Discrimination in the Workplace

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Introduction

Discrimination, racism and prejudice have been prevalent in the workplace for a number of years. To many people, the most common types are homophobia, racism, and sexual discrimination (Perlmutter, 2008).  When people come in contact with these type of discrimination, it can have significant impacts on their work and private life, and there is not enough awareness of this. This essay will discuss the definitions and impacts discrimination, racism and prejudice and how to overcome them in the workplace through training and recruitment. An evaluation strategy through the use of surveys is also discussed.

Prejudice  

Prejudice is a somewhat an umbrella term for a number of discriminating actions that are frequently happening in the workplace (Perlmutter, 2008). The most common are homophobia, racism, ableism, classism, looksism and sexual discrimination. Perlmutter (2008) explained that in a professional business setting, stereotypically the CEO would be a high classed mature aged straight, white man who was not disabled or disadvantaged at doing every day things.  From this example there is the use of sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism and classism.  Dixon described Prejudice as being a form of thinking that leads people to judge a person based on a preconceived notion, without prior verification (Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012). This judgement is commonly negative or offensive. According to Pettigrew and Meertens (1995) There are two forms of prejudice, the first being defense of traditional values and the second being overstatement of cultural differences.  With the first defense of traditional values, people of the in-group are viewed as being acceptable and their behaviours necessary as to what is construed in the terms of the group’s traditional values or reputation. The prejudice occurs to people of the out-group are viewed to act in ways that are either unacceptable or not capable to succeed compared to the in-group.  The second type of prejudice is the exaggeration of cultural differences. These come from attributes of the out-group that are disadvantaged due to cultural differences. Both types of prejudice can cause not only mental but physical impacts to the receiver (Guimon, 2010).

The Sheriff’s Summer Camp case studies placed young adults that had no history of animosity or bigotry in a number of social constructs. The results from the case study proved that people could rapidly develop many different views towards prejudice including stereotypic, voluntary segregation, physical and verbal aggression (Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012. Studies also conducted by Dixon, Levine, Reicher & Durrheim (2012) proved that when prejudice is occurring in the workplace, like racism, it begins to dehumanize the affected people (Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012).

        A study conducted by Fraser, Osborne and Sibley (2015) discovered that there is a 14.8% pay difference between males and females in the workplace with women earning 85 cents for every dollar that a male would earn in the same position. Along with this, of all the Fortune 500 companies, females hold only 4.5% of the CEO positions because they are viewed as being incompetent compared to their male counterparts (Fraser, Osborne, & Sibley, 2015)

Discrimination

From prejudice comes discrimination. In Australia, the Anti Discrimination Act 1977, was put in place to protect people under certain circumstances and to promote equality of opportunity for all  (NSW Legislation, 1977). It protects against discrimination of sex, disability, race, homosexuality, age, gender and marital status.

Whilst it is believed that discrimination is disappearing in the workplace, in reality it is only becoming subtler to recognise, particularly to those who are not trained or brought to the attention of discrimination (Basford, Offermann, & Behrend, 2013). Guimon described discrimination as being an unfavourable behaviour founded on prejudice that regards race, age, sex and a number of other factors (Guimon, 2010). This leads to an formation of barriers in a social environment that prevent a particular person from participating equally (Guimon, 2010)

In a workplace, discrimination is an issue that must happen for the business to succeed. The types of discrimination that happen in the workplace are where the problems occur. For there to be no discrimination at all in a business setting, all staff must be treated the same, paid the same and expected to do the same tasks no matter what their situation is. Whilst this shows that discrimination is not a bad thing, there are certain types of positive discrimination that frequently occurs (Thornicroft, 2014). This can include a junior staff member receiving a lower salary than someone higher up with 10 years experience.  A perfect example of this is when a male and female are applying for the same position at a hotel, the male has no experience and the female has 3 years experience on the front desk. Based on the job requirements the female is chosen, as she is better suited to the position rather than the male, which is positive discrimination. If the manager chose the male instead because he said that he works better with males than females or would prefer to hire a male, this is unjustifiable discrimination (Thornicroft, 2014) and (Holgate et al., 2012).

Racism

Racism is an conceptual construction derived from a mix of nationalism and assumption about biological, social and cultural differences (Ouali & Jefferys, 2015). Even though there have been improvements towards racism, workplaces still provide opportunity for racism to take place through neglect, incivility, humor, ostracism, inequitable treatment (Fox & Stallworth, 2005). Schmid (1996) describes racism as the infliction of unfair consideration that is stirred by the desire to dominate, based on purely race alone (Schmid, 1996).  These people do not see themselves or their race as superior but would rather put down another race through physical or mental abuse, which are predominantly racial slurs (Schmid, 1996). Racism is therefore solely defined as the desire to dominate others based on race; it is the fundamental opposition of the principal of human equality (Schmid, 1996). The principle of equality being the perception that all humans are essentially factually equal, capable of self-government and racial judgement and also the willingness to extend to all humans as the same basic rights and not to see superiority over other races (Schmid, 1996).  Racism is typically targeted towards people of colour such as African Americans, Asians, Africans and Muslims (Ouali & Jefferys, 2015). The common Identity Model introduced different social groups, such as Caucasians and African Americans to view one another as members of a shared in-group such as Americans and to encourage multiculturalism. This process has been proven to improve their attitudes, reduces intergroup racism and increases positivity. This process is one of many interventions to reduce workplace racism (Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012)