Sex discrimination

Sex discrimination refers to the unfavorable treatment of men and women because of their sex. It is most often pertinent to employment situations. Critical to the occurrence of discrimination are gender stereotypes and the gender-type of the occupation. When a job is viewed as male-typed, women are expected to be ill-equipped to perform it successfully. There is some debate as to whether or not similar consequences are observed for men when the job is female in gender-type. In each case, the biased judgments and resulting discriminatory practices stem from the perceived mismatch between what women and men are thought to be like and the requirements deemed necessary for success in gender-incongruent jobs.