Why Do We Still Need Affirmative Action - Essay Example

Women, people with disabilities as well as people who are older face a variety of impediments to their full participation in the labor force.Discrimination in the workforce affects people from all walks of life. Accordingly, the employment opportunities of half of our population are hindered by latent and overt sexism in the offices of America. It is well known that women in America earn substantially less than their male counterparts. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) of 1963 was established more than four decades ago to protect men and women who perform the same tasks from wage-based discrimination.

Sexism is an unfortunate aspect of our modern society but the EPA seeks to combat it through positive legislation aimed at correcting the pay discrepancy between men and women in the labor force. Older workers also face a variety of impediments to their active inclusion in the labor force and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from discrimination at work. Finally, people with disabilities face a plethora of hurdles in society, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was established to ensure the full inclusion of people with disabilities in American society.

Covering a wide variety of instances of discrimination, the ADA is the most recent piece of legislation mentioned above which aims to tackle problems associated with discrimination in the labor force (Bernbach 1996; Ripa 2007).Job discrimination prevents the active inclusion of certain types of individuals in the work environment and is detrimental both to the diversity of an office as well as to the productivity of a particular workspace. Seeking to address the major challenges minorities face with respect to discrimination at work, the government has legislated policies to protect certain groups from harmful work practices.

Job discrimination is unethical and ends up hurting both the individual as well as the company. It is wrong and must be tackled with vigor.