Challenging patriarchy to build workplace gender equality
| Autor | Aruna Rao |
| Cargo | Co-Founder and Executive Director, Gender at Work Research Associate, University of Sussex |
| Páginas | 1-8 |
IUSLabor 2/2016
1
EDITORIAL
CHALLENGING PATRIARCHY TO BUILD WORKPLACE GENDER EQUALITY1
Aruna Rao, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and Executive Director, Gender at Work
Research Associate, University of Sussex
If progress for gender equality and non-discrimination were measured in legal and policy
advances, the momentum over the past 20 years would be record-breaking. And yet, why do
so many hard-won policy and legal reform processes fail to generate any measurable changes
for gender justice? Women’s workforce participation is increasing all over the world yet we
are witnessing persistent inequalities and gender power dynamics that keep women
subordinate. Sexual harassment, for example, involving high profile individuals from the full
spectrum of workplaces –United Nations, business, media, and civil society organizations–
is front page news everywhere. In Australia, despite being outlawed for 25 years, sexual
harassment is the top complaint received by its Human Rights Commission; in EU countries,
40-50% of women reported that they experienced sexual harassment in the workplace; in
Japan, in 2013 the Equal Employment Office had 9.230 sexual harassment cases and in the
US, one in three cases before the Equal Employment Commission are sexual harassment
cases2.
Despite a range of policies and programs to address gender inequalities, women are
underrepresented at the highest echelons of power and decision making across sectors and
across countries. For example, a 2015 study by LeanIn.org and McKinsey and Co. covering
118 companies in the United States found that women are still vastly under-represented at
every level3. The same story is repeated in different kinds of organizations around the world.
For example, a 2015 survey of 328 not-for-profits carried out in India, by DASRA, a
philanthropic foundation, suggests that while women constitute close to 53% of employees,
their proportion drops dramatically when it comes to managerial positions –34%. In women-
led NGOs this number jumps to 75% and in men-led NGOs, it drops to 15%4. The survey
1 I am grateful to Joanne Sandler, David Kelleher and Carol Miller for their insightful comments on this paper.
2 Catalyst. Quick Take: Sex Discrimination and Sexual Harassment. New York: Catalyst, May 25, 2015.
3 Lean In and McKinsey, Women in the Workplace, 2015.
4 http://www.livemint.com/Companies/busG56HnYK2a6TeU9xcuSO/Even-in-the-nonprofit-sector-women-
are-getting-left-behind.html
Ibid., p.2
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