In this journal entry, you will critically reflect on how workplace policies influence gender equity, both from a personal perspective and through the lens of course material. You’ll then extend this exploration by analyzing a real-world organization’s policies. You'll wrap this assignment up by reflecting on your own career path.
To complete this assignment
Read the instructions carefully. While this journal does not have a specific word count requirement, your responses should show meaningful engagement with the prompts. Focus on depth over length—thoughtful, reflective, and specific answers are valued more than simply completing each question quickly. When not specified, a good estimate is at least 1 sentence per point in the rubric.
Section 1: Initial Reflection
- Based on your own experiences or that of those close to you, what workplace policies—either supportive or limiting— have you encountered that impacted people differently based on gender? In 1.2, you’ll be bringing in course material, so your response here should focus solely on your personal reflection.
- Based on the learning materials from this module, how do workplace policies support or hinder gender equity? You need to bring in at least two concrete examples or pieces of evidence from our learning materials, cite the materials with page number or section number (e.g., 11.2.2 for Pay discrimination) included, and explain the connections between your position (support or hinder) and the examples or evidence you brought in.
- You will not earn credit for this section without relevant in-text citations–be sure to include specifics about the location such as page or section number (i.e., it is not sufficient to just cite the textbook).
Section 2: Workplace policy evaluation
In this section, you will research a real-world company’s policies on promotion, mentoring, pay transparency, or parental leave and then evaluate how well the organization promotes gender equity.
- What is the name of the company?
- What policy are you reviewing? Please indicate whether you are looking at gender equity, pay transparency, or parental leave and provide a direct link to this information. The direct link is necessary to earn points in the remainder of this section.
- Provide a summary of the policy. You should paraphrase (vs. using direct quotes). Provide enough details so that we have a clear sense of what the policy is and who might be impacted.
- How well does the organization promote gender equity through this policy? Take a position and justify it. It must be clear to us why you’re taking that position based on what you shared about the policy.
Section 3: Future Planning
This is your chance to connect the module content to your personal goals and explore how social and organizational systems might shape your professional experience.
- Think about your current or desired career path. What barriers or advantages related to gender have you or might you encounter? Specify at least one barrier and one advantage. You can be brief, but make sure to provide enough detail that the impact is clear.
- How might you proactively navigate or challenge these potential barriers?
Submit
- You will submit your assignment as text to a submission entry prompt here on Canvas.
- Organize your submission by the Sections indicated above.
- Within each section, number your responses to reflect which question you are responding to.