Causes and Forms of Gender Discrimination: Analytical Essay

A notable feature of the labour market’s change over the past two decade is the increase in the proportion of female works. As women’s participation in economic activities increase, working families are becoming a universal household form, and traditional views on gender roles in men and women are also changing a lot. In particular, as the perception that domestic labour is not the sole responsibility of women. However, there are still gender issue such as gender wage gap, economic participation and opportunity, also well as low female representation in senior position.

In this paper, therefore, I will look at how these gender issue, above mentioned affect international management. First, the definition of gender will be explained, and the situation and cause of each issue on gender equality will be identified. Then, I will discuss about glass ceiling index to find out the key features of gender issue by selecting two countries: Korea and Japan which might reveals the cause of gender inequality. Finally, it will find out how important the female economic participation rate plays in international management.

Gender equality means that men and women are treated equally without discriminating against each other in all areas where they live, giving them the same opportunities of participation and the same rights and interests. Around the world, nations are still passing legislation to protect the right of employees and job candidates to be free from discrimination and harassment based on their gender, race, colour.

The phenomenon is invisible but can be explained by the glass ceiling index, which means structural suppression that prevents a particular gender or race from rising up in the workplace (Choi and Park, 2014). In other words, it is a typical figure that indicates a situation in which a person with sufficient ability cannot hold a high position due to gender discrimination or racism in the work place, and the indicators are calculated by calculating the academic, economic participation rate, wages childcare expenses, and the status of the company’s board of directors, councils, and women in the workplace.

For example, Korean, which has the lowest glass ceiling index among OECD countries for seven consecutive years, and japan which ranks 28th out of 29 countries respectively, in the glass ceiling index in 2019, Korea received only 20 points out of 100, far below the average of 60 points of the member countries (The Economist, 2020). That year, top-ranked Sweden topped the list with more than 80 points, followed by Norway, Iceland and Finland. Korea ranked last in three out of 10 categories of gender discrimination, and its overall rating was poor. First of all, women’s wages were 34.6 percent lower than men’s (Japan: 25 percent), with 12.5 percent female managers and 2.3 percent female corporate directors. This showed a marked difference, with 39 percent and 36.9 percent, respectively, in Sweden, where the ratio of female managers and directors was the highest. Furthermore, the gap between men and women among the labour-participating population was also 20.3 percent, raking 28th, out of 29 countries. Economist (2020) point out, “The wage gap in Korea, which is the last place, is ridiculously large, and the proportion of economic participants is only 59 percent for women, compared to 79 percent for men”. Although the nation government said it will increase the female participation rate of high-ranking government officials, executives of state-run companies and members of the government committee by 2020, it has a long way to go. Even if the voluntary participation rate of Korean and Japanese women in economic activities has increased recently, the important of female workers has become a major issue in policy as a measure to solve the problem of labour shortage caused by low birth rates and aging.

Many scholars (Choi and Park, 2014; Kim and Kim, 2010; Lee, 2017) believe that this gap in gender equality is due to the culturally planted ‘Confucian ideas’ which traditional values of respect for authority and elders, emphasizing loyalty and hard work to manage social order, family harmony or self-sufficiency embedded into two nations. This is consistent with the part in which cultural influences human behaviour, as Hofstede claims (Hofstede, 1994). In other words, Korea and Japan can be seen as reasons belonging to collectivist society, high power distance, relatively feminine characteristics and strong avoidance of uncertainty among the cultural dimensions of Hofstede (Lee, 2017). In the perspective of management field, companies are mainly founded and operated by men thus, they tend to have a strong preference for men. Therefore, it is said that they often have a strong male-oriented cultural tendency in terms of their organization’s attributes and lifestyle. In this case, the cultural nonconformity between the value pursued by women and the male-oriented management culture is perceived as one of the biggest obstacles to women’s career development in the corporate field (Festing et al., 2015).

In the context of international management, most expatriates are made up of men. Some figures surveyed over the past 25 years showed that the proportion of female workers in the job has increased from 5 percent to 16 percent (Briscoe, 2012). The biggest reason for such a low percentage of female expatriates is the stereotype of host countries accepting women as professional or managerial roles. Another reason is that they generally assumed that women would not be accepted in foreign cultures. Other barriers to women’s international missions include “dual-career marriages, domestic managers who do not choose it, and the perception that women are not interested in those missions”. In fact, marriage, childbirth, and childcare are the biggest factors hindering women from participating in the economic activities in Korea and Japan. This must mean a lot. For the parent company, these reasons will inevitably lead to a stereotype of quitting at any time because of the above reasons and to reasons why they can not assign women to work oversea as its core talent. According some studies (Briscoe, 2012, p. 248; Westwood and Leung, 1994), there is a further dependence on prejudice or stereotype as another cause of the limited or low number of female expatriates, which is considered more deeply by the parents company than by foreign subsidiaries.

According to Gender Pay Gap Report 2020 (2020), the largest gender gap is ‘Political Empowerment’ among the four sub-indexes, only 24.7 percent of its gap has been closed in 2020. The second biggest gap was ‘Economic participation and opportunity’, with 57.8 percent of the gap showing a slight step back following last year. However, the change in this figure shoed an increase in the number of high-ranking women. Moreover, the number of senior private sector managers and officials worldwide reached 36 percent, up 2 percent from last year. Nevertheless, there can still be a gap between men and women as this figure can only be seen as a little closer to equivalent in few countries. Also, in the economic field, the gender gap has widened. The global labour market participation rate of women is 55 percent, far below that of men 78 percent. In this regard, the report said the percentage of women in managerial positions and representative positions is still low. Meanwhile, more than 40 percent of the wage gap and 50 percent of the income gap still need to be closed (WEF, 2019). It could also be seen that men are more distributed in higher-rated job clusters in career choices, not gender discrimination. Finally, according to this report, it is analysed that achieving gender equality, where anyone can freely choose a job, is expected to be possible in 2276, 257 years from now (WEF, 2019).

Organizational diversity in international management increase flexibility and enables quality to be improved through “a variety of perspective when making decisions or solving problems”. And diversity gives organizations a critical and multifaceted approach to the issue they face (Olsen and Martins, 2012, p. 19). Therefore, the diversity of organizations can contribute to enhance performance. Securing its diversity is necessary to improve organizational creativity in a knowledge-information society. In short, the diversity of men and women in an organization allows them to experience organizational creativity, innovation, and improved problem-solving skills (Ali et al., 2015). According to Mackinsey (2015, p.2), enterprises in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have “financial returns above their respective national industry medians”. In addition, in the UK, the higher the gender diversity of the senior executive team, the higher the performance in the data set, which resulted in an EBIT increase 3.5 percent for every 10% increase in gender diversity. There is also a study on the impact of the role of female executives on companies in terms of governance. In a study of gender issue, a board of directors, in which women participated, shows a higher level of independence and improved supervisory function than that of directors composed only of men. Finally, there are studies in which female executives lead in-depth discussions and make informed decisions. Daily and rose argue that female executives tend to give the board a different perspective tan man and promote decision-making appropriate to a situation, which can result in increased board transparency and reduced information asymmetry. Hillman (2007) also asserts that female executives are characterized by contributing to broad discussions at the board of directors by challenging traditional practices and policies, pursuing legitimate ways and communicating effectively. In sum, in can be seen that female executives improve accounting transparency by expanding the scope of boardroom discussions and making informed decisions through effective communication. According to McKinsey report 2015 (2015), comparing the average operating profit with the average return on equity (ROE) between the top 25% companies with a high proportion of women and those without women at all, “ROE showed a gap of more than 40% and more than 50% with a higher proportion of women”, which would have much to suggest.

In conclusion, if gender discrimination appears in various forms throughout society, and the causes and appearances of that form also vary according to industry. In particular, gender disparity in international management was able to find the factors that hindered the company’s development, innovative, and profit growth. Although it is true that many MNEs are increasing women’s economic participations rate in various ways or services for female employees, the figure is still insignificant. As mentioned above, culture and gender role stereotype and male-oriented management culture would be the most consideration element cased to gender gap and inequality. Even at this point, if women are still in a high social position, people may feel that the organization can be shaken due to lack of control by women. However, the gender inequality in international management should be excluded from these causes and reasons and should be pursued as a direction for the organization’s profit and innovative management strategy.