Survey Highlights Gender Bias in Jewelry Trade

RAPAPORT... The jewelry industry has a wide range of gender-disparityissues, including a discrepancy between how employers and employees viewequality in the workplace, a recent survey showed. Business owners expressed widely differing awareness than employees regarding nearly every gender-related workplace topic, according to the study conducted by the Women's Jewelry Association and MVI Marketing. Some 62% of employees ranked equal opportunity foradvancement between genders as their most important issue, while only 46% ofemployers thought it mattered most. While 66% of workers felt paydisparity headed their list of concerns, only 39% of owners rated it a topissue. A total of 38% of employee respondents - allfemale - reported they had been affected by pay disparity, whereas none of the male participants said they were impacted by a discrepancy in their salaries. However,only 2% of owners said they had received complaints about this issue, as a majorityof employees stated they did not complain, fearing negative repercussions. Meanwhile, 22% of respondents reported havingbeen asked about marital status when interviewing for a job, and all were women,the data showed. When it comes to sexual harassment, 23% of employees statedthey had been a target, but only 5% of owners said they had received complaints. Approximately two-thirds of workers who experienced sexual harassment did not reportit. Respondents were primarily concerned the complaint would affect their employment, while others kept quiet because the owner of the business was theperpetrator, the survey revealed. "The goal of the survey results is to help WJA betterunderstand the most pressing gender-related issues people in the industryencountered, so we can create programming and initiatives tailored to thoseissues," said WJA executive director Bernadette Mack. MVI conducted the survey in the fall of 2018 among 586individuals in the jewelry industry worldwide. Some 98% of respondents were from the US, while 240 wereemployees and 346 owners. Two-thirds of owners and 91% of the employees who respondedwere women.  Read more about women in the diamond and jewelry industry in the upcoming May issue of Rapaport Magazine. Image: Business people in a work environment. (Shutterstock)