Gender discrimination against women in the workplace
Addy Bonilla
April 27, 2025
Writing for the Social Sciences
Abstract
This paper will talk about gender discrimination against women in the workplace. Focusing on what are forms of gender discrimination, racism, mental and physical health, harassment, and pay gaps. Many of these main points were answered and some needed more context behind them. Some things are still missing from many resources, those being if men experience gender discrimination in the workplace too? harassment needing more context, and people of higher positions in the workforce abusing their power. This paper will go more in depth on what all of these things look like and what needs more research on.
Introduction
Women and men have been treated differently all throughout history. Women were not able to work fully until late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then, women were treated significantly differently from men. Men used to be the ones who went out to work and war while the woman stayed home, cooked, cleaned, and took care of the house and kids. Now times are different, women and men can work the same job. Women no longer are forced to stay home and be a housewife, they get to pick what they want to do. But there are still people who claim women are still not getting treated equally in the workplace. There has been lots of research and conversations on gender discrimination in the workplace. Most of the existing evidence suggests that women are treated inferior to men and face a lot of discrimination, but other factors need to be addressed, such as if men get discriminated as well, harassment in the workplace, and bosses abusing their power.
Summary
Women throughout history till now have had some type of disadvantages in work compared to men due to jobs originally being a “man’s thing”. Women have a harder time when being hired or in work in general because they are faced with a lot of judgement by the opposite gender. One reason being that men tend to discriminate against their female coworkers due to cultural, society, and gender stereotypes. “According to cultural perspectives, employers rely on gender stereotypes and gender-differentiated work expectations”. (Birkelund, G. E., Lancee, B., Larsen, E. N., Polavieja, J. G., Radl, J., & Yemane, R. ,2022). Some men may view women who work according to what they may have grown up seeing or what they believe is right to them. This being the reason why gender discrimination against women caused by other co-workers is so common, a lot of men rely on those views and believe in those possible harmful stereotypes.
It’s been shown in many sources that women are paid less than men even when working the same job. “… women and men are sorted into different jobs, with lower earnings and fewer promotion prospects in typically female-dominated jobs”. (Birkelund, G. E., Lancee, B., Larsen, E. N., Polavieja, J. G., Radl, J., & Yemane, R. ,2022). This seems to be a very common thing and mentioned a lot in different sources when speaking on gender discrimination. It seems to be one of the most played factors in gender discrimination. “Salary transparency and explicitly stated policies have the potential to play a part in gender discrimination in job postings, as it relates to impression management in the California academic community and the perpetuation of the ongoing gender pay gap as a measure or indicator of its failure to fulfill the industry’s commitment to DEI at large.” (Fox, J., Hurtado, N., & O’Campo, M., 2022). Difference in salary between genders is a violation of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) but many jobs tend to still pay differently.
Racism seems to be another big problem related to gender discrimination. Women already face troubles in the workplace but if they are another race other than white or a person of color things seem to be worse for them. With some sources mentioning race stereotypes can play a significant role in this too. “The nature of gendered racism may vary across racial and ethnic groups due to specificity of cultural stereotypes (e.g., sexualizing of Asian women;cultural memes of the ‘angry Black woman’; Lewis et al., 2016)”. (Autin, K. L., Herdt, M. E., Allan, B. A., Zhu, L., Abdullah, M., & Garcia, R. G., 2022). Harmful stereotypes seem to be a big reason racism is such a big problem for people of color. Women of color most likely have to face double the discrimination because of their gender and race. Going back to pay gaps, women of certain races also seem to get paid more than others. One source claim that Asian and white women get paid more than other races. “For example, although all women face workplace gender inequity within their own racial group, White and Asian women tend to earn more and have access to higher quality jobs than workers in other racial groups regardless of gender (although Asian American women and men face significant barriers to attaining leadership positions within these professions; Yu,2020).” (Autin, K. L., Herdt, M. E., Allan, B. A., Zhu, L., Abdullah, M., & Garcia, R. G., 2022). It doesn’t only seem to be women of color only face problems with payment they also are more likely to face harassment. “On the job, women of color are likely to experience overt and covert forms of racism and sexism. Women of color report the highest levels of sexual and ethnic harassment when compared to White women and men (Berdahl & Moore, 2006).” (Autin, K. L., Herdt, M. E., Allan, B. A., Zhu, L., Abdullah, M., & Garcia, R. G., 2022). This seems to be more common than expected. Black women seem to be one of the higher targets for these types of harassment causing more serious issues related to sexual assault and harassment.
Harassment is seen a lot with discrimination against women. Men with higher power taking advantage of young women and using them for their own benefit. Black women seem to be victims of this especially. “For example, stereotypes of Black women as hyper-sexual beings, stemming from historically documented common instances of sexual assault of enslaved Black women, have been shown to have direct implications today (Feinstein, 2018). Research has found that stereotypes of Black women predict mishandling of sex crime prosecution (Manatu-Rupert, 2000) and that Black women face disproportionate barriers to receiving sexual assault support services (Spates et al., 2020)”. Black women seem to sexualize more which have caused unwanted attention. This also goes for women of any race; some men think it’s ok to abuse their power. Harassment is not only shown in work but in other places too but getting harassed in work seems to be common. Sources showing evidence on how many women face any type of harassment in their life. “37 percent reported that they or female family members have experienced sexual harassment, and 29 percent said they or female family members have been threatened or non-sexually harassed. More than a fifth (21 percent) said they or family members experienced violence because they are women.” (SteelFisher, G. K., Findling, M. G., Bleich, S. N., Casey, L. S., Blendon, R. J., Benson, J.M., Sayde, J. M., & Miller, C., 2019). The numbers aren’t extremely specific where the harassment happens, but it seems important for this source to show the numbers on how common harassment is to women.
Gender discrimination has caused deeper issues that could most likely affect women’s mental and physical health. A study showing that gender discrimination or discrimination of any kind affects the stress levels causing problems with high blood pressures, heart diseases, and mortality. “Experiencing gender discrimination may negatively impact women’s health through parallel mechanisms, that is, through both psychological and physiological stress responses and health behaviors that lead to worse health outcomes.” (SteelFisher, G. K., Findling, M. G., Bleich, S. N., Casey, L. S., Blendon, R. J., Benson, J. M., Sayde, J. M., & Miller, C. 2019). When it comes to stress and gender discrimination it connects more than people think. It seems more common than what some might expect. Another problem that seems to be a big issue is women getting discriminated against by health care workers making it even harder to get treated for their problems that may have been caused by discrimination in their job. “Research has also shown there is gender-based discrimination against women in health care interactions and gender bias in medicine, which can have negative health impacts.7–9” (SteelFisher, G. K., Findling, M. G., Bleich, S. N., Casey, L. S., Blendon, R. J., Benson, J. M., Sayde, J. M., & Miller, C. 2019). These rejects where women can’t even get help with health care can cause bigger issues to their health in the future.
Discussion and evaluation
The answers found in these sources is that gender discrimination in the workplace against women is still prevalent in the workforce today. It seems that all the sources have similar topics, one being the pay gap between men and women. In all the sources it’s mentioned one way or another. The article called “Decent Work Among Women Workers: An Intersectional Approach” talks about the pay gap in a more different way than the other 3 articles. It talked about the pay gaps between races. Gender was still mentioned but they explained the difference between women of different races. Some races are paid more than others which isn’t mentioned at all in the other sources. The other 3 sources mention if pay gaps are still a thing between gender and the answer looks to be yes. Men are paid more even if the women are doing the same or a job with more labor. The reason is hard to answer in the sources. It all seems to come down on just basic discrimination. Gender stereotypes can be a big reason for these types of discrimination it seems to be that people believe women don’t deserve the same amount as men or can just be deeper issues in the type of job that it is.
Another thing that most of the source’s mention is the effects that this might cause to women. The article “Gender discrimination in the United States: Experiences of women” being one of the sources that go more in depth on the effects that it can have on mental and physical health. The mention of how discrimination against women in the workplace causes stress and the serious problems it can cause to their health. Not only does that article mention the problems it can have on women’s health but also the discrimination they also face in health care. Which shows how difficult it can be to even check your health after having these health issues from their job. It shows how gender discrimination follows women in other places other than their work.
Racism was mentioned a lot as well in both “Decent Work Among Women Workers: An Intersectional Approach” and “Gender discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Women”. With both articles mentioning the races of which women experience the most discrimination in their jobs. And even though white women face lots of discrimination for their gender it seems to be that women of color experience double the discrimination. Most women of color face both racism and sexism in their jobs making things possibly more difficult for them to work. In the source “Decent Work Among Women Workers: An Intersectional Approach” mentions how difficult it is for black women especially since it’s very common for them to face harassment due to stereotypes towards black women. Black women are one of the races that feel the most unsafe in the workplace according to this article.
Harassment and racism kind of mixed with each other due to the article “Decent Work Among Women Workers: An Intersectional Approach” mentioning how black women face more harassment due to hyper sexuality towards black women. It seems to be men feel like it’s ok to sexually harass them because they believe they are hyper-sexual when that isn’t always/ most likely the case. In the Article “Gender discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Women” harassment is mentioned statistically but just in general not just on workplace harassment.
When doing this research there seems to be a lot of gaps missing in these articles. One being harassment, there isn’t much that shows how much harassment happens in the workplace for women or how it affects them. There isn’t information on who are the main perpetrators. There is a lot of information on gender discrimination but not specific on harassment or sexual assault which happens more often than what’s reported. To fully understand the issue on discrimination against women in the workplace, harassment is a big part of that and one of the more serious issues. More research needs to be done on that.
Another gap will be discrimination against men in the workplace. this wasn’t really brought up at all in most of the sources. One source mentions it along with jobs that are gender occupational, that men could face discrimination in a female-gendered occupation. But there should be more information or evidence showing men getting discrimination as well. Even though the articles are on women’s experiences with gender discrimination men’s discrimination can also be mentioned to show some points or information to show some evidence on why gender discrimination happens.
Another gap that was missing was bosses or higher ups abusing their power. This can be connected to harassment as well but most of the time gender discrimination can be a problem with the people in charge since they are letting these things happen. There should be more information on higher ups abusing their power to get what they want or to cause fear towards those who are at lower power than them. There should be more research done on this since it could be considered one of the big factors of gender discrimination in the workplace.
Conclusion
In conclusion this research points out 5 main points, those being gender discrimination and what that looks like, pay gaps, racism, harassment, and mental and physical health. All these factors show that women are seen as inferior to men in the workplace according to these articles. There are still gaps that need to be filled like men’s experience on gender discrimination, more information on harassment, and the people in control in the workplace abusing their powers. There still needs to be more information on those things and there are still things that researchers need to find answers for.
Citation:
Birkelund, G. E., Lancee, B., Larsen, E. N., Polavieja, J. G., Radl, J., & Yemane, R. (2022). Gender discrimination in hiring: Evidence from a cross-national harmonized field experiment. European Sociological Review, 38 (3), 337–354. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcab043
SteelFisher, G. K., Findling, M. G., Bleich, S. N., Casey, L. S., Blendon, R. J., Benson, J. M., Sayde, J. M., & Miller, C. (2019). Gender discrimination in the United States: Experiences of women. Health Services Research, 54 (6), 1442–1453.https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.13217
Fox, J., Hurtado, N., & O’Campo, M. (2022). Gender discrimination in job postings: Does it still exist? Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 11 (4), 1–7.
Autin, K. L., Herdt, M. E., Allan, B. A., Zhu, L., Abdullah, M., & Garcia, R. G. (2022). Decent work among women workers: An intersectional approach. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 69 (6), 775. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000634
Reflection:
How I thought about and refined my research question was using what was said in class and finding a similarly in what all sources have in common. I had a lot of trouble finding information for harassment in the sources. There wasn’t a lot of information on that. I had trouble finding articles that had all the information I wanted/ needed to write this essay. Finding articles that are based on united states was hard at first a lot of them were on other countries but after searching with keywords I was able to find ones from the U.S. I also had trouble finding on gender discrimination in the workplace. At first, I found a lot of gender discrimination in general, but I wanted to find more specific to just jobs and work not in general, so I had to look for a long time. There was one source I found that I discard it because it was on Korea and I wanted to focus more on the United States instead of other countries even tho it did have good information on sexism in the workplace against women. I faced a lot of problem when analyzing my text because I didn’t know how to put into words what I found. I felt lost so I spend a lot of time staring at a blank piece of paper but once i reviewed everything, read the articles again, and reviewed my notes well I kind of knew what I could do.
