Societal
norms helps this injustice continue. When women are viewed as the ones who are
nurturing and caring and men are viewed as leaders and to be authoritative, it
is hard to then go against what society tells you is okay. It is known that females and males are treated
unequally in the workplace; “Reskin and Roos (1990) argue that employers prefer men over women, so men get the
good jobs while women are left with the jobs that pay less and offer fewer
opportunities for promotion.” (Stier 2017). At school even there would be
unspoken rules that were discriminatory against women. For example, when I was
a sophomore, I took a weight training class where we would do core workouts as
a class once a week. To do the ab work outs, we used medicine balls; these
ranged from six pounds to eighteen pounds. Every week, no matter how athletic
the girl was or how un-athletic the guy was, the males always ‘called dibs’ on
all of the heavy balls while the females were left with the lighter, six and
eight pound ones. As a girl, if you tried grabbing a heavier medicine ball, you
were not only glared at by all of the boys in the class who were used to having
first choice, you were also given a dirty look by the (male) P.E. teacher. The
boys would look at the teacher hopeless as they held the eight-pound ball and
the teacher would make the girl holding the twelve-pound ball switch. Even
things like when a teacher would ask for “two strong men” to help carry some
text books to another room was frustrating. Being the person who I am, I said something
to the teacher, who would then let me go grab some textbooks, but it wasn’t the
same. Here at college, when working out at the recreational building, I always
use the eight-teen-pound medicine ball for my ab workouts.
These
kind of situations and occurrences happen all over the country as well. Recently, I read a story on Newsweek
that gave a great example of how simple things, like sending emails to
communicate with clients, can be made harder just by being a female. The woman,
Nicole, was working at a sexist job in general; her boss hardly wanted to hire
her at first because he “‘wasn’t actually
considering hiring any females…’” but she did so well that he had to call her
in for a next round. He ended up hiring her, making her the first woman to join
his four-person company (Ziv 2017). When working with clients, Nicole would
struggle constantly, trying to deal with people who ‘mansplained’ and fight her
on things they hired her to help with. The male in her office, Marty, who does
the same job, “just never really dealt with that” (Ziv 2017). One day, Marty
was emailing back and forth with a client who was being “IMPOSSIBLE…
rude…dismissive…” and was ignoring his questions (Ziv 2017). After emailing
back and forth a few times, Marty notices, because of their shared email
account, he had been signing all of the emails as ‘Nicole,’ “it was Nicole he
was being rude to, not me (Marty)” (Ziv 2017). They then continued to do an
experiment for a week; by switching email signatures, Marty would sign ‘Nicole’
and Nicole would sign with ‘Marty,’ they wanted to see if the cooperativeness
and attitude of the client would change because of their gender. Nicole “had a
great week… People were more receptive, taking (her) seriously.” (Ziv 2017).
Her clients were no longer doubting her and her abilities. Now, for Marty, he
was “‘…in hell. Everything (he) asked or suggested was questioned… One (client)
asked if I was single.’” (Ziv 2017). Using the author of the article’s words,
“The story is just one example, anecdotal evidence of sexism rather than
scientific” that then attracted other women to share similar stories via
twitter. Starting with a seemly small thing that men nor women would think
twice about since that is all they are used to, it expanded through the sharing
of experiences. By sharing this story, this example of sexism was used to
educate a large group of people through social media. The bias shown in this
example is hard to combat, but with the use of informing the public and
educating them on what is happening, it can help prevent future situations like
this.
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