Gender Discrimination: A Sting which Affects Nurses Work Attitudes in Indian Hospitals

In Indian culture women possess a very respectful, important and high status in the society. Despite the fact that India has a patriarchal society, still women played an important role in the family which is a basic building block of a society. Therefore, India is symbolized as Mother India. Women are known for their characteristics like patience, endurance, affection, love, sympathy and generosity. Women, from ancient period, are perceived as aradhangani of male, means without her support there was no existence of male. Women is the source of energy and life, she has potential to generate new life. Despite all these facts women employees are still not getting proper respect from their male counterparts at workplace and facing problem of gender discrimination in the workplace. This rotten mentality of male employees is creating a big challenge in front of HR Managers in handling women employees and reducing turnover intentions in them.

Through this paper we are trying to investigate the impact of gender discrimination on work related attitudes, that is, turnover intentions and organizational commitment. Sample consisted of 122 female nursing staff in which 62 nurses were employed in a central government hospital and 60 nurses belonged to a prestigious private hospital chain in North India.

It was hypothesized that perceptions of gender discrimination from male counterparts would be negatively related with organizational commitment and positively with the turnover intentions of nurses. The result of stepwise regression showed that in both the sectors, gender discrimination was negatively associated with organizational commitment and positively with turnover intentions. The study is presenting basic humanitarian solution for Indian hospitals in the private and public sector which are currently facing problems of retaining their nursing staff due to perception of gender discrimination in workplace environment.