LITERATURE REVIEW

It is well-known fact that there is a significant pay difference between men and women
workers all over the world. Women are minority groups in employment and concentrated in
certain generally low-paying occupations and industries. Empirical
studies of labour market discrimination in both developed and developing countries show
that there are persistent wage discrepancies between men and women workers (Birdsall and
Sabot, 1991; Kasnakoglu and Dayioglu, 1997).
The literature review shows that more focus is on married working women than on unmar-
ried working women (Karl, 2009). It is also seen that focus is more on organized sector
rather than unorganized sector of working women (Shalz, 2011). Eggins (1997) advocates
for more facilities to women in the workplace, suggesting that “...it is an important part of
developmental strategy as well as an act of social justice” The World Bank (1991) esti-
mates that Indian Women make up one-third of the labor force. Singhal (1995)is of the
opinion that, “Participation of women in workforce is essential for economic development
and population planning.”
Somjee (1989) has some very strong critical comments. She has said that “in the history of
women’s studies, which is not very long, a variety of approaches have been adopted in order
to understand women’s problems and find solutions to them. such approaches range from
how women are perceived in various cultures and historical settings, given their biological
functions and what nature ‘intended’ them to do, to their decline in power and status vis-à-
vis men in the complex social evolution, to a widely shared emphasis on the need to make
women equal through the economic on the need to make women equal through the eco-
nomic and legal route which treats them as individuals rather than those having the sole re-
sponsibility for looking after the family.”
Okolo (1989) studied that another obstacle is the lack of role models of executive women
due to their scarce presence in top managerial positions. Likewise, this study found out that
there is no gender difference in organizational hierarchies when a woman has already gained
access to them. “The lack of impact in women can occur because executive and managerial
women have developed survival features becoming immune to the effects of men’s hierar-
chies. A hierarchy composed by men solely may have an effect upon the election of a man-
agerial board, and then its further influence is not very strong.”
Ronald J. Burke, Mustafa Koyuncu and Lisa Fiksenbaum (2010) examined the relationship
of the perceived presence of organizational practices designed to support women’s career
advancement and their work attitudes and satisfaction and their psychological well-being.
Data were collected from 286 women in managerial and professional jobs working in a
large Turkish bank, a 72 percent response rate. Five organizational experiences were consid-
ered: negative attitudes towards women, equal treatment, support, career barriers and male
standards. Women reporting more supportive organizational experiences and practices were
more engaged in their work, more job and career satisfied, and indicated greater levels of
psychological well- being.”
The findings of the study revealed that the majority of the women managers have not at-
tained the positions to which they ultimately aspire. The majority do not believe they are
progressing as rapidly as they think they should. However, the majority of the women man-
agers continue to aspire to top level management positions and they believe that it is very
realistic that they will attain these positions.(mary wentling, R, 2003)
Wentling (2003) showed that the twin roles of women cause tension and conflict due to her
social structure which is still more dominant. In her study on working women in Delhi, she
has shown that “traditional authoritarian set up of Hindu social structure continues to be the
same basically and hence women face problem of role conflict change in attitudes of men
and women according to the situation can help to overcome their problem.”

Sophia J. Ali (2011) “investigated the challenges facing women in career development. She
found that most of the women employees were dissatisfied with career development pro-
grammers and women were discriminated against in career development opportunities. The
study recommended that organizations should strive to ensure that career development pro-
grammers were set to enhance career development amongst women employees. Top man-
agement should also be committed to the career development of women, and organizations
should also introduce affirmative action to urgently address career development of women.”

Ahmad and Aminah (2007) examined the work-family conflict experienced by 239 married
female production operators in dual-career families, the social support they received and the
coping strategies used to manage the conflict. “The women experienced more work interfer-
ence with family than family interference with work. The intensity of work interference
with family was significantly higher in the earlier life-cycle stage than in the later stage.
About two thirds of the women indicated that they intended to leave their job upon having
another child, mainly due to the rising cost of child-care services. They received the least
social support from their supervisors compared to other sources, and tended to cope with
conflict using reactive role behavior and personal role redefinition strategies.”

Since 2007, Indian women have stood guard outside the President’s office. It is a highly
symbolic position for them. The Indian women contingent stands at 103. Some of them are
monitoring local police officers. Many of them also patrol the suburbs on foot. This has led
to a drastic fall in home invasions. The National Aviation Company of India has now 136
female pilots who regularly conduct internal and international flights. (The Kolkata repre-
sentative for the Daily Prothom Alo on 8th March) (afroza bilkis, 2010)

Gender discrimination lies at the imbalance of power in our society. Discrimination at work
and in opportunities in a variety of ways, fewer opportunities in education and marginaliza-
tion in high political, academic and corporate positions are the obvious images that float
around the world. In Bangladesh, as most of the women we surveyed on say, family culture
and religious values that are taught by the family are the root causes of gender gap in em-
ployment. Among the other causes, they feel that people of our country have developed a
psychology to accept biasness and discrimination in employment and works. When this is
accompanied by lack of knowledge and awareness about labour and employment rights, dis-
crimination becomes inevitable. The world community agrees that without equal participa-
tion of males and females in development activities, the millennium goal would never be
achieved. (afroza bilkis, 2010)

Women are excluded from positions of authority in part because they do not acquire the
same amount of human capital as men do and they do not work the long hours usually asso-
ciated with a position of authority (Mincer and Polachek 1974, Wolf and Fligstein 1979,
Halaby 1979, Becker 1981, Reskin and Ross 1992). Becker theorizes that if energy levels
are finite, women will have less energy to devote to their job than men since women devote
proportionately more of their energy to domestic duties.

Whatever approach is used, research shows that institutional factors such as the welfare
regime or the availability of childcare options explain differences in women’s employment,
in addition to individual-level factors such as the presence of children (Van der Lippe 2001).

Results show that for a long time now, Nordic countries, such as Sweden and Denmark,
have had higher levels of female labor force participation (76% in 2000; OECD 2001) than
other Western countries. The Anglo-Saxon countries, like the United States and the United
Kingdom have been runners-up (70% in 2000), while in Italy, Greece, and Spain, still only
half of the female population participate in the labor market (European Commission 1996,
International Labor Office 1975, 1985, 1995, 2000, United Nations 1999, Eurostat 2000,
OECD 2001). For a long time, the Netherlands used to have a low level of women’s em-
ployment, but recently the number of working women has increased at a faster rate than in
most other Western countries (OECD 2001). Increases in Western countries have been espe-
cially dramatic for married women (Jenson et al. 1988, Drew et al. 1998), although in
Southern European countries the percentage of married women who work, 37% in 1997, is
still substantially lower than in Scandinavian countries and the United States, where it is
63% (Eurostat 1998a, U.S. Census Bureau 1997).