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.