If Rip Van Winkle slept through the last 100 years, he would be bewildered by what he would see in today's workplace. The workplace scenario has seen drastic changes. It has now become a multicultural, multilingual, technologically advanced setting that opens career paths to men and women alike. Workplace diversity is now the buzzword in own world where boundaries are fast shrinking, thanks to the Internet revolution. In the modern day working environment, diversity has come to characterize the changing workplace.
Diversity has now come to be accepted as a reality that can be a company's strength and add to its core competencies. Diversity management in an organization makes good business sense internally, it provides a climate that values its employees; externally, it portrays the organization as a flexible and socially responsible employer. Workforce diversity has thus become a way of expanding horizons and broadening a company's outlook.
Workplace diversity is a multifaceted concept that is constantly evolving as national economies move toward a global marketplace. During the hey days of the industrial revolution, the workforce essentially consisted of men, with a few women occupying the lower rungs of the management. Women were initially assigned to jobs that were routine, monotonous and involved little thought process or creativity.
The assumption was that for the fairer sex, the family and children always take precedence over their jobs. Women were essentially seen as homemakers. The social milieu also fueled the discrimination by not according equal educational, political and employment opportunities to the women to prove their worth. So the workplace mostly became a male bastion with a few women adding color as clerks, receptionists and secretaries. |
