How gender equity regard to job perspective?

Gender equality and gender equity are often mentioned in society and the importance of it began to emerge as a basic requirement for a better working environment. Perhaps, there are different meaning between gender equality and gender equity. Gender equality doesn’t mean that women and men are the same, but the responsibilities, opportunities, and rights of men and women will not depend on their gender (Roy, 2017). On the other hand, fairness of treatment for male and female according to their respective needs known as gender equity. According to Council for International Development (2012), gender equity refers to the equal rights, opportunities, and obligations that distribute to the people according to their respective needs. It also says that people have different advantages and disadvantages inherently and requires development practitioners adopt different actions accordingly. However, society’s subjective comprehension of what people’s ‘needs’ are and what action should be taken towards equity might be the limitation to this term.

Furthermore, job perspective refers to a point of view, a particular attitude towards or way of regarding job. Gender equity should be involved into job perspective by a female and male worker in order to utilize the abilities whereas found a suitable working environment. Gender equity issues could be an obstruct in career perspective of an employee or otherwise a key of success for a company that treats their employees formed different genders with fair policies and compensations. Current issues that against to the gender equity such as fewer women hold senior leadership roles than men in the company. Moreover, intention of collaborative and working less self-promoting by female employee causing them to unfair treatment. In addition, report has found that technical and scientific positions leaved by women at a greater rate than men.

In fact, women are the sole breadwinner in 40% of U.S. households with children below age 18. Also, nearly 40% of total earning of the family are contributed by the women in the median U.S. household with a mother working outside of the home. The productivity of women and their economic opportunity matter to the majority of families in the U.S. whereas the fairness treatment that provided by the company. In Malaysia, the participation of women in the employment sector has now increased to 54.3 percent. Moreover, Finance Minister II, Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani has claimed that currently over 700,000 women worked in various sectors, thus contributing 0.3 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)of Malaysia.  In Malaysia, 19.7 percent of small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) are owned by women. The  91.7 percent from the total were businesses in the services sector, followed by 6.9 percent of the manufacturing sector and less than 1 per cent in other sectors. Women, Family and Community Development Minister, Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim said that women in the global level are increasingly smart to take advantage of current economic conditions and educational facilities to start business to generate their own income (Jaafar and Sazili, 2017).

Gender equity must be improved to reduce the gap between male and female employee as the role of women is getting more and more essential in business field. By the job perspective, a company can enhance the policies and the workplace environment to achieve gender equity. The consideration of fair working environment by employer such as provides the quality, clean and on-site child-care facilities for both father and mothers that employed.  Furthermore, the facilities aren’t the only element that forming the working environment but also included the employees that based on different perceptions for gender equity. It is import to provide a training or seminal that regards to gender equity that might serve to educate the employees about the fairness treatment of both male and female workers in order to prevent whistleblowing, sexual harassment, and segregate issues happened in the workplace. 

Furthermore, the policy that ensures men and women are compensated equally for performing the same work must be established by employer. The policy should also ensure that both genders are treated equally in hiring and promotion, training and recruiting instead of just equal pay for equal work. Thus, If men are more willing to spend time working with senior management, participating in the most important projects or meeting the most valuable customers, they will become more attractive candidates for promotion. Employers should have appropriate processes in place so that all employees meet the same standards through their careers. This helps ensure that they all receive training and opportunities. Not only that, employer should also acknowledge and diversified the rewards for different leadership styles. It is because men and women tend to use different styles of leadership. Men are comfortable with hierarchy and self-promoting or willing pay more efforts in their individual work. Women more concern about seeking the consensus whereas democratic leading style, stand for their teams and don't stand out as individual leaders. Hence, to meet and reward the collaborative leadership pattern of women, employer should adding group accomplishments and team productivity into performance evaluations (Forbes, 2016).

Claudia Goldman, a professor of economics at Harvard University, found that one of the reasons why women earn less than men is because they strongly prefer time flexibility rather than salary.In other words, they are willing to refuse high-paying jobs, because these jobs require more time or predictable hours. Although women are more willing to make less money for more flexible time, men also like flexibility (Lucas, 2017). Employer should Implements policies that allow worker to work from home - full time or from time to time. Establish core business hours and then let worker select their schedule according to their timetable.

After the green office culture became a trend for healthy workplace environment, the gender equity should also be achieved by a company due to abilities of female workers representing a part of the company’s asset and it getting important for productivity in the economic. A company that fulfills the several requirements in achieving gender equity may serve to utilize the capabilities of their employees as return to the management.    

References

Cid.org.nz. (2012) Gender Equity and Gender Equality: A brief overview of these issues and their application within NGOs. [Online] Available from: http://www.cid.org.nz/assets/CID-Resources/Fact-Sheets/FS6.-2014-format.-Gender.pdf [Accessed 1 April 2018].

Forbes.com. (2016) 13 Ideas To Promote Female Equality In The Workplace. [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2016/04/08/13-ideas-to-promote-female-equality-in-the-workplace/#3b07581c3f14 [Accessed 1 April 2018].

Jaafar, N. and Sazili, S. (2017) Wanita dalam sektor pekerjaan 54.3 peratus. [Online] BH Online. Available from: https://www.bharian.com.my/wanita/keluarga/2017/09/321572/wanita-dalam-sektor-pekerjaan-543-peratus [Accessed 1 April 2018].

Lucas, S. (2017) 5 Ways to Ensure Gender Equality in Your Workplace. [Online] The Balance. Available from: https://www.thebalance.com/create-workplace-gender-equality-4134484 [Accessed 1 April 2018].

Roy,K. (2017) Why We Need Gender Equity Now. [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2017/09/14/why-we-need-gender-equity-now/#4c5d4d4677a2 [Accessed 1 April 2018].