Question

Read the following situation and choose the best possible alternative.

Seema was a finance manager at an MNC and felt that gender discrimination at her workplace was slowing down her career. Frustrated, she quit her job and started her own company. When she started the company, Seema decided to keep an equal number of male and female employees. Over the last six years, Seema has become a very successful entrepreneur and has grown her business to eight locations across the country. Recently, however, Seema has run into an ethical problem: many of her female employees are not willing to travel between cities or work late hours, even though the job needs this, while her male employees do this without hesitation. Seema is now under pressure to reduce the number of female employees, but she also knows that hiring equal numbers of men and women was one of the strongest reasons she started the company in the first place. What should she do as a responsible woman entrepreneur?

• A. Check whether the unwilling female employees can be given roles that do not need travel and involve less overtime.
• B. Reduce the number of female employees since it has become a business need, without letting this concern affect her decision.
• C. Let the current situation continue exactly as it is.
• D. Hire only male employees from now on.

Hint:

Look for the option that keeps her original commitment to equal representation while still solving the real problem, which is a mismatch of roles, not the employees themselves.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Think of this less as a men-versus-women staffing question and more as a role-fit problem: certain employees, who happen to currently be some of the female staff, cannot take on travel-heavy, late-hour assignments, while the company still needs those assignments covered.

1. Reduce the number of female employees: this treats gender as the cause of the problem, when the real cause is that specific roles need travel and overtime that specific employees cannot manage. It also throws away Seema's founding goal of equal representation.
2. Let the status quo continue: doing nothing keeps forcing employees into roles they cannot fulfil, which will keep creating friction and does not actually solve anything.
3. Hire only male employees going forward: this permanently shuts out an entire gender from future hiring because of a scheduling mismatch affecting only some current staff, which is a far bigger and more unfair step than the problem calls for.

Instead, the sensible fix is to separate the who from the what: keep the equal male-female hiring policy exactly as it is, but rearrange which employees do which job. Employees, of any gender, who cannot travel or work late can be shifted into roles or locations that do not need this, while roles that do need travel and overtime can be filled by whoever, male or female, is able and willing to do them.

Let's summarize:

• The real problem is a mismatch between certain roles and certain employees' availability, not a flaw in hiring equal numbers of men and women.
• Reducing female headcount or hiring only men solves nothing and undoes Seema's founding principle.
• Reassigning unwilling employees to roles without heavy travel or overtime keeps the policy intact and fixes the actual problem.

So Seema should see if the unwilling female employees can be given assignments that do not need travel and involve less overtime, which is option 1.