Sexism in the history of women in the workplace has always been present.
The fact is, there have always been less women than men in the workforce. Hence, women have had to face many hurdles in the workplace.
Ever since they were allowed to enter the workforce, the belief was that women have skills that are different from men’s and as such they should be concentrated in different professional fields.
Thus, women take on more positions in education and care, while men dominate the political, science, technology, and engineering fields.
Such horizontal gender segregation leads to the increase of the pay gap since the occupations dominated by male employees tend to be paid more than those dominated by women.
Yet, even in women-led profession, the men in the same positions still earn more than them, as Statista data shows.
Sexism isn’t only prevalent regarding pay.
A McKinsey & Company study found that women get far fewer promotion opportunities than men, with only 87 female workers getting promoted for every 100 males.
Moreover, they are less likely to take on leadership roles. In fact, according to the McKinsey study, only 26% hold a C-suite position.
The bias around women doesn’t stop at unequal pay and job opportunities. Even today, women are still not getting the same level of respect, as this. Samsung research showed that the use of stereotypes is still widely used in the workplace.
Hence, women are three times more likely to get asked to make coffee or tea than men. Additionally, they are also twice as likely to be given admin-based tasks. Lastly, they must endure sexist jokes three times more than men.
All this evidence suggests that sexism still permeates the workplace culture.