Complete 9 page APA formatted essay: Assess the possible explanations for enduring forms of discrimination at the workplace. Discuss the reasons why employers should bother with policies designed to p

Complete 9 page APA formatted essay: Assess the possible explanations for enduring forms of discrimination at the workplace. Discuss the reasons why employers should bother with policies designed to promote equal opportunities and diversity management.

Therefore, for employers to get the best out of their employees, they need to have the knowledge on how to best rally the diverse work groups to work as a unit through establishing the necessary policies designed to promote equal opportunities and diversity management.

According to Welle and Heilman (2007) the contemporary society still exhibits various gender discrimination practices which are perceived as posing a great challenge to career progression of women. Cultural diversity at the workplace is a result of different trends in the business environment one of them being the increased number of female professionals where it is estimated that by the year 2020, the workplace will be composed of employees from diverse cultures with more female and older employees. Women today are faced with challenges that goes beyond sexual harassment as many report some form of discrimination that is not more visible for example women in high-level corporate and firm positions face social exclusion through practices such as lack of mentoring, elimination from informal communication networks in addition to facing hostile corporate culture (Catalyst, 2001).

Discrimination based on gender can be attributed to the existing conflicting perceptions between the necessary qualities essential for one to be successful at the workplace and the qualities that women are presumed to possess (Welle and Heilman, 2007). Along with the qualities that male or female workers are presumed to possess is the perceptions about a particular work being suitable for a particular gender due to the difference in numerical figures of those present for example the existence of more women than men in the nursing profession while there are more men than women engineers (Lips, 2003). This furthers the assumption that certain jobs are for a particular gender leading to the preference of one gender over the other during employment as it is presumed that for example a successful manager