Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

 

I have to admit, I have never been one to be a super feminist activist. Growing up, all I wanted was to get married, have some children and live happily ever after. I never gave much thought to what I would do for a living. Oh, I had dreams that I would dwell on from time to time, the biggest one of them being to become a writer.

Now, seeing that the world of literary authors expands almost as quickly as the breaths we take thanks to independent publishing, I knew it would be hard to make it as an author and be able to pay my bills regularly. So what career would give me the satisfaction of obtaining a lifelong dream while I was still chasing my goals? Enter journalism, and boy have I had a wild ride from time to time in my chosen profession.

In fact, the further I through myself into the work force, and the more I juggle the hats of worker, mother, wife and anything else life throws my way, the more I find myself leaning more and more towards women’s rights and the equality issues women face in the workforce.

I have been told time and again from various males in my life to work harder, achieve, keep pushing, and my favorite – “if I can do it you can do it.”

But here is the deal, I recently stumbled across an article in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to my father) that just about proves a term a former boss of mine used to describe women in the workforce, “pink collar workers.”

At the time I heard it I couldn’t have been more appalled. But, as time goes on and I work just as hard, if not harder, than many of my male colleagues I am forced to see the truth in the term brutally used to describe us women in the world out hustling trying to make ends meet in – dare I say it – a man’s world.

To my ex bosses defense, he actually got the term off a woman in the 1980s who he used to work alongside. If I was to meet that woman today, I would give her a high five and agree with her before sadly saying I believe close to nothing has changed in the workforce since the time she uttered the phrase.

Statistics show, one million women will be left behind in entry-level positions over the next five years compared to their male counterparts who will climb the ladder. Currently, men outnumber women nearly two to one at first-level manager jobs. Even more, ¼ of women said that their gender has played a role with a missed promotion or raise compared to only 10 percent of men.

What is even more concerning, is that when polled 32 percent of human resource departments said women are judged by different standards than men. They also believed that too few qualified women are in the pipeline by 45 percent and 47 percent of human resources said women have fewer sponsors at work championing then for advancement. These statistics were polled from 68,500 employees through 329 companies.

Pink collar workers hustling to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts with comparable raises and advancements, perhaps so.
In the article, The Wall Street Journal states that evening the odds early in a women’s career would do more to achieve equality. But how many employers strive to do so? We’ve seen the statistics, maybe asking the touch questions like what employers are going to do about it would be a better step in the right direction?