Discrimination is the set of actions that deny equal rights and opportunities to a category of individuals due to preexisting prejudice (Schaefer, 2015). Discrimination can take many roles, and can mentally and physically harm a group of individuals. For a long period of time, women have suffered gender stereotypes misconceptions and were not always entitled the same rights as men. For many years women were seen as inferior. As times have changed and progressed societies assume the horrific days of discrimination are over yet reality shows a different story. The developed research is intended to find out if women continue being discriminated in modern day America.
Research Question
Are women discriminated in modern day America?
Literature Review
The researcher will gather information from several different scholarly articles in which relate to discrimination among women in modern day America. In this study the author expresses gender inequality in modern workplace. Research conducted by ‘Rebecca L. Ziman’ (2013) in the (University of New Hampshire) will be discussed here. Rebecca L. Ziman discusses in her article “Women in the workforce: An in-Depth analysis of gender roles and compensation inequity in the modern workplace” that there has been a deeply ingrained idea in our society of men being the movers and shakers in the business world. According to (Ziman, 2013) women are making good progress in the business world and the ratio of men and women are beginning to even out. Women’s participation in the workforce has become an interesting trend according to (Ziman, 2013) article. Although the author sees levels of education increasing among women, there are still some major factors holding women back more than men. Some factors are the massive wage gap and overall gender inequality that has developed in modern workplace. Historically, compensation has always been in the odds for men and women. Men are still viewed as the designated breadwinner and women as supplemental breadwinners. Women have been paid lower wages than men for decades. Yet the problem is nowhere near solved.
Theoretical Conceptualization
Knowledge gap theory best fits this research due to increasing the gap between higher and lower educated people. Discrimination takes many roles and the knowledge gap can be a huge contributing factor to why many women in modern day America have felt discriminated against. An example would be a lower education status. People with higher socioeconomic status tend to have a better ability to acquire information (Weng, S.C. 2000). This leads to a division of two groups, better educated individuals and those with a lower educational level. After all, the researcher will be using this information to find out if the knowledge gap theory leads to lower socioeconomic status (SES)and women feeling discriminated or unequal.
Ethical Concerns
The researcher acknowledges all the ethical concerns that surround the sensitive topic of discrimination. Therefore this study will strictly follow the code of ethics presented by Understanding Research in which states that “Researchers have a strong moral and professional obligation to act ethically at all times and situations” (Neuman, 2009). The researcher will give brief informed consent regarding the content of the survey. In no shape or form will any participant be harmed or mistreated while conducting this study. The names of the participants will remain anonymous, for their protection. The researcher will make sure every participant knows they are allowed to skip questions and can stop the completion of the survey at any moment. The researcher will make sure the participant has privacy and feels safe answering the survey.
Design Study
The study will have a basic approach and will focus on the discrimination of women in modern day America. The research is intended to find out if discrimination persist affecting women in today’s modern society. The population for this study will be the participants participating in the Arizona Western College (AWC) location and the Bath and Body Works location. The combination of both surveys will give the researcher diverse and consistent information. The sample will be filtered by the purposive sampling technique and women who meet the characteristics of lower education status and different racial backgrounds will become the final sample. This will allow the researcher to obtain a non-biased well-filtered sample. The researcher intends to gather all participants data and compare them to study the problem.
Data collection
The data collection gathered during this survey will be quantitative. The researcher will gather all surveys information and interpret them into charts. Once the researcher obtains the purposive final sample, the researcher will analyze participants past discrimination events and combine them together to obtain percentages. The reason why the researcher is using a Likert Scale survey other than interviews is because interviews are more personal and probing. Another reason why the researcher chose a questionnaire other than interviews is because of the sensitivity of the topic and strangers not being comfortable talking about their personal experiences face to face. The reliability will be demonstrated by providing accurate information and keeping all original documentation (surveys). The validity of this study will be demonstrated by eliminating any biases. This will be completed by ensuring all questions are correct and the study has no sampling errors.
Conclusion
Women have suffered discrimination for a long period of time. The researcher intends to find out if discrimination persist in modern day America. The researcher’s main goal is to inform the audience in a clear authentic way. This research paper has described the following: literature review, theoretical conceptualization, ethical concerns, design study, and data collection. All with the purpose to educate the audience and give them a clear representation of the ultimate researched answer.
