The Issue of Gender Inequality in Australia

Gender inequality is a issue faced by all the working sectors in Australia and statistics have shown that women in Australia still earn 26,527 less than men in all sectors. This shows that there is still a gender gap of 22.4% (Burke, 2017). However, this gap is still to huge and there are less amount of amount of women holding stronger positions in management.  Even though efforts have been made to include women into senior level positions, no drastic change has been visible. The statistic very clearly indicates that women represent 24.9 % of the boards in all sectors. This has made it very evident that men are still dominating the sector and there have been no significant change in positions held by women in the past four years.  There are claims such as those women are not competent enough to be a part of the board and the scenario will not change until women gets the opportunity to prove themselves. Financial and insurance service sector in Australia has the maximum pay gap. There has been gender pay claims against Bendigo and Adelaide bank where it has been seen there is a gender gap of 33% (Browne, 2013). The gender pay gap in the national context is 17.6%, which shows the contrast in gender inequality. The report will analyze the given case on gender equality to indentify the different issues and the different measures to resolve the issue.  

The given case brings to light the one of the primary issues the corporate sector in Australia is facing that is gender inequality and gender pay gap.  The awareness in gender inequality has increased significantly that is evident from the effort made by the organization to address issues with gender inequality and decreasing the imbalances in organizations. Even though the data suggest that, there is increase in awareness among the employers but still a considerable amount of progress has to be made in this context.  The current situation shows that women still earns far less than the men in every sector do.  Therefore, providing the manager with adequate training is necessary to prevent unconscious biases from creeping into the organizational processes.  The impact of gender pay gap and inequality has affected the financial and insurance sector the most where there is clear distinction between in pay between both the genders. There is national pay gender gap of 15.3 % according to SAP President and managing director, Colin Brookes. This shows that employers are not doing enough to gap in gender equality. Therefore, effective management of diversity and work life balance is essential reducing the gender biases. 

Gender Pay Gap in the National Context

As stated by Barak, (2016), there is a clear distinction between diversity initiative, affirmative plans and equal employment opportunity. However, all three are very important in reducing gender biases within an organization but they all deal with gender inequality in their own way. Equal employment opportunity deals with the protection of classes form discrimination based on religion, race, age, color, national origin and disability. Affirmative action plans specifically deals with maintaining employer standards for positively hiring, promoting and recruiting women into organizational setting (Kirton & Greene, 2015). On the other hand, diversity management measures the standards of discrimination indentifying the cultural difference within the workplace.  This shows that diversity management is essential for reducing the gender pay within different sectors in Australia.  Bendigo and Adelaide bank has been facing similar issues so the bank will have to implement effective policies for reducing gender inequality and gap.

According to (Downey et al., 2015), Managing workforce in effective way is essential for gaining competitive advantage in the operating market. Diversity in workforce will define the type of culture the organization is following. The study shows that effective diversity management reduces the turnover rate and motivates the employees to perform in a better way. Diverse workforce enables better dynamics where different members can perform different function to improve the quality of work they are doing.  Diversity management brings people belonging to different culture, race, and gender and social upbringing so that they can effectively use their expertise to overcome the problem in hand. However, discrepancies in providing equal opportunity and pay opportunities to women are a failure of the organizational policies in most of the organizations in Australia.

Bendigo and Adelaide bank have not been able to manage effectively the diversity of the organization that has been evident from the gender pay gap and lack of recruitment of women at managerial posts and senior levels of higher responsibilities. Thus, this will have a negative impact on the organizational culture and productivity due to the unfavorable work culture that has been developed (Sabharwal, 2014). Thus, in order to ensure progress of the organization Bendigo and Adelaide bank will have to use diversity management to improve the quality of their workforce.   One of the most important elements of diversity is gender and Equal Opportunity for women in the workplace Amendment Bill 2012 was devised to provide women with more opportunities in senior management and corporate governance (Mitchell et al., 2015). Diversity management can be divided into three aspects; one is managerial, second is strategic and third is operational which will be based on organizational values, short term and long-term goals, existing culture, individualism and constraints. This provides the organization the flexibility and dynamics to adapt to the changes in management. 

Diversity Management: An Effective Tool for Reducing Gender Bias

Initiatives used to manage diversity

As opined by Riccò & Guerci, (2014), initiatives for managing will vary depending upon the nature and purpose of the strategy.  Strategic initiatives are used by the organization to gaining competitive advantage in the market. Operational initiatives are concerned with implementation of the organizational practices. Finally, managerial initiatives focuses on development of policies and practices which will facilitate in effective management of diversity within the organization. Therefore, in terms of strategic initiative the change in existing culture will have to be demarcated so that the new culture can be developed. In order to do so, the various dimension of the new culture will have to be identified and the issues in the existing culture will have to be identified. Thus, diversity can be managed in a better way in the organization. In the case of Bendigo and Adelaide bank there are two main issues they are facing one is the gender pay gap and the number of female employees holding a position of senior management and governance (Ben-Amar, Chang & McIlkenny, 2017). Therefore, they will have to develop strategies for managing these diversity issues and promote diversity by creating job roles for female employees at senior levels of management and corporate governance.

However, in order to accomplish the strategic initiatives the organization will have to develop managerial initiative for supporting and developing effective practices. This will consist of human resources practices where job roles, working hours and employee structure will be evaluated. This will consist of examination of recruitment and selection processes so that development of any random biasness can be identified and rectified.  Performance management system is very crucial in this context, as it will enable the organization to evaluate and compare the performance of the employees so that discrimination can be avoided (Buckingham & Goodall, 2015). Transparency will have to be maintained while developing the performance management system so that performance appraisal could be done based on their performance and gender bias can be avoided. Therefore, constant evaluation of performance will facilitate in developing effective training and development programs for employees. Performance management system will have to be used for providing women employees with deserved salary increment and promotions. Performance management will aim to identify the hindrance faced by the employees based on heir diversity so that suitable solutions can be developed (Dawar & Singh, 2016). Thus, by using effective management tools Bendigo and Adelaide bank will be able to make the women employees to perform at full potentials by identifying their unique hindrances. Therefore, implementation of these policies into the human resource practices will transform the organizational culture to develop new values. These changes cannot be achieved overnight and considerable amount of preparation is required. The operational change comes into play in this phase where all the necessary preparations have to be made for implementation of change initiatives into the organizational setting. This will consist of period, resources and role of each of the departments in successful completion of each of the projects. 

Implementing Diversity Management in the Australian Workplace

Challenges faced in the development and implementation of diversity initiative

The implementation of diversity management into the operational activities is difficult as understanding the concept of diversity management and its effectiveness for the organization performance. Therefore, in order to convince the internal stakeholders about the effectiveness of the diversity management initiatives business cases will have to be prepared so that benefits of implementing the diversity management program into the organizational setting can be explained with clear data (Castonguay, et al., 2045). The communication process within the organization is a big challenge as with the change in organizational culture there will be change in the nature of the organization. There are many contradictory elements to implementing diversity management. These challenges will have to be mitigated for managing diversity in an effective way.

The implementation of diversity management can be effectively done by use of tools such as diversity enlargement, cultural audit and diversity training. These three are all important in creating an effective diversity within the organization.  Diversity enlargement is the techniques of increasing the representation of minorities within the organization.  This tool will identify the current number of women employees in Bendigo and Adelaide bank. Then diversity enlargement will be used for increasing the number of female employees by setting up a particular target for the fiscal year (Eginli & Narin, 2017). Diversity training deals with training programs to change the attitude of the employees towards workplace diversity. This is only possible by developing a culture of acceptance within the organization where both the management and employees will value the importance of diversity of their workforce. Moreover, this will consist of developing a culture, which will recognize different people based on their different needs, different styles, different desires and different values. Therefore, the management and employees will have to be provided with proper training so that they can practice tolerance within the organizational setting. Cultural audit is used for investigation the behavior of the employees and management towards diversity issues (Gray, Lindstädt & Slapin, 2017). This is conducted through questionnaires and surveys on organizational focus groups to observe their behavioral patterns. Work life balance is a key implementation, which is essential for providing the women employees with flexibility. It is has been seen that flexibility in work increase the level of performance of female employees. 

Conclusion 

Thus, it can be concluded that gender inequality and gender pay gap are the different limitations for most of the sectors in Australia. Even though the gender pay gap is, decreasing gender inequality is highly prevalent within the organization due to the absence of less number of women in senior levels of management and corporate governance. Bendigo and Adelaide bank has received a lot of criticism from various experts due to their huge difference in gender pay and very limited amount of women in the higher levels of hierarchy. Therefore, diversity management is essential for providing women with equal opportunity and remunerations at workplace. Bendigo and Adelaide bank will have to implement diversity training, diversity enlargement, and cultural audit and work life balance within the organization for implementing diversity management within the organization. 

References

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