Equal Opportunities versus Managing Diversity Essay

Equal Opportunities versus Managing Diversity - Essay Example In the rapidly growing world, when legal aspects of such facets in organizations are highly managed, it becomes even more important to ensure that diversity and equal opportunity are maintained. The paper is aimed at discussing of two elements in which equal opportunity and managing diversity are evaluated, and a comparison is given as to what is more important and why. The theme of the paper is to evaluate two elements against each other and build a case as to what is and what should be more important for organizations. Equal Opportunity Equal opportunity relates to fair treatment of groups of employees in order to ensure that there is no discrimination. Various categories or groups of employees against which discrimination can be implied include gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, disability, previous offenses and arrests and even sexual orientation. This discrimination may be direct or it may be indirect as well. To illustrate, discrimination against race in the direct sense woul d be when one set of people are treated unfavorably against others. Indirect discrimination would be when a particular group of people is treated unequally by promoting equal rights to all other groups of people, for example bans on different types of clothing for a particular group of people. ... ote that concerns for equal opportunity are at all stages of employment, from hiring to transfers to training and from promotions, benefits, perks, procedural actions, like grievance handling and disciplinary actions, as well as dismissal. In each scenario, it is important that discrimination is avoided within the organization as it affects productivity and efficiency within the organization (Braham et al., 1981). It is worth noting that there are various areas in which discrimination is a regular feature. For example, studies indicate that on an average, a woman earns relatively less in terms of salary and benefits in comparison to a man. This is primarily because of segregation in choosing a woman for a job, stating that there are various other benefits assigned to a female like maternity leaves, etc (Smith, 1979; Vickers, 1991). In addition, women are considered mainly for temporary or part-time jobs while high end jobs are discriminated against and preference is given to the male counterpart (Gilory, 1993). Several researchers indicate typical conditions for women that are considered to be unskilled labor, services, little overtime, more vacation days and days-off, part-time work etc. This is generally considered as to how women work in organizations. Typically, other discriminatory factors are aimed at race and ethnicity, for example people from the thirdworld countries are typically blue-collar workers, are less skilled and can be given less payment to work more hours (Sloan &Siebert, 1980). Various researchers have conducted studies where it has been revealed that racial and ethnic minorities are discriminated against, where unemployment, particularly long-term, is high, because they are considered as less skilled or qualified and, as a result, this