Discrimination and Harassment Discrimination Is an Act

¶ … Discrimination and Harassment

Discrimination is an act of prejudice where unfairness towards a person or group of persons is demonstrated. It is an act of unreasonably treating a person less fairly as compared to how others are treated. Discrimination can manifest itself in many instances in our lives, either within the social environment, workplace, school, and many others. In reference and respect to every person's human rights, discrimination is prohibited under human rights and constitutional laws. According to an online source, this especially includes discrimination based on the following attributes.

race, colour, sex, age, trade union activity, religion, criminal record, political opinion, marital status, impairment (including HIV status), disability (including physical and intellectual), medical record, national extraction, nationality, social origin, sexual orientation, gender identity inc. transexuality

Harassment, on the other hand, is a form of abusing or injuring a person or group of persons, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. As with discrimination, it can also manifest in many instances of our lives. Harassment can cause trauma to a victim because it can physically or mentally affect an individual.

Discrimation and harassment differs from each other in such a way that discrimination does not directly intend to harm a person's well-being, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. Its main intention is to give biased treatment between people. A result of harm is not definite to occur in discrimination and depends only on situation. Harassment on the other hand is an unfavorable action that causes direct harm to victims. Harassment is an intentional way of causing harm to others. The act of harassment is usually not hidden or disguised which is opposed to discrimination in which the major reason can be concealed with things that will not make the act unfavorable to the receiver.

Workplace Discrimination

A case of discrimination has been an issue in Wal-Mart wherein bias treatment between male and female workers was demonstrated by Wal-Mart. Last year, a gender discrimination lawsuit was filed against the company and it was considered as the largest case of discrimination against a large company.

From an interview conducted by Paul Solman with the female employees of Wal-Mart, it was revealed that the company favors male employees more than the female employees. This is in terms of many job aspects that include salary, promotion, and fair treatment. As indicated by Brad Seligman in Solman's interview,

To get promoted, there was no application process, there was no posting. What there was, was the tap on the shoulder. A manager, most likely a male, would reach down and tap the shoulder of some favorite, and that person would be anointed to become the next manager. And we all know people are comfortable with what looks like them, and the face of senior management at Wal-Mart is the face of middle management at Wal-Mart, is the face of lower management at Wal-Mart. It's mostly a male face.

Moreover, according to a research conducted by Richard Drogin (2005), women get a salary of 5 to 15% less than men. It was not only gender discrimination that the female employees complain about Wal-Mart but also harassment. Gina Espinoza, an employee of Wal-Mart, was fired from the company after filing a sexual harassment complaint against her boss. Chris Kwapnoski, another female employee of Wal-Mart, also received unprofessional statements from her manager. Furthermore,

while Gina Espinoza was still with Wal-Mart, she complains about attending work meetings that are held in an unappropriate venue -- at Hooters, an "entertainment club" generally meant for males. Apparently, she was the only female manager among the managers in the meeting.