What is the Impact of Gender Discrimination in Workplace Negotiation Between Women?

Abstract

The presence of different kinds of gender-based inequalities at workplaces leads to the menace of gender discrimination. It is often thought that gender discrimination is preferring of men or male employees more in comparison to the opposite gender employees despite having similar credentials of due consideration. The interesting fact over here is gender discrimination is not just only happening due to men discriminating women at workplaces but women being discriminated or facing unfair treatment from their women superiors as well. The prevalence of gender discrimination at workplaces is a clear depiction of organisational culture that can be seen from the Human Resources (HR) management policies. It is observed that the women superiors often stereotype women employees and this gender bias plays a negative role during the time of yearly performance evaluation at these mid-level corporate organisations. This issue of gender discrimination deteriorates organisation work culture once a woman in senior position shows critical behavior towards junior female employees that is a sign of inappropriate behavior or sexual bullying as well. In this regard, the main aim of this study critical analysis of gender discrimination and its impact at corporate workplaces (of UK and Ireland) and its aftereffects on negotiation capabilities of women employees. The qualitative (i.e. Interview strategy) is selected over here in the form of conducting interview of two women employees of UK and Ireland based corporate firms, and making use of thematic content analysis for analyzing of the collected data. It is observed that negotiations are proving ineffective for women employees due to gender discrimination quite prevalent in these firms as is seen from gender pay disparity, denied promotions or appraisals and many more ways as discussed in this study. This led to agreement of the hypothesis that gender biases which women employees are having about other women is a major cause of gender discrimination at workplaces severely impacting negotiation outcomes.