Exercise: Sex Discrimination in Pay

Mini Paper: Male and Female Leaders

There are four Web exercises, each requiring you to submit a paper.

Either visit a website that is listed or select one and answer specific questions, following the instructions.

It focuses on statistics and advice found on the Women Employed(www.womenemployed.org) website.

Follow the instructions given below to complete the exercise:
1. Go to: Women Employed

2. Click on "Resources"

3. Click on "Publications"

4. In "Topical Issues" choose "Equal Pay/Wage Gap" and in "Resource Type" choose "Research Report/Policy Brief

5. Select the publication "Pathways and Progress: Best Practices in Ensuring Fair Compensation."

6. Review the information in the report, particularly the barriers to fair compensation and the best practices to ensuring fair compensation.

7. Select one barrier that you have personally witnessed in your current organization or an organization for which you have worked in the past.

8. Select one best practice approach that you believe could effectively address the issue of sex discrimination in pay.

9. Prepare a paper based on the following structure and content:
a. A title page and table of contents page

b. An introduction section that identifies the barrier and best practice you have selected

c. A background section that briefly discusses the important points related to the barrier you selected (framing the problem)

d. An analysis that ties course material to a discussion of how the best practice you have selected can help address sex discrimination in pay and overcome the barrier described in the background section (analyzing the problem, and possible solution)

For example, administration of a compensation system is one type of barrier to fair compensation. Under this, untrained managers may be given the authority to make compensation decisions that result in unfairness. A manager may distribute bonus funds across a group of employees, but allow bias to influence her or his decisions regarding who gets how much bonus money, and for what.

e. A best practice that can help alleviate this problem is to establish a firm philosophy about an organization's compensation system. Managers are informed of the organization's compensation philosophy and are trained in how to maintain equity and fairness in handling bonus distributions.

f. A conclusion that summarizes the main points of your findings: Reflect on how the best practice you selected for the assignment could improve gender-based inequities in pay.

g. A reference section that lists the website and the course material you used in preparing this assignment. Be sure to cite sources within your paper, using correct APA formatting.

Your work should be submitted in a Word document, 2-3 pages in length (excluding the title, the table of contents, and the references pages), typed double-space in 10- or 12-point Arial or Times New Roman font. The page margins on the top, bottom, left side, and right side should be 1 inch each. Use APA guidelines for citing and referencing sources.