1

Walmart: Revamp Needed Regarding Stereotyping of Women and Equal Opportunities

Izak Munoz

South Texas College

Management Theory 1 CBE

Professor Joe Cruz

May 6, 2022
2

Walmart: Revamp Needed Regarding Stereotyping of Women and Equal Opportunities

Female employees at Walmart have felt undervalued and underpaid for quite some time

now, and too often do we see the stereotypical selection and placement of women into “women

departments” such as the women apparel and baby department. Betty Dukes, Walmart employee

famous for leading the Walmart Vs. Dukes case, had this to say “Dukes claims that Wal-Mart

routinely assigned women to stereotypically feminine departments, such as baby clothing, and

excluded them from masculine departments, such as hardware. “…I can mix a can of paint,” she

complained. “I want a chance to do it…” (Thompson, 2011, p. 3). This proves that not all women

want to be working in the “Feminine” departments, and a new training regarding being unbiased

on the Selection And Placement of women and their roles, needs to be implemented to all

managers of Walmart and throughout Human Resources. Selection and Placement is a key

element of the Human Resources process because they are the ones to instill the right mindset

and culture by discussing the values of the organization. Now comes the topic of equal

opportunities for management positions for women. Women do not get the same opportunities as

men do, when it comes to management positions, even though the women do the same, if not

better, work production. This statistic best describes the issue at hand “…The plaintiffs

demonstrated that female employees at Wal-Mart were disproportionately absent from

management positions; the basic statistic was that although 70% of the workforce were women,

only about one-third of the managers were women…” (Selmi, 2015, p. 12). As you can see, even

though the workforce is made up of mainly women, there are still more men being hired as

managers and this is something that needs to be revamped from Walmart HR. More available

equal opportunities for management positions in favor of women need to be implemented into

the HR strategies for Walmart. (Selmi, 2015)

3

The Balanced Scorecard for HR and managers needs to be revamped as well. The

balanced scorecard measures the behaviors, skills, mind-sets, and results required for the

company’s success, “…The Balanced Scorecard is a framework designed to translate an

organization’s mission and vision statements and overall business strategy into specific,

quantifiable goals…” (Management Principles, 2012, Ch 6.3). Walmart’s HR and management

team need to specifically look at bettering their Workforce mind-set, and their Workforce

behaviors in the Balanced Scorecards. The way to implement this strategy is to be diverse and

give the same equal opportunities to women for managerial positions. By changing culture and

values in the balanced scorecards, the doors will not only open for women in management

positions, but this will help with the retention of the majority workers at Walmart, which are

women. A new hire will see that there are several women in management, and she will be

motivated to apply herself to achieve the same goal. So focusing on changing the culture and

mind-set not only benefits women in general, but will most certainly motivate new hires to give

it their all in terms of performance to reach said management positions, and in turn generate

Walmart more revenue, making this a win-win scenario. “…Sex discrimination is pervasive in

the American labor market. Despite decades of effort by women’s groups, women still earn on

average roughly eighty percent of what men do for comparable work, and the glass ceiling

prevents qualified women from getting many of the most lucrative positions…” (Thompson,

2011, p. 6). Women being stereotyped in the selection and placement process, and not giving

women a fair chance at managerial positions needs to change. Walmart cannot keep doing this to

its female employees. This is why I have revised this plan to change the culture going forward

(Thompson, 2011).
4

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Diversity Opportunities

This graph represents the 3-year plan Walmart needs to implement. By increasing diversity of

women selection and placement, more managerial opportunities are created. Implementing this

strategy will lead to higher employee satisfaction, which will lead to more revenue for Walmart.

“…As an example, imagine that an organization has a goal of maintaining employee satisfaction

in its vision and mission statements. This would be the organization’s vision in the domain of

learning and growth, since employee satisfaction is indirectly related to financial

performance…” (Management Principle, 2012, Ch 15.7) If we can get Walmart to change the

way they see women, as not just lower-level employees that are just shoed in to work in the baby

department, but as managers that can bring immense drive and skills to the table, as well as great

ideas and creativity, then Walmart can increase its revenue immensely. I remind you, over

seventy percent of women are the workforce of Walmart, so you most definitely want that large

percentage of employees happy and thriving. The best way to implement this change is to

allocate more resources into training every single manager and every HR employee. Walmart
5

needs to shell out some serious funds to turn this culture around and give the women employees

of Walmart what they so rightfully deserve, equal opportunity. (Management Principle, 2015)

Year 3

Year 2

Year 1

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Women in Management Resources

This graph represents the 3-year plan that needs to be implemented in order to change the

mind-set and culture. Allocate more resources into proper training of management and HR, and

you then in turn give more opportunities for women in management. “…It was patterned after a

long series of cases that involved discriminatory job assignments and promotional practices

within grocery stores where it was common for women to be consigned to cash registers and

departments that did not lead to managerial roles…” (Selmi, 2015, p. 13) We must put an end to

this stigma of keeping women in non-managerial roles by enforcing better training in Walmart’s

HR and management department (Selmi, 2015).

 6

References

Management principles (2012) https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/management-principles-v1.1/

Selmi, M, Tsakos, Sylvia (2015) Employment Discrimination Class Actions After Walmart Vs.

Dukes. Pg. 12-13

Thompson Ford, R. (2011). Discounting Discrimination: Dukes v. Wal-Mart Proves that

Yesterday’s CPgivil Rights Laws Can’t Keep up with Today’s Economy. Harvard Law

& Policy Review, 5(1), Pg. 3-6.