Essay: Understanding Diversity In Australian Society." (50 Characters)

1.List the characteristics of culture, race and ethnicity as key areas of diversity.

2.Describe the impact of economic policy in Australia on diversity.

3.Summarise the Australian Government’s diversity policy and its impact on the diverse communities that make up Australian society.

4.Outline how a person can contribute to the development of workplace and professional relationships based on appreciation of diversity and inclusiveness.

5.What legislative requirements must we consider when working with diversity?

6.List the four grounds in which discrimination can generally be based on.

7.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an international document that states basic rights and fundamental freedoms to which all human beings are entitled. What are the key features outlined within this document, and how do they play a part in your role within the workplace?

8.Describe the relationship between human needs and human rights.

9.List the frameworks, approaches and/or strategies used in your workplace that relate to diversity

10.Read the case study, then answer the questions that follow.

Skye is an educator. She suffers from severe anxiety and is afraid that if she tells her director, Karly, she will stop her from working.

Karly has questioned why Skye cannot attend an excursion they are taking. The whole group is taking a bus trip to the supermarket. Skye is very anxious about this and does not think she can attend, as she is likely to have a panic attack. Travelling on a bus is one of her phobias.

1. What type of marginalisation might Skye’s needs be identified as?
2. What should Skye do to seek assistance and guidance from someone else?
3. Do you believe Skye’s emotional state is a reason for her to lose her job?

11.Read the case study, then answer the questions that follow.

Amy is working in the toddler room with eight children who are quite busy and noisy. On several occasions throughout the morning, you overhear Amy telling Ty, a Vietnamese boy, that he cannot join in with the play of the other children. After she has told him this on two different occasions, you then hear her say to Ty, ‘Go and find something else to do, you wouldn’t understand what the children are doing here anyway‘, and pointing to the direction of the other side of the room. Ty looks confused and continues watching the other children play. Amy then says ‘Asian children don’t build with blocks, go and do some cooking in the home corner’.

1. Do you believe Amy’s attitude towards Ty was discriminative? If so, on what grounds?
2. What should you say to Amy after hearing her speak to Ty in this way?
3. What should be done in this situation to help support Ty and the other children from this happening again, and who should be told?
4. Has Amy has breached her responsibilities and not carried out her job role adequately? If so, explain why.

List the characteristics of culture, race and ethnicity as key areas of diversity.

Individual has a diverse nature and this depends on various elements. Diversity means accepting every individual is unique in a society. This uniqueness comes from one’s culture, race and ethnicity People can live in an environment with peace beyond their culture. This understanding to live together is recognising diversity of people irrespective of their background. Different family structure should be in mind to accept people in society. Age is also a vital factor. Values are very important. This value gives courage to evaluate competence to express respect for cultural diversity. It is an on-going process of continuing learning which starts from very early age and develops with time (Enotes, 2017).

Culture: Culture is how we live our day to day life and it depends on religious thought, cultural customs and racial beliefs.

Race: Race means how people look which is variation in look and skin colour.

Ethnicity: Ethnicity depends on distinct character of people.  People sharing same skin colour or bloodline, same dialect, environmental characteristics have same ethnic group.

Disability: There are different categories of disabilities including Physical, Intellect, Psychiatric, Sensory and Neurological disabilities.

Religious and Spiritual Beliefs: Religion is a set of rules practised by a group of people. Sometimes they belief in worshipping focuses on spiritual customs.

Gender Identity: Gender identity means some characters and mannerisms specific to gender. Gender status means whether a person is of that gender by birth or by medical intervention (Christian, 2017).

Today Australia is a country with diversity from different race and ethnicity like aboriginals to immigrants. Immigrants are believed to be very skilled and hard worker, so to build a nation they are important factor. Australian Government has Multi Cultural Society to eliminate discrimination in work place. Government supports projects to eradicate unemployment, gives medical support, to enhance skill to develop small scale business. To make an economical sound society, Government always comes with loan to change financial condition of everyone irrespective of background. This support system makes community to share their productivity to build the nation (Fensham, 2016).

Australia is a country with diversity. People come from different race, religion, country and to make it a society as a whole, Australian Government seriously initiates some steps to make up Australian society with such a huge diversity. It encourages the richness of different cultures, languages. The Department of Social Affairs supports programs and services that can benefit and aiming it a responsible society by sharing various cultures and allowing diversity (Assaf, 2014).

1. Making an Australian Multicultural Council to enhance to adopt different cultures.
2. Australia celebrates Harmony Day (21stMarch) to include people beyond their cultural origin.
3. Government grants different programs
4. Australian government always fix policies depending on world political events like recent refugee crisis in Iraq or Syria(Omeri & Raymond, 2009).

Describe the impact of economic policy in Australia on diversity.

First one needs to have very receptive approach and openness to include everyone. That person has to share relationship to co-workers and their family members to make a support system to build a team approach. One has to focus linking with the community that makes sure to give equal opportunity. This starts from children by teaching uniqueness of every individual and should teach to foster bonding with other families. That person must be a good listener to take a positive approach to normalise all doubts. And most important is to welcome in an equal manner to minimise discrimination from workplace (Workitdaily, 2016).

When working with diversity, there must have some legislative requirements to stop discrimination.

There must be an Age Discrimination Law to protect people against discrimination irrespective of their age. This law must ensure to give equal right to everyone and at the same time this act allows some special benefits to a certain age group. It must have provision for younger and older people to protect them against discrimination. This act must remove all barriers of age (Business, 2017).  

Then there must be a Disability Discrimination Act to make proper definition about disability and any type of discrimination related to disability. The areas of discrimination includes employment, education, purchasing properties, access to any public places, taking facilities from goods and services and administering of Commonwealth Government laws and programs. This act must ensure to provide different aids to help disable people in every sector.

There must be a Racial Discrimination Act to cover all offensive behaviour depends on racial hatred and prohibiting racial discrimination.

There must be a Racial Hatred Act to ensure protection against humiliation, insults and intimidation people in public place.  

There must a Sex Discrimination Law to protect unlawful discrimination based on sex, pregnancy or marital status. With help of this act, people come under cover against sexual harassment. This law must cover in such a way that insurance, accommodation, Commonwealth Laws can be provided to everyone irrespective of any sex or family duties.

Next there must a Human Rights Act to protect every individual living in the country to ensure every right to live with dignity. This law must promote consciousness about human rights and how to protect the right of a human when the person is not covered in other acts. This includes a person can enjoy its every right irrespective of criminal, marital, medical, religion or political background and history.

Summarise the Australian Government’s diversity policy and its impact on the diverse communities that make up Australian society.

Privacy Act is also needed to stop discrimination to prevent leaking information about an individual. This act must ensure to prohibit to public various records like criminal, health, racial origin, religion other political affairs. In this act it behaves dually. In some cases personal information is required for society. In that case that organisation has to provide unless safety and security of that person is at risk. Then that organisation can deny that access (Marshallelearning, 2015).

Discrimination means injustice or negative treatment depending on personal characteristics. This may include race, sex, ethnicity and disability. It also includes bullying and sometimes serious harassment. There are different kinds of discrimination like direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. When people are treated unfairly directly related to their characters is direct discrimination. Indirect discrimination occurs when Government laws and policies treat people unfairly or disadvantage (Irving, 2017).

Sometimes people ridicule others for their personal behaviour and this may turn to humiliate and it can go worse like sexual in nature. People who are treated differently are victimised for their own characters and it is stated as bullying. This discrimination makes people feel low, angry, loosing self-esteemed, sad, depressed, isolated, guilty, withdrawn and rejected. All these make a people less worthy among others and lead less productivity in society or workplace. This lowers confidence and as a whole society is affected with discrimination. This discriminative mentality is very common in children as they are stereotype. They usually find similar to them which is normal but becomes verbal if something happened different around them.  Mostly it happens due to lack of information. So children should be taught in a right way to stop discrimination. Sometimes adults also show peculiar attitudes due to ignorance or lack of information. So it is must to teach proper reaction that might hurt another person or humiliates in any extent. Many times we don’t even realize that we are discriminating someone just because of complete knowledge (Burgess, 2017).

In 1948 United Nations drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Australia is one of a founder member. This Declaration tells about freedom, peace, justice, life, privacy, free speech is basic rights of every human and these must be enjoyed by every individual. It is not a legal rather an international expression of ethics, morality that influence human rights.

In Article 7, it says that all individual are equal before law and are must be enjoyed without discrimination. Everyone is entitled to equal protection against any kind of violation. Article 23 is stated in point 2 that everyone has the right to equal pay for equal work without discrimination.  

Outline how a person can contribute to the development of workplace and professional relationships based on appreciation of diversity and inclusiveness.

Human Rights in workplace are to give equal rights for everyone in workplace. There are some basic rights which are must are Privacy, Dignity, Freedom, Confidentiality, Informed choice, broadness of sharing different ideas and opinions, ability to be vocal about own rights. There must be agreed same standards for everyone and should have access to every service.

There should follow some guidelines to enhance appropriate practice in workplace. There must have some framework to approach the human rights in right way.

There should have National Quality Framework which includes some strict laws, regulations and standards. Childhood is best to adopt new things, so all these things must be included in Early Years Learning Framework in School program. Children should teach ethical and moral values. There must have different laws, policies, procedure to establish human rights in workplace (Irving, 2017).

Human needs and human rights are two different things to consider depending on various legal and ethical issues. The term ‘Human Rights’ means respect of being a human and it comes with not violating rights to live with all respect and dignity with equality.

‘Human Needs’ means needs of a human to ensure basic living. Basically it is a charity to ensure life.  One must have food, air, water, clothes and proper sleep to live very basic life.

Human needs are important to live but human rights are more important to live with dignity and thus it is assured by laws.

Diversity means different group of people irrespective of race, ethnicity, and religion live in a society with very cordial and affectionate manner. Every individual is unique in some extent and we should acknowledge this fact in positive way that a society can be built to accommodate every individual. This is a two way process: Individual approach and cumulative approach.

There must have legal framework to stop discrimination in workplace. Everyone should get justice and enjoy equality that must be initiated by any organisation with legal procedure from Government. Early childhood is the best time to teach about all odds and different things which are not generally visible. This makes children not to bully even they would grow up. Every workplace should have some grievance cell that every individual can take their help or register their problems. First people have to identify and accept everyone and if this is violated, then legal action should be taken.

We need some approaches to deal this like always we have to face the problem. We need to confront conflicts in a limited way. We need to understand the problem and try to solve accordingly. We should avoid the subject of confliction, stop behaving like stereotype. We should take decision that should not affect others in a disgusting way. We need to search for better solution and should have that openness to accept own fault and to take steps to stop problem (Burgess, 2017).

1. Skye has psychiatric marginalisation.
2. Skye needs a counsellor to eradicate her anxiety and as well as her phobia. Only a counsellor can assist her to deal with the situation. She actually in a dilemma for her panic attack during travelling a bus.  
3. No, I don’t believe that Skye’s emotional state should be a reason for her to lose her job. It is a mental state which needs to be cared not to be isolated. She should be assured from her Director that not going to the excursion can cause her losing the job. Skye should get support for her mental state that in future she can come out from this type of trauma.

Yes, Amy’s attitude towards Ty was discriminative. Ty is discriminated by race as he is Vietnamese. Here Ty’s race, Asian discriminated him from other child as his looks are different from others.

I should say to Amy to stop discriminating based on race. It is not Ty’s fault. I would confront if she denied my words and then would complain to higher authorities.

Ty must help to get sit within peers not in isolation. This is most important job to handle a tender boy in this discriminative situation. Ty should not make comfortable that he can behave normally with other children. Other children should be learnt about different race and their looks. Race is not individual thing to change or alter rather should accept everyone irrespective of race. Vietnamese are no less a discriminative object. They are also very normal just like other Australian children.

Definitely Amy breached her responsibilities, breaks her ethics in workplace. She even breaks Government laws that support every individual from racial discrimination. Her role was to teach every child in equal manner but she did not. She has hatred which is injustice.

References:

Assaf, J. (2014, November 07). Diversity in the Workplace. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Dss: https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/a-multicultural-australia/programs-and-publications/1995-global-cultural-diversity-conference-proceedings-sydney/economic-aspects-of-diversity/diversity-in-th

Burgess, M. (2017, February 18). Workers more likely to face career barriers because of age in Australia than the UK or USA. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from News: https://www.news.com.au/finance/workers-more-likely-to-face-career-barriers-because-of-age-in-australia-than-the-uk-or-usa/news-story/dd3ab678468bf04c5d13b28930bc4b1f

Business. (2017, June 05). Equal opportunity and diversity. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Business: https://www.business.gov.au/info/run/employ-people/equal-opportunity-and-diversity

Christian, E. (2017, February 21). Ethnicity, Nationality, Race, Identity, Culture & Heritage (E.N.R.I.C.H.). Retrieved august 11, 2017, from Djaunter: https://djaunter.com/enrich/

Enotes. (2017, April 15). What characteristics of culture, race, and ethnicity may play a key role in diversity? Retrieved Auust 11, 2017, from Enotes: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-characteristics-culture-race-ethnicity-may-940339

Fensham, P. (2016, April 11). Economic benefits of cultural diversity. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Sgsep: https://www.sgsep.com.au/publications/economic-benefits-cultural-diversityhttps://www.sgsep.com.au/publications/economic-benefits-cultural-diversity

Irving, J. (2017, April 27). Age discrimination in the workplace happening to people as young as 45: study. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Abc: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-28/age-discrimination-at-work-starts-at-45-study/8480992

Marshallelearning. (2015, February 05). Understanding equality and diversity in the workplace. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Marshallelearning: https://marshallelearning.com/understanding-equality-and-diversity-in-the-workplace/

Omeri, A., & Raymond, L. (2009). Diversity in the context of multicultural Australia: Implications for nursing practice. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Nd: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=nursing_chapters

Workitdaily. (2016, December 19). How To Build Positive Workplace Relationships. Retrieved August 11, 2017, from Workitdaily: https://www.workitdaily.com/workplace-relationships/