Sexism and the Glass Ceiling

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Sexism and the Glass Ceiling

Sexism is still in evidence in the workplace and in today's society despite the battle that women are making for themselves. Sexism is a particular concern for society when considering its effect in the workplace. Sexism has always been a particular problem in the labor market especially with the formation of capitalism. In the last half of the 20th century this has been especially highlighted due to the increase of woman entering the labor market. This aroused the need for legislation for equal opportunity for both sex's to be passed in 1975. It stated that discrimination of a person's sex whether male or female was unlawful in employment, union membership, education, provision of goods, services, advertisements.

Woman hold a large percentage of the work force in companies but hardly any seems to pertain any of the power. There are many obstacles in the way of woman in careers; women are in the quest for equal pay for both sexes. The pay should be the same for the same jobs, but many companies pay men a higher salary then women for the same job causing sex discrimination. Sex discrimination means that a person gets treated in a less favorable manner because of their sex.

A good example of this is to take two fictional characters, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. The Jones's wanted to go swimming. They get to the swimming pools where they find that Mrs. Jones is charged an discounted price while Mr. Jones has to pay the full price even though they are both the same age. This is because women become pensioners at the age of sixty while men cannot gain the benefits until they are sixty-five.

Sex discrimination is not only present within the older generation but is also evident throughout the entire age range. Before legislation was passed in the 1960's most young girls left school after certain number of years to receive a strong social message that their careers where already setup for them as marriage and motherhood. The only jobs they would be getting were tedious low paid jobs such as a position as a Secretary and be only looking forward to when they would meet a man, have a family and settle down.

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