The Causes of Gender Disparity and its Prevalence in the Workplace Today

Paradoxes of the Gender and Workplace Inequality
Institution
Date
Introduction
The problem of gender differences and inequalities has been on the forefront of social debates for so long. Currently, gender inequality plays out in corporate structures and workplaces in general. Most women play a subservient role to their men, and the society has been tuned in a way that allows women to be men's subordinate when it comes to major economic activities, childbearing, critical social and political decisions among others. To help understand gender difference better, Lorber has come up with a theory known as paradoxes of the gender. Lorber argues that gender inequality is not an individual issue but rather a phenomenon that is intensely entrenched in the tenets of societies. That gender bias is built on organizations like marriage, families, workplace, political arena and religious organizations and other social institutions and starts right at birth through gender categorization. The current gender inequality debate is at the workplace. Unfair treatment of females regarding pay, promotion, and accommodation during pregnancy. This paper uses Lorber's theory to discuss the causes of gender disparity and its prevalence in the workplace today.
Paradoxes of gender by Judith Lorber
Feminism theory is grounded in the belief that men and women should be treated equally, politically, economically and socially. Lorber a feminist theorist claim that most people talk about gender the same way fish would talk about water. She argues that gender is so entrenched in the societal system that it would be problematic to question its assumptions and presumptions. She claims that gender is a human creation and that it is practiced on a daily basis. That everyday life of people is punctuated by gender acts that are sometimes subtle and not easy to note. That person only becomes comfortable after successfully placing the other in their gender status. Failure to successfully put other people in their rightful gender creates a feeling of social dislocation. Other than men and women, other gender constructs should be given prominences include transvestite, the person who dresses in clothes of the opposite gender, a transsexual, a person whose sex has been changed surgically. To construct their gender accurately, transvestite and transsexual walks, talks and dresses in the manner of the desired gender.
Feminist theorists thus apply their intellectual tools to building knowledge about the oppression of women. They intend to use that knowledge to inform strategies for resisting subordination of women and improving women’s lives. Feminists are mainly concerned with understanding how specific events results from gender oppression, how structures of gender differences subordinate women as women, and how the society can have a clear understanding of oppressive situations. One of the outstanding feminists discussed in this paper is Judith Lorber.
According to Lorber (1994), gender construction starts from sex assignment on what their genitals look like tat the time of birth. That the society determines the child's gender by dressing them either as boys or as girls. Parents mostly do this to avoid the question whether their babies are...