Gender Bias at Work

Your takeaway at the end of this lesson: enough vocabulary and well-managed ideas to confidently speak about gender bias and discrimination in workplaces.

If you have been treated unfairly on grounds of your sex, this may be unlawful discrimination. It can happen in many different forms, affects any gender identity, and doesn’t have to be intentional to be unlawful. For example, an employer bases their decision on stereotypical assumptions about the woman’s ability to carry out the job.  Another situation to imagine is when an employee receives a telephone call informing him that his civil partner has been involved in an accident, and the employer refuses the employee’s request for leave.

A study by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2020 shows that about half of the world’s men and women feel that men make better political leaders, and over 40 percent feel that men make better business executives and that men have more right to a job when jobs are scarce. Women are over-represented in occupations that are mostly considered as unskilled or low-value.

But men are not immune from gender bias, too. Positive stereotyping through titles like “The Results Are In: Women Are Better Leaders” by Forbes saying women are better leaders than men again invites discrimination claims. What we should focus on instead is “competency,” not gender.

In this lesson you are going to take a deep dive into this topic and learn and review the key vocabulary and more ideas to speak about it in English and confidently discus it with others.

Related topics: 

Job Satisfaction

Click here to know how to join the VIP groups for weekly discussion opportunities. Practice with a group of English learners who are serious about improving their speaking and communication skills.