Gender, Race, Age, and the Physically Challenged
Historically in the American workplace an ethnocentric workforce and management and systemic discrimination against women, minorities, the elderly, and the physically challenged have been addressed through regulation and legislation. Affirmative action, equal employment, the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1978 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 are efforts at redressing the absence of diversity in the U.S. workforce despite an increasingly diverse culture and labor force. Gordon contends that a number of changes in American culture and economics have combined to make ethnocentric thinking a detriment to organizations: “Demographics, competition for talent, marketplace demands, and the changing environment call for a diverse workforce…Changes in the workplace have made cultural ethnocentrism, the belief in the preeminence of one’s own culture, dysfunctional in a global economy” (72).
Through regulation, legislation, and slowly changing cultural perceptions and values, increasing numbers of women, minorities, elderly and the physically challenged have entered the workforce in the U.S. Despite years of imbalance with respect to diversity among employees and management, new studies on companies that embrace diversity demonstrate a host of advantages in today’s organizational environment from maintaining a diverse workplace. According to Gordon, a more diversified workforce typically “results in improved decision making, better understanding of customers’ needs, and increased flexibility in staffing” (92). Customer needs are better understood because not only is the U.S. workforce becoming more diversified but the U.S. marketplace is as well.
Women in the workforce face unique issues. Women often are single heads of households who find the demands of child rearing and work especially challenging. Job redesign to create part-
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