| Abstract [eng] |
In an equal opportunities society, social gender remains the main category of human identification. Despite the fact that the recognition and guarantee of equal rights and opportunities at constitutional level is a key feature of a democratic state, society is still structured according to gender. Gender identity and its undeniable significance in everyone's life is a kind of self – awareness, and any form of discrimination is therefore unacceptable and intolerable. However, discrimination is still a reality for many people who belong to a certain social group in today's world of equal opportunities. Therefore, justice and equality are applied through positive discrimination measures, which are like a mechanism for ensuring equal opportunities. Positive discrimination is relevant in organisations because it promotes the aforementioned equality and social justice, attracts talented and competent employees from discriminated groups and promotes diversity. The subject of this final Master's project is positive gender discrimination in business organisations. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the expression of positive gender discrimination in business organisations. To achieve this goal, the following objectives are set: to analyse the concept of positive discrimination and its characteristics; to analyse the ways in which positive discrimination is expressed in organisations; to investigate the expression of positive gender discrimination in business enterprises. Methods used in the work: scientific literature analysis, document analysis, interviews, questionnaire survey, descriptive statistics methods, qualitative content analysis, document content analysis. The analysis of scientific literature allows to identify the main features of positive discrimination. Positive discrimination is designed to support, encourage, promote, recognise and assist, to empower and favour a particular vulnerable group and to achieve positive goals. However, the use of the term positive discrimination is highly controversial because technically positive discrimination as a concept is meaningless. According to the common meaning of the term, discrimination is in itself a negative. The term discrimination is used to refer to negative acts such as arbitrary, unlawful or malicious acts. Therefore, more appropriate terms to describe the application of this principle would be: affirmative action, positive measures or measures having a positive impact. However, the term ,,positive discrimination” is the most common in the academic literature. The analysis of documents has shown that positive discrimination is indeed widespread in the largest Lithuanian companies. It is declared and applied by all the organisations analysed, and a wide variety of actions and measures are mentioned in strategic documents and sustainability reports, but the term ,,positive discrimination” itself was not found in any document. 8 Semi-structured interviews with a sample of managers revealed that the term 'positive discrimination' is little heard of and often interpreted as equality and equal rights and opportunities, inclusion and diversity, which is widely used and applied in the organisations in a wide range of actions and measures. A questionnaire survey was used to interview employees and assess their attitudes towards the use of positive discrimination in their organisations. It was found that what the organisations present in their documents as affirmative action actions and measures work well in practice. Employees are supportive of diversity and inclusion policies, various recruitment strategies, are aware of and participate in various training and development programmes, and have an excellent view of advertising and communication strategies, but are ambivalent about the application of positive discrimination to certain groups of people. It is therefore suggested that this distribution of opinions may be due to self-identification or non-identification with the discriminated group of people. |
