• Discrimination and affirmative action policy
Discrimination- wrongful acts in employment,
housing, education, medical care etc.-
a person is deprived of some opportunity or some
benefit because of membership in some group
Employment discrimination- arises from the
decisions employers make about hiring,
promotion, pay, and other terms of employment
that affect the economic interest of employees
to make an employment decision, not on the basis
of legitimate, job-related factors (such as job
qualifications or merit), but rather on the basis
of false stereotypes or prejudice or membership
in some group…
• Not all unequal treatment is discrimination (eg.
Favourism of the employer)
• 2 elements: discrimination involves decisions that
directly that directly affect the employment status
of individuals/ terms or conditions of their
employment- personnel decisions
• Unequal treatment results from prejudice/ some
other morally unjustified attitude against members
of the group to which an individual belongs.
• Individuals are treated based on membership in a
group- not on individual merit.
• Unlawful employment practice-
• To fail/ refuse to hire or to discharge any
individual with respect to their compensation,
terms, and conditions, or privilege of
employment because of such individual race,
colour, religion, sex, or national origin
• To limit, segregate/ classify their employees/
applicants for employment in any way that
would deprive any individual of employment
opportunities because of such individual race,
colour, religion, sex, or national origin
The forms of discrimination
•Sex (single women or married men)/Caste
(belong to a specific category)/religion (Hindu or
Christian or Sikh or Muslim/ religious beliefs or
practices) /regional/Age (old or young)/ national
origin/ excluding immigrants, HIV/AIDS, sexual
orientation, lifestyle, handicapped
Prejudices involved in discrimination are of several
types:
• 1st- Feeling of antipathy and intolerance
• Prejudice based on misunderstanding
• Economic consideration (eg. stop hiring pregnant
women, or older people)
It occurs-
When there is an express intent to treat certain
groups differently-
Refuse to receive application
Have a policy of discrimination
“Thanks for your application. We regret to inform
you that we hire only non-group candidates”,
• To avoid discrimination, employers must show
that the qualification is absolutely essential
for the condition of the business, not merely
useful.
• Eg: post of jailor for women in a male prison-
make the workplace safer
Ethical analysis
Utilitarianism: discrimination creates an
economically inefficient matching of people to
jobs.
Example: The person with the best
qualifications gets the job
With discrimination, this doesn’t happen
Therefore, employment discrimination is
unethical on utilitarian grounds
Discrimination does ham to the welfare of
society as a whole by perpetuating the
effects of racism and sexism
• Criticisms
• Not all forms of discrimination produce
economic inefficiencies
• It is not clear that even racial and sexual
discrimination are always inefficient.
• (Employers who discriminate on the basis of
race and sex impose an external cost to
society.)
• Kant
• The discriminated people are deprived of a
fundamental moral right to be treated with
dignity and respect.
• Moral rights are denied when individuals are
treated based on group characteristics.
• Discrimination results from the stereotypes
that lead employers to overlook significant
differences among individuals. Stereotypes
results in a denial of dignity and respect.
Rights: -Kant:
Reversibility: I wouldn’t like it if I
were victimized by employment
discrimination
Universalizability: I can’t imagine a
world in which all employment
decisions were based on false
stereotypes and prejudice instead of
legitimate, job-related factors
Treating with dignity and respect
Based on justice:
The principle of justice is the requirement that we be
able to justify our treatment of other people by giving
good reasons, but to discriminate is to treat people
differently when there is no good reason for doing so
Aristotle- proportional equality- like cases should be
treated alike, and unlike cases should be treated
differently in proportion to the relevant differences
Discrimination is unjust because Race/sex are
irrelevant to the performance of a job
John Rawls- “Social and economic inequalities are to
be arranged so that they are… attached to offices
and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity.”
Denial of opportunity could not be justified because
individuals would be deprived of- self development
• How to avoid discrimination?
Job analysis consists of 2 parts-
• Accurate job description- that details the
activities/responsibilities involved in a position
• job specification- listing the qualifications
required to perform the job as described
• Because the qualifications must be related to
the description, it is easier to determine
whether they are really needed for the
satisfactory performance of a job.
• A job can be redesigned to avoid discrimination-
narrowing down to avoid excluding some groups
unnecessarily
Recruitment and selection
Recruiting applicants in a non-discriminatory
manner
Ensure that information about an opening is
widely disseminated, especially to non-
traditional groups (eg. minority publications/
educational institutions/ employment agencies
serving minorities )
Involving significant members of
minorities/women in the company recruitment
• Selecting the person who is best suited to fill
the job
• Simplifying the application procedure/
providing instructions how to proceed
• Reducing the number of promotion lines and
increasing their flexibility so that minorities
and women have opportunities
• Objective test and subjective evaluation
based on interviews/ instructions
1. Test measuring specific knowledge and skill
2. Test measuring intelligence/aptitude
3. Test attempts to gauge an applicant’s
suitability for employment
Avoid biases in the interviews:
‘halo effect’- a single trait of a candidate
influences the evaluator-
Stereotyping – assumptions about members of
certain groups influence an evaluator
‘similar to me’- an evaluator is more inclined to
be more favourable to people who have the
same traits as themselves.