole.
Female Discrimination
Research states about the various obstacles faced by women in corporations in India, ranging from bias in evaluation to the proverbial glass ceiling, allowing fewer promotions for women and resulting in an insignificant percentage of women managers reaching the higher echelons of management in most organizations.
Considering that India today is a rising economic power house it may appear disappointing to the average reader to discover that stereotypes that relegate women to a secondary position in most Indian corporations are still the norm. Not just India, It is reported that women held under a quarter (24%) of senior roles across the world in 2016, which is only 3% of increase from 2011. Furthermore, one third (33%) of global businesses had no women in senior management roles, a number which has stayed stagnant since 2011.
The men vs. women quotient of world dynamic roles in world politics is a staggering ratio of 5:1. Countries such as current day Afghanistan makes you wonder about how a country can still be living in the 1900s, in 2021.
Women are still being defamed for studying, working for their households or even showing a bit of their interest in the passion that they have grown up with.
Afghanistan is just an example, but countries such as Sudan, Nigeria or even Egypt still believe in the ideology of ‘Man is the earner of the house’. In the scenario, that the man of the house (as people say) is unable to work, that family is looked down on just because the lead earner of the house is a woman.
Stereotyping of women in roles of leadership has been there since the medieval ages and has always been taught to people through generations, hence resulting in the narrow-minded personalities of a huge number of ‘Progressive’ companies in today’s world.
It is unfortunate that very few women are given senior roles and results also showed that even though women had accumulated 10+ years of work experience, they still faced major stereotype threats hindering their career advancement to reach a higher level.
A Ray of Hope
Holding fewer than a quarter of senior-level roles globally, women still have far to go to achieve equality in the senior ranks.
In a newly released report from Spencer Stuart, women leaders address the challenges of climbing the corporate ladder and advancing to the C-suite. “Research points to the same conclusion: Gender diversity in leadership is good for business (as is diversity in general, for that matter),” said a study on women empowerment “It’s better for financial performance. It inspires more innovation. Yes, it has societal benefit, but it also provides a company with a competitive advantage and is considered a key enabler of growth.” The glimmer of hope that is portrayed by the empowered individuals has created a world of differences for the generations to come. As an example, Iceland has focused on creating a government with a gender quotient of 52:48, with 52 being male and 48 being female respectively. This is a staggering growth as most of the political domains in the world superpowers as well as developing countries still have ratios of male vs. female lying between 80:20, 85:15, or in some extreme cases 95:5. A change has been seen in the world and the world is becoming a better place to live in every single day, even with the small and big hiccups faced by all genders, not just women. Given all the facts and figures, the world becomes a dynamic place for gender neutrality in workplaces and makes a space for change to happen, irrespective of their gender, sexuality, caste or race.
- Sayandeep Bose
References
http://www.strategyfocusedhr.com/women-leaders-now-climb-corporate-ladder/ https://grdspublishing.org/index.php/people/article/view/1226 https://www.proquest.com/openview/3f7b96853de1979806dc868b73bb4709/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=26524 Gender Stereotypes in Corporate India: A Glimpse Sujoya Basu, New Delhi: Sage publications, 2008 Catalyst study exposes how gender- based stereotyping sabotages women in the workplace. Retrieved from http://www.catalyst.org/media/catalyst -study-exposes-how-gender-based-stereotyping-sabotages-women-workplace.