Paper #1 (part1)

Gender in the Workplace
In the last twenty years, women have seen and undergone some substantial changes. What was commonplace and popular jobs for women began to change directions. Women began to learn how best to use their voices to affect change. The old standard path of graduate high school, get married, have kids, be a housewife gradually changed to graduate college, start career, get married, have kids, maintain career through all of this and continue career until retirement. With this change in a women’s life-path, the view of women in the workplace changed. The roles they undertook, the perception and treatment of women in the workplace, the manner of dress, the reception of claims of harassment, and the perception of what to do when kids are grown have all changed. In an interview with Catherine Sabin, a woman of 49 who has never held a career but has had several jobs, she elaborated one each of these areas to help explain how women in the workforce have seen change around them in the last twenty years.
First, Mrs. Sabin made the sharp point that women now are no longer held back in their career path. The roles a woman chooses to take are strictly based her own mindset. If she desires to work for a large company, a department store, or be a stay at home mom, it is a woman’s right and choice to choose. Women can hold any position from the highest to the lowest. With that, however, in the last twenty years there has been an influx of women holding high positions in companies. This could be due to many reasons, one being that with the freedom to pursue a career, women have stuck around long enough to move up the career ladder. Also, with the sudden widespread use of daycare and the rising cost of income, it is almost impossible for a family to survive on one income. Mrs. Sabin felt many women are feeling the pressure to help support the family from within herself and from her husband. She also mentioned a vicious cycle that almost makes some women want to stay home because it’s cheaper than paying for the daycare and other expenses regard working. But due to the rising cost of living, society makes it impossible for her not to work. Also, she commented that society looks down on women that do want to stay home almost as if they do not have enough confidence, skills, or ambition to have a career; that society disregards a woman’s values and reasons for choosing to stay home.
Mrs. Sabin then went on to talk about the views of women in the workplace from every perspective of the workforce. First, women tend to view other women in a very critical light. Some more than others, but overall very negatively across the board. This comes into great power in the workforce as women also tend to gossip about each other, thus making women’s opinions of each other very poor. Mrs. Sabin then when on to comment about women working under other women. She explained that it seems to her that now having a female boss means two things for the males and females under her: one- that she will treat her female employees more gently because they think more similarly, and two- that she will be more harsh on the males because she has to prove herself worthy to be their boss and because she might view them as competition for her position. In regards to how males view their female coworkers or subordinates, Mrs. Sabin felt that men could be more resentful of the woman thinking they may have only gotten the job due to their gender or that the men would be so distracted by a pretty face they would not be able to look past that. This “pretty face” problem led to the problem of how a woman should dress in the workforce.
Honestly speaking, Mrs. Sabin felt that, in general, women’s work dress had not changed much in the past twenty years other than the fact that most places of business have adopted a more business casual attire. She felt that women have always been more fashion conscious and this is reflected in their work clothes. Also, she pointed out that to succeed in business it is not in anyway necessary to de-feminize oneself. This, then leads to the problems brought up by Naomi Wolf in her book The Beauty Myth. Within this text Wolf, goes through many cases involving how women dress to show that women have always gotten in trouble for what they wear, whether it be feminine or masculine in nature (37-41). Specifically, Wolf states that “law developed to protect the interests of power by setting up a legal maze in which . . . no woman can ‘look right’ and win” (38). In this statement, the through her subsequent court cases examples, she proves that women really can not win in regards to what they should wear to work. Thus, this makes Mrs. Sabin’s opinion right on, that women typically like to look prettier and that they do this regardless of any other’s opinion and should dress according to what they want.
With this then comes the problem of sexual harassment. If a male cannot get past the “pretty face” of a woman, he definitely would not be able to get past her clothes. Often this inability to see past that can lead males to harass the women they work with. But with today’s definition of harassment being “anything that makes you uncomfortable,” the question become who should be believed? Mrs. Sabin definitively stated that twenty years ago and continuing on today that woman are and should be believed. She did, however, say that this harassment policy has become very sensitive and that it almost takes too little for someone to file a complaint. She also asked with more women in the workforce, could not the rise in sexual harassment numbers be simply because of the increased number of women?
Mrs. Sabin ended with what she believes to be the ultimate and most important problem affecting women in the workforce now. That problem is simply the glass ceiling. Women doing the same amount of work for the same amount to time and in the same position as men should be being paid the same as men. There is no reason for them not to. Everything else has been gradually changing and getting better for women. As mentioned above, women are sticking with careers long enough to move up the ladder, they are choosing for themselves what to wear and how to respond to harassment, and choosing what to do with their careers, but this one aspect needs to change and change as soon as possible.