For many of us, it has become near impossible to not get involved in some form of discussion (heated or otherwise…) about the inequalities that seem to persist in our places of work.
Clearly there are still many problems with the workplace environment, but one that has garnered increased media attention in recent years is the concept of the ‘leaky pipeline’.
What is the ‘Leaky Pipeline’?
Most people have by now heard of the ‘glass ceiling’, which is the understanding that at some point in a person’s career (particularly a woman’s), they will reach a stage in which they can’t progress for reasons outside of their control.
The concept of the ‘leaky pipeline’, goes one step further and suggests that like a pipe that leaks water, people are dropping out and not continuing down their chosen career path for a range of reasons.
It has been shown that relatively more women choose to stop progressing in their career or choose to stay at home when compared to men. Hence to put it simply, women are ‘leaking’ out of the workforce and are not continuing down the ‘pipe’ of progression. Thus, resulting in a marked shortage of female staff occupying the upper levels of most organisational hierarchies.
What is causing the ‘leak’?
There are many things that can cause someone to remove themselves from promotion contention or the workforce entirely. These include but aren’t limited to gender expectations regarding care duties, pre-existing commitments outside of work, a feeling of inadequacy of one’s own abilities, and even the feeling that only certain genders can do specific roles within an organisation.
Unfortunately, these issues not only exist, but also impact women to a much greater extent than their male colleagues. Traditionally it has been women that have been the ones to stay at home to raise the children, manage the household, or look after elderly relatives during periods of ill health.
So, it’s plain to see why generally speaking, women in particular are hesitant to take on more time-consuming roles with a higher degree of workplace responsibility. How can we expect someone to opt for working longer hours, whilst feeling they may be needed elsewhere?
So, what is being done?
Tackling this issue of limiting workplace gender norms will take time, but some action has been taken to put more women into decision making roles.
Firstly, we have ‘workplace quotas’. These can take a range of forms from ‘hiring quotas’ to ‘managerial quotas’, but essentially mean the same thing; a certain percentage of the workforce has to be comprised of women.
Also, we have the advent of ‘positive discrimination’, whereby resources or employment are allocated to individuals belonging to certain groups of society that are widely understood to have been historically discriminated against. This has allowed some females to access jobs even though on paper their academic and work life achievements may appear to be lesser than that of another applicant that has been excluded from the process due to their already overrepresentation in the workforce.
These are only two examples of now commonly occurring activities that have been implemented to make it easier for women to advance in their career and shed the historic gender expectations attached to their sex, and thus have for the most part been hailed as a move in the right direction of achieving gender parity.
It has even been shown that organisations that have a more equal balance between men and women on the payroll tend to generate more profit. How could you argue with that?
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