Workplace discrimination involving makes job-relating decisions of hiring, firing, demoting, promoting, suspending, or making any other decision because of a person. There are many types of discrimination. For my research purpose, I’ll discuss discrimination in the workplace. There are four types of major workplace discriminations. They include race, disability, age, and sex. Any other type of discrimination usually lie under one of the categories mentioned
Discrimination doesn’t only hurt the person being discriminated against, but it also hurt their family as a whole. If a man or woman can’t find a job because of their appearance, age, race, or sex, then their whole entire household will suffer. They can’t supply for their child(ren), if any, and they would probably rely on the government for assistance. Because of this, I this, I think discrimination in the workplace falls under the conflict perspective. It could also be a part of the structural functionalist perspective because everyone has their different roles in society. Discrimination falls under this category because society expect women to stay home and take care of their families mentally and physically, but men could only be a provider for their families.
Race is the largest branch for discrimination. Racial discrimination has three different forms: disparate treatment, disparate impact, and racially hostile work environment. Disparate treatment is when two workers are in the same predicament, but one is treated differently from the other. For example, Sally and Shan are working together and they both are late for work. If the employer fires Shan because she’s black and doesn’t fire Sally because she’s white, this would be illegal disparate treatment. If the employer fires Shan because she’s been late on many occasions ant this would be Sally first time then its legal disparate treatment. Disparate impact means that the employer has specific policies that he/she wants their employees to follow. For example, Denny’s won’t hire cooks unless they have a high school diploma. If this policy affects one race more than it affects any other race, then it may be disparate impact. The employer must prove that their policy is a necessity for the job or the employer may be a victim of disparate impact.
Racially hostile work environment means that the employee has been harassed in some way. An example would be Ali Aboubaker, a Muslim American who won almost $1.2 million in a job discrimination case. He claimed that he was harassed by his coworkers because of his name, appearance, and religion. He first begin working in 1991, and in 2008 he was fired because he refused to start working five minutes early. Still today, women face unfair workplace discriminations. Some women may have the same education and training as men, but they often have different salaries. Women have to pick low paying jobs than their spouses. Why is this? Society think women are better off being housewives, (staying home, cooking, and cleaning) than working jobs that are “better equip for men”. A new study from the Pew Research Center explains that thirty years ago, working women made 64 cents of every dollar a man made, making a difference of 36 cents. From then until now, the difference has decreased from a thirty-six cents difference to a sixteen cents difference. Women are still mainly responsible for child and family care. In the same study thirty-nine percent of women say they’ve had to take long periods of time off from work to tend to their children, forty-two percent say they’ve had to decrease their working hours to tend to their children, and twenty-seven percent say they’ve had to stop working completely to tend to their children. The same survey noted that eighteen percent of women have complained about being discriminated against because they were females, compared to ten percent of men. Seventy-two percent of women and sixty-one percent of men admitted that something needs to be