Abstract
Background: In the current period; gender inequality is regarded to be a major cause of concern since there is a substantial amount of disparity observed in the workplace. There is a lack of understanding and appreciation of female workforce and this leads to critical resource gap in the business environment.
Aims: The current study aims at discussing the impact that gender inequality has on the business organisation and has selected the UK fashion industry as a case study.
Method: A quantitative research design has been selected and SMARTPLS has been selected as the data analysis technique. The sample size is 400 participants.
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In the modern era; gender inequality is recognised to be a complex phenomenon that is observed within the business’ structures and also its processes. This is particularly distressing for female workforce as acute gender inequality is harming their prospects for pursuing a better professional career (Turker and Altuntas, 2014). The issues are mainly evident in the organisation’s attitude towards female workforce such as hiring policies, increments, and so on. The issue has also been identified in the UK fashion industry as there are repeated calls for including diversity and inclusion for female representation in the business.
The lack of corporate representation by females is a recurring issue identified for the UK fashion industry as it is failing to address societal expectations attested with it. There is also a perception that the UK fashion industry is one of the few industries that has an equal proportion of female workforce (Welsh et al., 2017). However, according to the British Fashion Council (2016); only 39% of females are represented in the UK fashion industry while the remaining is occupied by male counterparts. Such a disparity is also touted to be a reason for a decline in quality in their services as a lack of female representation is linked with lack of creativity and innovative ideas that are prerequisite for the UK fashion industry (British Fashion Council, 2016). Moreover, female workforce are also aware of the situation and its direness since according to European Institute for Gender Inequality (2017); the UK failed to improve its gender inequality score and reported an increase of only 0.3 points.
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