Being a senior, who is just about to graduate from university & currently scouting the corporate world to search for jobs (double major in Psych & Econ) I myself have witnessed & heard of discrimination, more specifically marital status discrimination- stories from a bevy of friends who are also searching for jobs here in Pakistan.
A popular question asked of young women in Pakistan, which I have been asked myself is whether they are married or single. Engaged women are often not given jobs because the employers assume that they will quit their job after marriage and all the time/money that the company would have spent in training the employee would have been lost. A lot of women in Pakistan do chose to assume the sole role of housewives & mothers but that doesn’t mean that women who actually want a career should be discriminated against. This kind of discrimination is based on Deep-level diversity, which we learnt about in the lesson for this week. They are those differences in beliefs, values, attitudes, etc., that do affect much more directly how a person behaves. One could also argue that Surface-level diversity (Demographic differences such as hair color, sex, skin color, height, weight, age, and so on) is also prevalent here since men are not discriminated against on this topic due to their gender.
I chose to delve deeper on this topic because it is quite prevalent in my country but alas there are not that many laws in place to counter this kind of discrimination-or of they are then they are not publicised. According to a Policy Briefing series: In America, under Federal Law, only the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 protects federal employees from discrimination based on their marital status. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which is a well-known act, does not protect women from this particular kind of discrimination. However, 21 states do offer protection separately against employment based on marital status. Alas in Pakistan you can do nothing about it but fume in anger!
In my opinion, hiring should be based on merit alone & their marital status should be irrelevant. According to our lesson, Diversity falls under the umbrella of human rights when looking at the bigger picture when we look at societies as a whole. Human rights are universal standards for the treatment of all people. These rights typically include basic ideas such as dignity, liberty, and freedom from discrimination. Thus if we don’t stop discrimination as a whole in every aspect of our life then we are hindering our own success.
Reference:
Pennsylvania State University. (2014). Lesson 3: Diversity. Retrieved at: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/olead497b/001/content/03_lesson/03_page.html
Sloan Foundation, A. P. (2009). Opportunities For Policy Leadership On Marital Status Discrimination. Retrieved September 11, 2014, from https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/sites/workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/files/imported/pdfs/policy_makers21.pdf
United Nations. (n.d.). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved fromhttp://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
Picture retrieved from:
http://www.paycheck.in/main/world-map-gender-pay-gap/gender-pay-gap-in-india-1
Those are some interesting statistics! It boggles my mind that in the year 2014 businesses still somehow manage to discriminate in anyway against any type of person. The EEOC prohibits discrimination among minorities from being hired. The ADA bans discrimination against Adults with Disabilities but I never thought about a marriage discrimination problem. When I think of marriage discrimination, normally I think of two women or two men trying to wed. Which obviously leads into a whole different Government problem (I won’t get into politics…!).
Discrimination in any way is pathetic. Unfortunately, I assume, there isn’t much for us Americans to be able to help against the Pakistani Government. I’m sorry that you have to go through issues like this. I hope for your sake things will change. I must say though, I think it is amazing that you’re attending Penn State and living in Pakistan! Good luck
Hana, I enjoyed your opinions shared in this week’s blog entries. Currently I am employed by a company that promotes the advancement of women in a technology based company. One of the items that consistenly is reviewed at some of the meetings that I have attended and supported is the topic of marriage, family and the workplace.
I was 30 years old when I had my first child and I took 2 weeks off. My wife stopped working before that (we had moved from Florida to PA) as our relocation gave us the opportunity to re-evaluate the landscape and figure out through our various support systems how we would juggle work and family. It was easy for us as her parents lived in PA about an hour from where we moved to and if she needed anything while I was working it was a simple call to her Mom.
If we had moved to another state and we had multiple children and no support system I might have needed more time off to help take care of my kids. Even though there is FMLA and other regulated process it wouldn’t be a true paternity leave. Realistically I would be conflicted taking any more time than that as I also have committments to my workforce and there is a deep level diversity discriminating the way “men” deal with paternity leave and taking time off for family reasons.
I think it’s interesting to try and balance the deep level diversity discrimination that we have known since birth with real life examples. I don’t think that I should ever feel “bad” about having to take work off for my family in any capacity but in the male driven ego it’s a painful battle between your concsious decision of doing what’s right and understanding how you might be perceived by the workforce and reacting to your own internal discrimination.