A Comparative Study of Gender Equality and Organizational Equality Policy.

Abstract

This study is intended to investigate the topic of gender equality between male and female employees within a higher education establishment. The traditional, binary gender divide forms the focus of this research to the exclusion of transgender and gender-fluid employees, due to a general lacking in literature surrounding this topic. That which exists, such as McCann and Sharek (2016) generally focuses on the scientific and health related aspects of transgender issues and little literature on transgender people within organizations exists. Furthermore, accessing a sizable population of transgender people may have proved difficult. The research relies on qualitative, semi-structured interviews as the instrument for data collection, in which organizational employees were questioned on the effectiveness of their organization’s gender equality policy. All participants in this study were female, as a review of the literature on gender equality in organizations revealed that women generally suffer inequalities more often than men (Davis 2011). It was found that the organization in question operates a less than robust gender equality policy, of which the employees studied had varying levels of awareness. Furthermore, some aspects of this policy appeared to exist for academic purposes only and were not enacted in many circumstances. The aims of the study were; to ascertain the extent to which men dominate the institution’s (at the centre of the study) upper echelons, to discover whether gender inequality is prevalent in the organization and to draw conclusions as to the effectiveness of gender its equality policy in reducing inequalities.