Sexist attitudes and compliance to work norms in financial institutions in Port Harcourt Metropolis

Abstract

The social condition of women in relation to men in different facets of life is rigged with inequality and discrimination as they are confronted with values and systems that discount and exploit them. The problematique of this study therefore is to examine the relationship between sexist attitudes and bankers’ disposition towards rules of behaviour at the workplace. Emphasis was placed on assessing how male and female bankers respond to rules of engagement in banking organizations. To achieve this aim, 165 bankers were sampled from 10 commercial banks using purposive sampling technique. Relying on radical feminism as the theoretical foundation, the Chi-Square (χ2) statistical test - at df=3 and α 0.01 – for testing research hypotheses, and descriptive statistics to analyze demographic details, the study revealed among other things that female bankers are under more pressure to adhere to work rules than their male counterparts. The study also showed that there is some degree of sex-bias in the enforcement of rules of work in financial institutions. Given these findings, it is recommended that bank managements channel more efforts towards ensuring equal and equivalent disposition to work standards from both male and female bankers, and that governments at all levels should be concerned about the issue of equal opportunity in the industrial system. Also recommended is the need for women groups to shift their advocacy and campaigns to addressing the internalized value system that tends to strengthen the inequality between men and women.

Keywords: banks; compliance; patriarchy; Port Harcourt; sexist orientation; work rules