Equality and diversity Free Essay Example, 1000 words

Like the ubiquitous Irish jokes, they are mostly gentle put-downs. In itself not seen as harmful, it can lead to more aggressive behaviour when it gets out of hand. Scale 2 is Avoidance where the majority group shuns the out group and refuses all contact socially. They practise ostracism. Scale 3 is Discrimination and the active component of prejudice where the majority group deny the out group opportunities and services which are deemed exclusive to the majority. The minority group is prevented from achieving equality through education, jobs and social ascendancy. They are suppressed and are not allowed to realise, what to them are legitimate aspirations. Scale 4 is Physical Attack where as an example, in the U. S.A. , a group calling themselves the Ku Klux Klan formed by the white majority randomly lynched members of the Negroid black community. Pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe are another example of physical attack of the out group where they also happened to burn and vandalise property belonging to the out group. Scale 5 is Extermination where the majority group seeks to completely wipe out the minority group from the face of the earth. We will write a custom essay sample on Equality and diversity or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Examples are, the ‘Final Solution’ of Nazi Germany in attempting to exterminate the Jews in what came to be known as the Holocaust, and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Armenia and Bosnia. Although not in any sense a minority group (indeed females are numerically greater than males in most countries), sexism involves prejudice and discrimination practised purely on the basis of sex. As an example, it may be cited that although women are as well qualified as men in most Western developed societies, less than 10 per cent of top managerial positions in industry are held by women. This has been dubbed the ‘glass ceiling’ effect, where although in theory senior positions are available to women, they come up against an invisible barrier when they try to go up the promotional ladder. As regards theories of prejudice, the most well recognized is the F (Fascism) Scale devised by Adorno et al. (1950) to measure the attributes of what they called the authoritarian personality, which was hypothesised as a precursor of prejudice. They held that the authoritarian personality is developed through childhood experiences of harsh treatment by parents. The hostility felt towards the parents is suppressed and later displaced onto minority groups and result in acts of aggression. However, they are submissive towards authority figures. Although the measure (F Scale) has been validated up to a point, it has been proved too blanket a form of measurement ignoring individual and situational differences in levels of prejudice.