Glass Ceiling

Diversity Paper (The Glass Ceiling Effect)

The amount of diversity a company contains has proven to be directly related to their overall success. Diversity plays an essential role in providing companies with alternative views, ideas, and problem solving techniques. A company that contains strong and well-educated employees along with a vast range of diversity holds a major advantage over the companies that do not. Unfortunately, large amounts of diversity in the workplace can also influence discrimination. Discrimination is defined as “the unfair treatment of different categories people or things, especially having to do with ones race, age and sex” (dictionary.com). Examples of discrimination in the workplace are the mistreatment of certain employees, not hiring someone based on race, sex or gender alone, and even an employee receiving lower wages than another when each completed similar work. Throughout history the unfair treatment of people who are disabled, citizens of a different ethnicity or race, and even the direct discrimination against women, have all emerged in the workplace. Although acts of discrimination can sometimes be difficult to prove, the United States government has been successful in passing numerous laws and acts attempting to eliminate any attempts of discrimination in the workplace.

Anti-discrimination laws, such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, are continuously being put in action to eliminate discrimination. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enacted specifically to target the discrimination of women in the workplace. This law states that it is illegal to pay a woman less wages than a man if they are completing the same tasks in a similar workplace (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). Although there are multiple anti-discrimination laws in place today, research shows that the amount of discrimination women continue to undergo in the...