A study on the lived experience of female employees of Karaj city of gender discrimination in the workplace

Purpose:

One of the most important characteristics of contemporary society is the increasing trend of women's employment and their entry into the field of economic partnerships. Simultaneously with the arrival of modernity in Iran, women redefine their identity in the struggle between tradition and modernity in the shadow of social transformations. The consequences of gender in women's employment are clear things, which becomes highlighted with the passage of time and the presence of more women in various fields of employment. On the other hand, the presence of women in Iran's labor market has gone through ups and downs but in all these ups and downs, it is certain that women have had a very impressive presence in the fields of knowledge and learning, and this shows that they have understood the need to be present in the society to improve their status and make an impact. This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the lived experience of female employees of Karaj city of gender discrimination in the workplace.

The current research is applied in terms of its purpose, and in terms of method, qualitative and sampling method in this research is in the form of a snowball using semi-structured and phenomenological interviews. The statistical population of the research was 15 female employees of Karaj city. In order to analyze the data, the seven-step Claysey method was used. In this way, based on the first three stages of the Claysey method, the concepts deduced from the interview with the participants were placed in 155 codes. In the next step, it was tried to place the extracted codes in the specific categories of the subject. For this purpose, first, sub-categories were created, and from their integration, sub-categories were formed from the combination of several sub-categories, finally, the main concepts of the research were created. Next, by juxtaposing the corresponding codes extracted from the above tables, the main concepts were identified, which is actually a combination of several codes.

34 concepts were identified and three main categories were obtained, which were the underlying roots of gender inequality, consequences of gender inequality, and strategies to deal with gender inequality. It also turned out that gender discrimination in the workplace has many consequences that may lead to a decrease in the productivity and overall performance of the organization or the loss of capable and effective workforce, as well as lack of motivation and frustration among employees and cases like that. In this research, it was found that psychological problems, exploitation of women and decline in productivity at work are the consequences of gender inequality in women's work environment