In 2017 a group of leaders and opinion formers across hospitality, travel and leisure decided to take action to accelerate progress towards an inclusive culture within our industry and seize the opportunity to come together as an industry to amplify the
impact of individual initiatives. We want as many companies as possible to sign up to The Diversity in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure Charter and actively contribute to making a difference in this area.
Women in the United States continue to earn less than men, on average. Among full-time, year-round workers in 2019, women’s median annual earnings were 82% those of men.
The gender wage gap is narrower among younger workers nationally, and the gap varies across geographical areas. In fact, in 22 of 250 U.S. metropolitan areas, women under the age of 30 earn the same amount as or more than their male counterparts, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
Women in the Workplace is the largest study on the state of women in corporate America. In 2015, LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company launched the study to give companies insights and tools to advance gender diversity in the workplace. Between 2015 and 2021, over 750 companies participated in the study, and more than a quarter of a million people were surveyed on their workplace experiences. This year, we collected information from 423 participating organizations employing 12 million people, surveyed more than 65,000 employees, and conducted
interviews with women of diverse identities, including women of color,2 LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities. Our 2021 findings focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion on the experiences of women and the state of work more broadly.
The high-level results of this research show that when respondents agree that pay is transparent in their organization, the gender wage gap vanishes for women doing similar jobs to men when all
compensable factors are adjusted. Analysis of the gender wage gap by industry and occupation largely
follows the same trend. However, there are a few notable exceptions where pay does not quite equalize, mostly in industries with a larger gender wage gap to overcome or in occupations that are significantly
male dominated.
This research proposes and tests a new theoretical mechanism to account for a portion of the motherhood penalty in wages and related labor market outcomes. At least a portion of this penalty is attributable to discrimination based on the assumption that mothers are less competent and committed than other types of workers. But what happens when mothers definitively prove their competence and commitment? In this study, we examine whether mothers face discrimination in labor-market-type evaluations even when they provide indisputable evidence that they are competent and committed to paid work. We test the hypothesis that evaluators discriminate against highly successful mothers by viewing them as less warm, less likable, and more interpersonally hostile than otherwise similar workers who are not mothers. The results support this “normative discrimination” hypothesis for female but not male evaluators. The findings have important implications for understanding the nature and persistence of discrimination toward mothers.
Work-family reconciliation is an integral part of labor law as the result of two major demographic changes: the rise of the two-earner family, and the pressing concern of elder care as Baby Boomers age. Despite these changes, most European and American workplaces still assume that the committed worker has a family life secured so that family responsibilities do not distract from work obligations. This way of organizing employment around a breadwinner husband and a caregiver housewife, which arose in the late eighteenth century, is severely outdated today. The result is workplace-workforce mismatch: Many employers still have workplaces perfectly designed for the workforce of 1960. Labour lawyers in Europe and the United States have developed different legal strategies to reduce the work-family conflicts that arise from this mismatch. The Europeans’ focus is on public policy, based on a European political tradition of communal social supports — a tradition the United States lacks. Advocates in the United States, faced with the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world, have developed legal remedies based on the American political tradition of individualism, using anti-discrimination law to eliminate employment discrimination against mothers and other adults with caregiving responsibilities. This article explores both the social science documenting that motherhood is the strongest trigger for gender bias in the workplace and the American cases addressing “family responsibilities discrimination.”
Much has been achieved in terms of human rights for women and people of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) community. However, human resources management (HRM) initiatives for gender equality in the workplace focus almost exclusively on white, heterosexual, cisgender women, leaving the problems of other gender, and social minorities out of the analysis. This article develops an integrative model of gender equality in the workplace for HRM academics and practitioners. First, it analyzes relevant antecedents and consequences of gender-based discrimination and harassment (GBDH) in the workplace. Second, it incorporates the feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives in the analysis. Third, it integrates literature findings about women and the LGBTQ at work, making the case for an inclusive HRM. The authors underscore the importance of industry-university collaboration and offer a starters’ toolkit that includes suggestions for diagnosis, intervention, and applied research on GBDH. Finally, avenues for future research are identified to explore gendered practices that hinder the career development of women and the LGBTQ in the workplace.
Gaps in gender equality are narrowing globally, but significant challenges persist in all countries. Approaches to improve gender equality need to be made by individuals and at the organisational level. Egalitarian men can do their utmost to promote opportunities for women in medicine and science. But to quote feminist Mary Beard, ‘you cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded male; you have to change the structure’.
