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Gender discrimination

The meaning of gender discrimination refers to that there are some prejudices to consider a specific gender. In addition, it can also refer to that people in a certain gender are treated unequally by other people. However, in current society, gender discrimination is always to figure out the unfair treatment for females. This is the gender inequality, which results in gender discrimination in society. In this research, there are three main parts to analyze gender discrimination, including the causes, specific examples, effect of gender discrimination.

In a word, the cause of gender discrimination is related to gender stereotype and religious influences. At the same time, the example of gender discrimination can be shown in society and the language used in daily life. In detail, gender discrimination and equality can be shown in income gaps, as well as employment rates in the workplace. In the end, the influence of gender discrimination will be the obstacle for people to realize their social values. What is more, it will be harmful for social and economic developments in the long-term. Furthermore, it will also do harm to self-development of female and healthy development of families. Therefore, the gender discrimination ought to be changed and reduced by the efforts of people, companies as well as governments. Specifically, the government ought to promote policies and equal opinion so as to reduce gender discrimination in society.

The causes of gender discrimination

First of all, the formation of gender discrimination is based on the bias cognition on different genders. In the light of Welsh et al., (p13), he figured out that gender discrimination generates from gender stereotypes. In detail, there are some oversimplified opinions to either males or females, which does not approve the individual differences. . For example, according to Welsh et al., (p22), females are always considered to be kind, polite and considerate while males are considered to be decisive, confident and powerful. However, in the differentiated respect, it will be more likely for people to give more respect to males. Furthermore, gender discrimination is caused by religious cognitions. For example, in Christianity, Jesus created Adam while he used one of Adam’s rib to create female . (Heilman, p732). As a result, female was considered as the belongings of male in Christianity. In other words, the status of female is not the same as the one of male, which leads to gender discrimination in the traditional opinions of Christianity. Thirdly, from the aspect of sociology (Blau et al., 16), the gender discrimination result from the gender prejudices. The meaning of gender prejudices refers to that people take unreasonable opinions to judge on a specific gender. However, this kind of opinion is not proved by science. In the traditional opinions to female, they are considered to be the proper people to take care of the family. However, this type of opinion is not scientific. Instead, it is only consistent with traditional opinion to females instead of making conclusions from scientific researches. In a word, the causes of gender discrimination can be concluded as gender stereotypes, religious influences as well as gender prejudices.

The examples of gender discrimination

Secondly, there are many examples to illustrate gender discrimination. One of the most common gender discriminations is the workplace gender discrimination. As mentioned above, because of gender stereotypes of males and females, different genders are considered to be suitable for a particular job. On the basis of Kehn, and Ruthig, (p29), more than fifty-five percent of females thought that the working opportunities for them when contrasting the ones for males. . Furthermore, according to researches carried out by Jung, and Choi, (p260), it revealed that the rate of females’ employments was much lower than the rate of males’ employments. . For instance, the research also pointed out that it would be possible for male to submit the resumes for three times in average to get a chance for interview. However, for females, they needed to submit for more than seven times to get the similar chance as the male. As a result, the inequal treatment in employments between male and female has obviously reflected the gender discrimination in the workplace. In addition to the unequal treatment in asking for jobs, the gender discrimination also appear income differences and the participation in work. In order to illustrate this phenomenon specifically, the differences of gender income in Belgium will be taken as an example. On the one side, on the basis of researches carried out by Healey (11), it reveals that the mean hourly earnings of males are much higher than the one of females in the overall condition. . In detail, income gaps are the largest in the financial sectors. Typically, it is only available for female to earn 21.6 dollars each hour while it is possible for male to ear nearly 28 dollars in each hour. The reason why the biggest income gap occur in the financial sector is due to public consideration on gender. In the light of Healey (p34), the males are considered to be smarter when coping with the technological and mathematics aspects. At the same time, males are recommended to work in financial aspects because they are thought to be sensitive to numbers. As a result, it is easier for them to get promotion in such occupational fields. In addition, males’ incomes in health sector is a little higher than the ones of females. In a word, it is not possible for female to gain the same income as the male, which greatly show the gender discrimination in the workplace according to the data. On the other side, the gender discrimination can be also observed in the work participation. The participation in work mainly refers to the employment rate, which can be easily to be measured. According to the research, the results find that the employment rate of female is about sixty percent while the one of male is more than seventy percent . (Milkman, p46). In other words, the gap in employment rate has reached nearly ten percent, which is considered as the large gap. What is worse, when considered the working hour between different genders, the employment rate seems to be larger in Belgium. Specifically, the employment rate in each hour of female is only thirty-seven percent while the one of male reached more than fifty percent . (Watson, 16). As for the reason of large employment rate between different gender, it is due to the consideration of working ability between males and females. According to Moghadam (67), the result shows that the company would like to hire males because they compete in more aspects than female. . In addition, when considering the employment rate of people with children, the employment rate of female is only sixty percent (Moghadam, 67). On the contrary, the one of males has reached nearly eighty percent. This is the accurate example of gender discrimination in workplace. As mentioned above, leaders in company are not willing to hire women who is pregnant or have children. In their opinions, females will make fewer contributions to companies because they need to take responsibility of looking after their children. However, as for males, no matter they have children or not, the social judgment on them would not change a lot. As a result, the gender stereotype on role of family results in the low employment rate of females. In the end, this phenomenon changes to be the example of gender discrimination in workplace.

As shown in this picture, the average employment rate of female is much lower than the ones of male in European countries. It can be seen that the distances of employment rate have reached about ten percent between males and females. (Hildegard, 2) This is the specific data to illustrate gender inequality in the workplace.

Moreover, in addition to the workplace, gender discrimination is also shown in language. According to Brice et al., (p245), many compound words consist of man, such as human, chairman, mankind. . The meanings of these words refer to both men and women. Nevertheless, the usage of man could not be replaced by woman. In the traditional opinions, man ought to work while woman should take care of their family. Therefore, the word of housewife is to depict the females without works while there are not similar words to describe males without jobs but taking care of their families. More importantly, Brice et al., (p244) found out that some jobs were considered only for males, such as doctors, lawyers in the past. Therefore, when females were occupied in such areas, they would be called as woman lawyers, woman doctors and so forth, which can also be recognized as gender discrimination in language. In a word, there are two main examples analyzed in this part about gender discrimination, such as in workplace and language.

The effect of gender discrimination

In the end, as mentioned above, the gender discrimination is always shown as the discrimination to gender. On the one hand, when considering the impacts to individuals, the working enthusiasms and motivations of females will be greatly reduced due to gender discriminations. When people make many efforts in their employments, they are refused due to the gender, which will greatly do harm to their personal developments. In other words, the females’ values and efforts are hard to be approved because of their genders, which will be undoubtedly fair to them. What is worse, the gender discrimination will also be the barrier to realize their career plans and social values. On the other hand, there will a series negative impacts to society. First of all, more potential social conflicts will be resulted from gender discrimination. In the light of the study of Khan et al., (p2250), more than forty-five percent of complaints on labor rights is relevant with gender discrimination, such as unequal treatments for pregnant females and so on . With the large number of complaints in workplace, the working atmosphere will not be harmonious in either a company or the society. Hence, the imbalances and inequalities would easily be caused by gender discriminations, which will do harm to sustainable social developments. What is worse, the imbalance caused by gender discrimination will result in occupational segregations which refer to people in same gender gather in a specific field. In the long run, the occupational segregations will distort labor resources and reduce the total economic output (Khan et al., p2252). Secondly, the external living environment for female will be destroyed due to gender discrimination. As mentioned above, either the workplace or the language environment is not positive for female. When female grows up in such environment, their psychological and physical health will be undoubtedly negatively influenced. More importantly, the internal motivation of females will be also decreased due to gender discrimination. In the light of Rives (71), the self-evaluation is the internal energy to push individual developments . However, under the social surroundings of gender discrimination, it is obvious that female will make low self-evaluation because their social values and contributions are limited. Thirdly, the gender discrimination will also result in unreasonable family role. As having been analyzed above, the cause of gender discrimination is mainly due to gender stereotype. However, this type of gender stereotype has wrongly distributed social and family responsibilities between males and females. According to the gender stereotype, females are considered to be the weak one so that they need to adopt the responsibilities of taking care of families (Wreyford, 97). Nevertheless, this opinion seems to be the excuse for male to avoid responsibilities in families. Roth (84) revealed that many males less took part in educating and playing with their children in family due to their work. In other words, it was more likely for females to be responsible for caring and educating children. Nevertheless, this type of education and family role would not benefit for children’s healthy development. As a result, it can be concluded as the negative influence of family resulted from gender discrimination in society. In a word, the effect of gender discrimination will not only do harm to individual development, such as career, it will also negatively result in social development.