Wait, being a woman is an advantage now?

Spoiler, it’s really not.

March Held in Celebration of International Women’s Day, Telegraph

“Ah but she only got that promotion because she’s a girl; we all know that spot is meant for a man,” my uncle complained, as he hadn’t been promoted to the coveted VP title at his job.

I listened with mild amusement as he told me that I should enter the business industry because I already had a shoe in as a woman. And sure, maybe women do occasionally receive promotions that their male counterparts normally fill, but why could it not just be that she was the best fit for the role? I’ll admit that I was hurt that my potential worth and success was easily chalked up to me being a girl, as I’m sure many others in my position have felt. 

My uncle and his male coworkers seem to believe that there was an unfair advantage to being a woman in a predominantly male work environment. It’s easy to gloss over all of the challenges that someone faces when they don’t affect you specifically.

Not every accomplishment that a woman makes in her career is based solely on the fact that she is in the minority as a woman. And although some companies might be looking to put women in positions of power, there is an overwhelming majority of men in those highly regarded positions. In fact, Zippia found that, “Women represent 54.3% of the US workforce as of December 2021 but only held 35% of senior leadership positions”. 

So no, it looks like it wouldn't be too easy for me if rising to a position of power was on the list for my career goals.

Woman In STEM!

You probably know the viral saying that women around the world use as a mantra as they tackle the draining task of being a *Woman in STEM*. Although funny and motivating, there is a darker side to the reality of being a woman in an overwhelmingly male dominated major.

STEM majors seem to be fueled by an aggressive and negative culture, specifically for female students.

According to Brooke E. Dresden, “One factor that may influence the perceived negative “engineering culture” is sexual harassment on campus, which is experienced by an estimated 60% of female college students in the United States.”

Clip from the hit movie, Clueless

Ugh! As if classes weren’t hard enough to focus on! Now women have to put up with difficult classmates who look down on them for simply being a girl. This environment can be especially harmful as it can result in women dropping out of the major and leaving the field altogether. 

When looking specifically at engineering, Brooke E. Dresden found that “approximately 30% of women who enter engineering, a male-dominated field, ultimately leave the profession. Of those women who left the engineering field, 30% cited organizational climate as a primary motivator.”

Clearly something is going wrong if women feel as though they cannot continue to work in the field that they suffered through years of school for. Women might feel uncomfortable being constantly surrounded by men, and it can become worse when those women become subject to the harassment of their co-workers. 

In fact, “... women employed in male-dominated occupations experienced significantly more sexual harassment, and experienced the harassment more frequently, than women who were not sexual minorities in their workplace.”. 

Safety comes in numbers, and without having a proper and established group of supporters in a male dominated field, women fall victim to nasty comments and advancements. Uncomfortable or hostile workplaces are not ideal for anyone, so unfortunately it makes sense that women would leave their less than ideal job, in exchange for a new one.

But wait, what happens when they leave predominantly male spaces and start working in typically female dominated jobs? 

Susan Bisom-Rapp and Malcom Sargent found that, “... occupations where women predominate - are linked not only to poorer pay but to poorer outcomes in terms of power and prestige for those working in them.” 

The disadvantages of being a woman follow them even when avoiding a hostile working environment. Less pay and power is normal for women especially when surrounded by men in the workplace, but now we are seeing those ideas being kept regardless of where women work. The stereotype  that women cannot handle power or responsibility because of their gender is one cause for this unfairness. 

It is not surprising that women are paid less overall when recent data tells us, “women’s annual earnings were 82.3% of men’s”. This fact is not unknown, and it has caused cries of outrage around the world because of the blatant unfair treatment women face.

And we have made significant progress… compared to women making, “57 cents per dollar earned by men in 1973”, according to the US Department of Labor. 

OK so it’s still a work in progress, but thankfully there are laws and regulations that aim to close the gap in pay and decrease the amount of harassment women face in any given professional situation. Right?

 

The Equal Pay Act was created in 1963 in order to protect both men and women from any form of unequal pay. That’s right, 10 years before we see an extreme difference in pay between men and women, a bill was passed that explicitly prohibited that very thing. Yikes. Somehow companies are getting away with undercutting their female employees and taking advantage of their overall lack of power. 

Part of that reason could be that female employees do not feel comfortable speaking up about the unfair treatment for fear of retaliation even though there are laws that protect women from harm that their employers may inflict on them after reporting unfair treatment. 

In the US, there are federal laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate against you based on your sex, race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Title VII also works to protect employees from punishment in the case that they decide to file a complaint against the company for different forms of discrimination that they may face.

But even though there are laws prohibiting discrimination, the workplace can be filled with an uncomfortable culture that makes it difficult to deal with. As previously mentioned, a lot of women who leave their male dominated jobs often blame the overall vibe of the workplace for driving them out.

Let’s face it, women are at a disadvantage when it comes to historically male dominated spaces. Between sexual harassment, unequal pay, and an unfair power imbalance often seen in different workplaces, women certainly have their work cut out for them. 

Educating both women and men about the dangers and hidden setbacks that women face is vital to solving the problem at hand. Becoming aware of your surroundings and making an effort to combat discrimination, whether you are in the position of power or not, is an important step we need to take. If we do not think there is a problem because we cannot see it ourselves, nothing will change for the better.

For more information about what to do if you are facing workplace discrimination, visit equal rights.org for steps you can take.