Hannah Gregory BUS 259-0001 October 27, 2012 Human Resources and Working Women Executive Summary For as long as women have been working, they have been facing problems and inequality. The Civil War saw the amount of working women increase exponentially. With this increase, came an awareness of the working woman’s issues. Poor or dangerous working conditions, long hours, low and unequal pay and outright discrimination made working a hardship for women. Unfortunately, exposure of these issues did not generate much progress. Changes did not begin until the mid-nineteenth century with the formation of the first women’s labor unions, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association and the Daughters of St. Crispin. Equal pay was not legislated by Congress until 1872 and even that was only extended to female government employees. At the turn of the century, women began to be more vocal about their treatment at work. Women began to organize into leagues and unions, going on strike to force employers to treat them fairly and equal to their male co-workers. Finally, in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt made women’s rights and official part of his political platform. This action put women’s issues in the face of the public and demanded a reaction. In 1920, the Department of Labor was formed to support women in the workplace. More legislation providing equal rights, equal pay, and improved working conditions for women was passed during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Over time, conditions and pay have improved for working women. However, there are still issues that women face when they are a part of the modern workforce. These issues include sexual harassment, the glass ceiling, and equal pay for equal work. The glass ceiling is a phrase coined by the Wall Street Journal describing the barriers preventing women from achieving promotion to the highest levels of a corporation. Today, women make up a meniscal percentage of CEOs and board members of Fortune 500 companies. Human resource departments have to take an active role in shattering the glass ceiling in these companies so that women are promoted on an equal basis as men. Sexual harassment is a problem that is not exclusive to women, but is prevalent in the workplace and women are the most frequent targets. Unwelcome advances, pervasive crude and sexual behavior, and basing employment decisions on whether or not a sexual favor is granted constitutes sexual harassment and is a form of discrimination. Human resources departments are an important part of stopping and preventing sexual harassment. These departments also play a big part in insuring that women are compensated on an equal level with their male counterparts. Human resources are responsible for creating and influencing compensation practices in a company. This influence should be used to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work as required by law and ethical standards. The development of human resource departments has been crucial to women’s equality in the workplace. During the twentieth century, human resource departments have aided women by walking alongside them in their journey to equal treatment. Human resource employees can offer information and options to women who have or are starting families and don’t wish to leave their careers. These options enhance companies and often raise profits. Introduction Women have been an integral part of the American work force for a long time. Longer in fact, than there have been formal human resource managers and representatives. It is important to understand the history behind the working woman so that modern human resource departments can function effectively. For human resources to really aid the female workforce, they must understand topics like sexual harassment, the glass ceiling, and equal pay for equal work. These are just a few of the issues that women face in the work place. History of Women in the Workplace The Civil War claimed the lives of over 600,000 men and left scores more injured. This great loss required women to enter the work force en masse to provide for their families and keep the machine of American Industry moving. Working conditions were poor at best and life threatening at worst. Hours were long and pay was low. Women who worked in factories, mills and shops were not compensated equally to their male counterparts and had very little voice. In fact, many were perceived as a threat by the men they worked with and for. The end of the Civil War saw a change in the demographic of the American Workforce but sadly, it took many years for women to make their voices heard there. While the height of women’s rights activities occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women have been making efforts to improve their working conditions long before then. According to a timeline by NYSUT, (A Union of Professionals), the first organization of female workers was the Daughters of Liberty formed in 1765 as a branch of the Sons of Liberty. The first time that female workers organized a strike was in 1824 when over a hundred women in Pawtucket, Rhode Island went on strike to protest wage reduction and an increase in work hours. The United Tailoresses of New York was formed the next year and was the first women’s union. The union went on strike six years later protesting unfair wages. By the 1870s, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) had been formed by female cotton mill workers in Massachusetts, and the first national union for women, the Daughters of St. Crispin, was formed. The LFLRA staged a notable strike against twelve to fourteen hour workdays in “unhealthy apartments, exposed to the poisonous contagion of air, vegetable, animal and mineral properties, debarred from proper Physical Exercise, Mental Discipline and Mastication cruelly limited, and thereby hastening on us through pain, disease and privation, to a premature grave…” (TheLaborSite.com). The LFLRA sought the creation of laws limiting the workday to ten hours and the improvement of working conditions. In 1872 Congress passed a law providing female government employees equal pay for equal work. The late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds saw a surge in action by women seeking to improve their work environments, wages, and rights. In 1881 three thousand laundry workers went on strike in Atlanta, Georgia and New York passed a law requiring female doctors for female patients in mental institutions. The National Consumers League was formed by women in 1899 to organize women to use their influence as consumers to push for better working conditions and employment laws for women. 1909 saw the formation of the National Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) to fight for improved pay and working conditions for women. In 1909, female workers in New York went on strike in the “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand” (NYSUT). This was a planned strike protesting safety issues that included few and inaccessible fire escapes from lofted work stations and extremely poor working conditions. A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company then caused the deaths of 149 women there who were either unable to escape or forced to jump from the top floors of the building. This tragedy at the end of the two-month strike did lead to laws forcing employers to improve working conditions (TheLaborSite.com). It also grabbed the attention of the American public and in 1912 Teddy Roosevelt’s party officially included women’s rights in its platform (NYSUT). The NYSUT timeline goes on to describe activities and incidents in the early twentieth century’s political arena. In 1920 the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor is formed to support working women. In 1933 and 1934 the presidential cabinet and U.S. Court of Appeals instated their first female members; Francis Perkins as Secretary of Labor, and Judge Florence Ellinwood Allen on the bench. The next year, the National Council of Negro Women was formed by Mary McLeod Bethune to fight racism, sexism, and job discrimination. She was backed by President Roosevelt in 1936. During the 60’s and 70’s, a slew of laws providing equal rights, equal pay, and improved working conditions for all American women. These laws included the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1964, and Executive Order 1137 in 1967 by President Johnson which expanded his affirmative action policy and expanded education and employment rights for women (NYSUT). In the turbulent 70s, the courts were forced to consider the effects of these laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that employers could not manipulate job titles in an attempt to pay women less than men or justify lower pay for women based on a false “going market rate” (Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, NYSUT). Also during this time, the Equal Rights Amendment (1972) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978) were passed. Finally, in 1986, sexual harassment was declared to be employment discrimination and against the law by the U.S. Supreme Court (NYSUT). These are just a few events that helped to shape our modern day work environment. Women have taken an impressive journey in an effort to be treated fairly and considered equal to their male co-workers. Why is this journey so important? How is it relevant to current human resources operations? It is important because without understanding the past, we cannot hope to improve the future. Women are still fighting many of the same battles today. Relationship between Human Resources and Working Women When women were carving out their place in the workforce, they did not have a human resources representative to contact. There was no one “on the inside” to vouch for them or ensure that they were treated fairly and with respect. Women were truly on their own in many ways. Today, companies have human resources departments devoted to, among many other things, ensuring that all employees are treated equally regardless of race, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. They are responsible for ensuring that women are compensated equally to their male counterparts, are not victims of sexual harassment or other forms of discrimination, and are able to enjoy equal opportunities for advancement. Women now have a wealth of information and help available to them, thanks to the women who fought for equality in the past. One thing that Human Resource departments have been working towards is getting and keeping qualified female employees for their companies. No one argues that men and women are different with different needs, motivations, and attitudes. Women are the ones who carry and birth children but they are no longer required by society to be the primary caregiver. Many families are making the decision to let Mom go back to work while Dad stays home with the kids. Companies are also able to offer flex-time and work-from-home options to their female employees. Human resource departments need to stay up to date on these practices so that they can offer these options and keep valuable employees on board. Policies like this that support working women will enhance a company, increasing productivity, opportunities, creativity, and morale (Green, et.al). Women’s Issues and Human Resources There are many obstacles that women still face in the workplace. Equal Pay, the Glass Ceiling, and sexual harassment are problems that are not faced exclusively by women, but they are dominant among female workers. Frequently, these issues rear their heads in subtle ways that could easily cause them to be overlooked. Human resource workers have a responsibility to identify these issues and work to eradicate them from the companies they work for. Without action, these problems will continue and progress will come to a halt. The Glass Ceiling The “glass ceiling” was a term used by the Wall Street Journal to describe barriers preventing women from promotion into the top levels of corporations. Ten years after the appearance of this phrase, the Glass Ceiling Commission was created and published its findings that the glass ceiling continued to “deny untold numbers of qualified people the opportunity to compete for and hold executive level positions in the private sector” (Economist, 2005). An article in The Economist (21 July 2005) said that the Commission found that while 45.7% of American jobs were filled by women, 95% of senior positions were filled by men. In the ten years since the Glass Ceiling Commission was formed, the number of senior positions held by women has increased from five percent to eight percent. In 2010, women held only fifteen percent of board seats among Fortune 500 companies. Only three percent of CEOs in these companies are women (Lang). In her article for USA Today, Ilene Lang states that even though more of today’s women are going to business school and earning their MBAs, their male counterparts (with or without a comparable degree) are paid 23% more. She goes on to say that men not only “start their first post-MBA jobs at higher positions than women”, but their salaries increased at a rate higher than their female co-workers. Women with seniority, higher performance ratings, and more education and experience are being overlooked for senior positions. They are being bypassed in favor of the male stereotype and the idea that a woman will abandon the company to tend to or start her family. According to Psychology Today (15 May 2010), women are choosing to “opt-out” of high level jobs and are either remaining in their present position, starting over at new companies, or simply going home because they have hit the glass ceiling and can go no further in their current companies. Human resources departments can and must take an active role in working to shatter the glass ceiling. Experts at Harvard have stated that having women in senior level jobs would greatly improve company function and profits (Williams). Human resource representatives can start by analyzing the hiring and promotion practices of their companies. By looking at statistics, employee profiles, and the methods used by the company to determine who will receive promotions, human resources can identify practices or individuals who may be contributing to a low ratio of female to male senior employees. Unsatisfactory practices can be corrected by making changes to company policies and pushing for awareness of the glass ceiling throughout the company. Individuals contributing to this issue may be more difficult to deal with. Many may not realize that they are treating their co-workers unfairly and these employees could benefit from awareness training and workshops. A system of checks and balances could easily be incorporated into hiring and promotion procedures to prevent unintentional actions that would put any employee at a disadvantage. Individuals who are consciously discriminating against the women they work with and preventing them from working in top-level positions will need to be handled more actively. Disciplinary action may need to be taken if these employees refuse to acknowledge or change their behavior. The progress on this issue has been painfully slow. Top companies have experienced increases of female CEOs and board members at rates of one to two percent per decade (Williams, Lang). One out of every three qualified women with MBAs is not working or is underemployed as opposed to one out of every twenty similarly qualified males (Economist). The only way to correct this problem and change these numbers is to empower women in the workplace and work to eradicate stereotypes and bias. Human resource departments have the power and responsibility help shatter the glass ceiling in America. Sexual Harassment Unlike the Glass Ceiling which mainly affects women, sexual harassment can be directed towards any employee with the largest amounts of victims being women and homosexuals. For the purpose of this paper, the focus will be on women. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declares the illegality of harassing an applicant or employee because of that person’s sex and goes on to state that: “Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature…harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).” A harasser can be a supervisor, co-worker, or anyone else connected to the work environment, of the same or a different gender, and of any sexual orientation. Sexual harassment is discrimination and it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Heathfield). About.com offers examples of sexual harassment. Some items on this list are unwanted jokes and gestures, inappropriate touching or grabbing, offensive emails or pictures of a sexual nature, and constant flirting or requests for dates. To constitute sexual harassment, these behaviors (among others) must be severe or pervasive (Equal Rights Advocates). For example, a single inappropriate or offensive email forwarded to female coworkers would not be considered sexual harassment, but persistent offensive emails would constitute sexual harassment. When offensive behavior creates what the EEOC calls a “hostile or offensive work environment” this behavior has become sexual harassment. Offensive behavior of a sexual nature that interferes with an employee’s ability to perform their job falls into this category. For example, two or three female employees are subjected to lewd jokes, whistles, inappropriate comments and flirting from their male co-workers several times each day. They are unable to escape this behavior since they work in cubicles and the men refuse to stop. These women are being hindered in their jobs and forced to work in a hostile and offensive work environment. They can take action to stop this sexual harassment. Employment decisions based on the rejection or acceptance of sexual favors or advances also constitutes sexual harassment. Some women have found that they are passed over for promotion, given poor performance reviews, or suffered reduced compensation because they refused to submit to the sexual advances of their supervisors or co-workers. These women are victims of sexual harassment and may take legal action. If a woman complains that she is being sexually harassed at work, she is protected by law from retaliation. For example, a woman is being sexually harassed by her direct supervisor. She complains to her company’s human resources department who reports the behavior up the chain-of-command. The woman’s supervisor is legally barred from firing the woman, lowering pay, or taking any disciplinary action against her because of her report. Title VII requires all public and private employers (Exception: companies that employ less than fifteen people) to “take reasonable care to prevent sexual harassment and take reasonable care to promptly correct sexual harassment that has occurred” (Equal Rights Advocates, Repa). Human resource representatives play a key role in ensuring that these laws are followed. A clear policy on sexual harassment and defined procedures for reporting and handling incidents are important to preventing and stopping sexual harassment. Human resources departments need to ensure that these policies and procedures are in place in their companies. They also need to stay up-to-date on the laws that protect victims and dictate handling of sexual harassment cases. For example, before someone files a sexual harassment lawsuit, she must first file a complaint with the EEOC. Many companies also have their own procedures for dealing with complaints and employees should take advantage of these procedures. Many times, sexual harassment cases can be resolved in house and without a drawn out legal process. Human resource managers also have a broader role in preventing sexual harassment in the workplace. Managers need to foster a workplace environment that does not permit sexual harassment. All employees should know that their co-workers are to be respected at all times and sexual harassment will not be tolerated (Heathfield). Human resources departments should encourage the employees of their companies to speak out if they are being harassed and write down dates, places, times, and witnesses of any harassment. Most importantly, employees immediately report sexual harassment and be unafraid to do so (Equal Rights Advocates). Human resource representatives should have an open door policy that ensures employees that they are free to report harassment without fear of retaliation or rejection. Equal Pay for Equal Work Equal Pay may be one of the oldest grievances that female workers have had against their employers. Even today, over one hundred years after women fought tooth and nail for equality, there are women in the United States who are compensated less than their male counterparts. According to the Equal Pay Act (an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act) passed in 1963, “men and women who do the same jobs that require equal skill and responsibility must be compensated with equal wages and benefits” (Repa, 2/10). This does not mean that every woman must be paid the same amount as every man. Men (and women, for that matter) may have increased compensation based on seniority, quality of work, merit, and many other factors as long as those factors do not include gender. Jobs do not have to be identical in order to fall under the Equal Pay Act. Any jobs, regardless of title or descriptions, which require similar amounts of skill, effort, responsibility, and are performed under similar circumstances, are considered “the same job” by the EPA (Repa, 7/28). These criteria do not have to be identical, only similar. Some companies have tried to bypass the law by changing job titles and descriptions, saying that men are being paid more because they are working a different job. This trick is not only unethical and discriminatory, but it is also illegal. Human resource departments are heavily involved in the compensation practices of their companies. Human resource representatives have the ability to ensure that all employees receive equal pay for equal work. Sometimes, discrimination of this nature is unintentional or caused by a biased compensation system. Other times, pay discrimination occurs because of sexist stereotypes and preconceptions or outright dislike of women. For example, take two sales representatives, one male and one female, working in Washington State. They have been working at a company for the same amount of time and both have consistently good performance reviews. In any given month, they both earn similar commission on the products they sell but the male is paid a significantly higher hourly rate than the female because he is considered “one of the guys” by his supervisor. This violates the Equal Pay Act. However, if the male makes quarterly trips to Arizona, New Mexico, and New York State to conduct company business, he may be compensated more because his job includes a significant additional facet. These systems should be analyzed to ensure that female employees are not being discriminated against, intentionally or otherwise. It is the job of human resource workers to evaluate the pay systems their companies are using to prevent inequality, whether it is deliberate or not. Compensation can be a very tricky area to work in. Considerations must be made for financial compensation as well as non-financial compensation. Companies offering men more paid time off than women may be in violation of the Equal Pay Act, even if men and women are receiving the same paychecks. Human resource representatives have the ability to make changes to compensation systems that are biased towards men. They also have the ability to stop deliberate pay discrimination with a system of checks and balances. Conclusion Human resource departments can go a long way to assisting and promoting female workers. Some of these women depend on their H.R. representatives to ensure they are treated fairly in their male-dominated career paths. Human resources must be sensitive to women’s issues or else they risk adding to the problem instead of helping find a remedy. While sexual harassment, the glass ceiling, and equal pay for equal work are not issues that are exclusive to women (many minorities still suffer from unequal treatment in the workplace), women are a group that faces these problems each day. Human resource departments must work to make sure that everyone is treated fairly regardless of age, race, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. Works Cited Equal Rights Advocates. Know Your Rights: Sexual Harassment At Work. 2012. Web. Fleischer, Charles H. Employer’s Rights. Naperville: Sphinx, 2004. Print. ---. H.R. for Small Business. Naperville: Sphinx, 2005. Print. Grahm, Stedman. Diversity Leaders Not Labels: A New Plan for the 21st Century. New York: Free Press, 2006. Web. Green, Kelli A. et al. Diversity in the Workplace: Benefits, Challenges, and the Required Managerial Tools. October 2008. Web. 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