Beware of Common Gender Discrimination in the Workplace

Today, gender discrimination in the workplace is a very serious problem. As HR, you need to be aware of some of the forms of discrimination that may occur in your organization.

Knowing the various gender discriminations will help you understand how to take action to prevent or address them if they do occur.

Well, for those of you who want to know some of them. Here we present 5 examples of gender discrimination that are common in the workplace, what are they? read more below.

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Common types of gender discrimination in the workplace

1. Discrimination against pregnant women

Whether we realize it or not, pregnant women are often the target of discrimination in the workplace. Some companies don’t want to hire a woman because sooner or later they will have families and take long maternity leave.

That is why many pregnant women are not involved in important company projects, even though it can improve their careers.

There is even a significant difference in salary between working mothers and male co-workers. Quoted from The Conversation, mothers who have children earn less, regardless of education and work experience.

2. Sexual harassement

When you hear the word gender discrimination, sexual harassment will be discussed in this issue. Yes, sexual harassment is a form of discrimination that quite often occurs in the workplace, both verbally and non-verbally.

Based on U.S. data Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), there were 16.3% of reports of sexual harassment by men in 2021,

Sexual harassment is a critical problem in every country, including Indonesia. In 2020, Komnas Perempuan found 1,731 cases of violence against women in the community/public sphere, including sexual harassment. Where 9% of them occur in the workplace.

This fact is very unfortunate considering that sexual harassment is very detrimental to the victim. The number of reports made by several women against male abusers proves that a male-dominated workplace is one of the toughest challenges for them.

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3. Salary differences by gender

In today’s increasingly sophisticated era, many companies are starting to open up and accept differences. Many companies treat their employees equally regardless of their background and gender.

Unfortunately, this does not rule out the possibility that there are still some companies that discriminate against women by providing unequal salaries or benefits.

As mentioned above, a working mother on average has a lower salary than her male colleagues.

In Indonesia, the practice of gender pay differences is still very common. This is reinforced by the report of Indonesia’s Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani which states that women have 25% lower salaries than men.

4. Lack of representation of women in senior management

Is it true that in modern times like today the role of women who have high positions in a company is still very few compared to men?

In fact, this is still the case. However, entering 2019 many companies began to try to overcome this problem. Since then the role of women who have important positions in the company began to increase by 29%.

In 2020, Catalyst shared its record that 87% of midsize companies had at least one female employee taking up a senior position.

So, those are some of the gender discriminations that occur quite often in the workplace. As HR, you should be more sensitive and aware of all these problems. Discrimination and other discrimination should not be tolerated. The workplace should be a safe and comfortable platform for all employees.

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