Stereotypic Errors in Gender-Based Discrimination: Under-Utilizing Organizations Resource Base

Abstract

The paper identifies and elucidates the errors and the inadvertent consequences in workplace discrimination that are based on gender stereotypes. The paper contended that discrimination has a normative value, as it permits choices to be made by managers. Nevertheless, when discrimination is based on over-simplification, over-generalization and on classification of sex roles, as the case with gender stereotypes, the managers analytical vision tend to be blurred. This mostly manifest due to inherent automatic-stereotypes rooted in cultural disposition on sex-roles related to feminism and masculinism. The paper identifies the ultimate implications as type A and B stereotypic errors, which unintendedly diminish organizational attempts towards optimum utilization of its human resource base. The paper also introduces the concept of intra-gender stereotypes as an inhibition to effective decisions in employment and deployment of employees. The paper suggested critical analysis on individual assessment, rather than presumption on differential characteristic of gender categories, that are base of cultural and societal mental maps.