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biracialcinephile · 3 years ago

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Gender Discrimination Against Women in the Workplace

Gender discrimination, as defined by Equalrights.org, is when an employee is treated differently simply because of their gender. There are even laws protecting against gender discrimination, however millions of working individuals experience the discrimination more often than they’d like to, especially women. It is the year 2021 and society is starting to change and develop in positive ways a lot of people had only hoped it would for some time, but society isn’t finished growing yet. While people are starting to be held accountable for their actions, this doesn’t mean the problems are existing any less. Women of all ages experience sexism and/or gender discrimination at some point, or multiple points, within their careers. Some examples of discrimination towards women include verbal comments towards women, not be offered promotions as often, being paid less than men for completing the same jobs and being held to different standards than men. Some women even experience sexual assault or advances in the workplace. I’ll never forget the first time I experienced gender discrimination in the workplace. For the past few years, I have been working as a pharmacy technician and for the most part, in my own experience, pharmacy technicians have mainly been female. The first major experience I had was at an independent long-term care pharmacy where there were four technicians, me and three other women all either in their 40s or 50s (I was in my early twenties at the time). The pharmacy was ran by two male pharmacists, one of them specifically appointed as pharmacy manager. When you work in pharmacy, you dispense all sorts of types of medications, and you have to be cautious when it comes to controlled substances or narcotics like Xanax or Oxycodone. At this pharmacy, we had some customers which were… let’s say “shady.” Some red flags of “suspicious” customers are ones who only want to pay cash for controls or narcotics, and people who have prescriptions written for high quantities of the controls/narcotics. At this independent, we served very few retail customers. Any retail customer we had always received narcotics in very suspiciously high quantities and all paid cash. The other female pharmacy technicians and I wanted to talk to the pharmacy manager about these customers and how we were uncomfortable with it since we were technically a closed-door long-term care pharmacy who served nursing homes and rehab facilities. At this meeting, the owner’s secondhand man was also supposed to be there, but for some reason he couldn’t make it. The ladies and I met with the manager and expressed our concerns. The manager wasn’t really paying attention to us, and it was obvious. One technician was getting emotional about it when the manager finally stopped her and yells “ALL RIGHT! FINE! WE’LL STOP DOING IT!” He looks away from us towards his computer screen, shakes his head and says very clearly “you f—king women.” Immediately this sent anger through me. I was in disbelief. I looked at one of the other technicians and said “What did he just say? Did he really just say that?” She just looked at me with a blank stare and gave me a slight shrug. I left the pharmacy within two weeks after that incident, and the pharmacy manager kept his job and received ZERO consequences. This experience has stuck with me, and I know I am not the only woman who has ever experienced gender discrimination. I decided to reach out to other women who were comfortable enough to share their own experience with sexism and gender in the workplace.

The following stories are from women, and I even was lucky enough to hear about an experience a male had seeing a female coworker of his experience discrimination because of her gender. All names and places of employment have been removed/changed to respect the privacy and identity of all who contributed.

Woman #1 – Casual gender discrimination while working for a major non-profit medical center “Across multiple industries – healthcare, education, retail, etc – more “administrative tasks” tend to fall to women. Regardless of their role or job description, it is assumed that women should be responsible for scheduling meetings, creating agendas, planning for the future of the workplace, etc. In two different positions I was given more administrative work in addition to my job description. The excuse I was given for this work was that I was “just better at managing it,” but the reality was that my male counterparts didn’t see it as a good use of their time. They were perfectly capable of managing their own calendars but farmed the task out to me - and when I left, other female workers. Despite having more medical research experience than my male counterparts at work, I was paid up to $10,000 less than they were.” “Dr. Roy would come to the clinic, see his patients, dictate his notes, and leave his nurses – all women – to return phone calls, file paperwork, and close out for the day. Dr. Laura, on the other hand, would stay until everything was completed, clearly understanding, and empathizing with her colleagues. Dr. Roy operated with a self-described “old school” mentality and refused to acknowledge that the nurses were just as busy, if not busier, than he was, and because they were women, were relegated to clean-up-type activities.”

Woman #2 – I experienced sexual harassment, once while pregnant. “My recent boss, who was promoted in the last year, went to a management mandatory sexual harassment course lead by the company. He came back and said that cupcake and sweet cheeks weren’t on the list of names he couldn’t call coworkers, so he began calling me cupcake and sweet cheeks. Another supervisor, same job, told me that I looked good in my leggings one day and that I could “get it” if I want. I worked at a very popular retail chain pharmacy when I was pregnant with my first child. There I had a manager who had a kink for pregnant women. He would touch my belly as he walked by me. The final time, he stood behind me and reached around with both hands to hold my stomach. I told my boss and he had him immediately demoted and transferred. This was in 2011. He probably would’ve been fired if it were 2021.”

Woman #3 – I experienced sexual harassment and was threatened. “At my job a few years back, I was 21-22 at the time, one of the union reps smacked my ass with a cut-off piece of cable and did this in front of an entire assembly line. I went to the union and co-workers about it and they advised me to let it go.”

“They said no man there would ever trust me again and they would find a way to let me go if I spoke up. He still works there as a rep to this day.”

Woman #4 A woman ‘should’ look a certain way in some workplaces “Working at a high-volume restaurant, I was denied the opportunity of working a mobile beer tub because I am not “what they are looking for” (which was blonde and skinny) when I could be making double the amount doing it than I was making while serving. I was also told my shorts are too long because they touch my knees. I had to squeeze into too small of uniform shirts because they do not order larger shirts. Their reasoning for not doing so was because “no one ever needed an XL before.” At this same place, I was denied when I applied for a different position because I “would not like the uniform” because I am a bigger girl.”

Woman #5 – Women can know things about electronics, too?

When I worked at a popular retail electronics store, I had multiple male customers not want to work with me because I’m a female. I had a male customer ask me a question about a product that I answered and right after he went up to my male co-worker and asked the same question. My co-worker said, ‘she just answered that for you.’

“Also, I had a male general manager, (whom no longer works for the company) who was so disgusting. Around the holidays, he would carry around a Santa sack filled with candy and tell everyone to reach into his sack.”

Woman #6 – “Women can’t tattoo!” “I work in the tattoo industry, which is an extremely gender biased field. Women have been sh-t on in the tattoo industry forever. My last shop was opened specifically as an all-girl shop and one of the owner’s business partners didn’t want to invest in it because women are ‘too emotional it’s not going to work.’

There are 12 season of ink master and women have only won twice.”

A man’s perspective experiencing sexism towards a female coworker “There are three people involved in this situation. The employees at hand I’ll use different names for, we’ll go with Mike (30) and Carlie (17). The operator was a male manager named Gene. One day while performing regular duties on the front line, Mike made some sort of joke or tease aimed at Carlie, to which Carlie responded to by sticking out her tongue. In that instance Mike gripped her up a bit. Between the professional setting, the age gap and the age of Carlie herself I think it’d be safe to say that the gesture was wildly inappropriate.” “Naturally, Carlie took the issue to HR, where HR took the issue to Gene. Gene and HR scheduled two separate meetings as a means of investigation. One meeting with Carlie alone, and one meeting with Mike alone.”

“The meeting with Carlie was first. This occurred while I was running shift for the evening, so I had a pretty good view of the meeting taking place in the quarantined lobby, as well as what I would consider a decent read on the facial expression during said meetings. Carlie’s didn’t seem to be going so well. She was crying, making hand gestures as if trying to plead a case. Gene on the other hand, seemed stern and was making hand gestures that could be construed as opposition. When the meeting was over, Carlie walked behind the front-line counter, crying, and clocked out for the day. It was just for the evening.”

“The meeting with Mike was very different. As he approached the table where Gene and HR were sitting, Gene promptly stood to meet him, greeted him with a smile, gave him a little fist bump on the shoulder and motioned for him to take a seat. The read on this meeting was a lot different. Both Gene and Mike exhibited more relaxed postures as they filled the air with smiles and sometimes laughter. When this meeting was finished, Mike returned to the kitchen with a half-smile and stayed the remainder of his shift.”

“Later in the evening, I got word from an accompanying manager who sat at the meetings some more details. Essentially Carlie was blamed for the aggression. As if the motion of sticking out her tongue at Mike was “asking for it.” (Insert parallel to men catcalling scantily clad women here.) She tried to make a case for herself but ultimately failed.”

“In the meeting with Mike, the tone from Gene was more of a “you ought to be more careful, you know how women are” type of tone. More forgiving, almost dare I say it��. understanding? Mike had no need to make a case for himself, as Gene had a case for him from the start.”

“I can’t help but affirm my own disgust for the entire debacle. I don’t even think I need to make a case for myself as to why I feel this way. It speaks for itself: the age gap, the underage young woman, the “professional” setting, as well as the care I had for my employees, and the responsibility I felt for their wellbeing. The undermining of their safety and comfort by the actions of Gene is one of MANY reasons I had made the decision to leave that company. I did not want to work for a man with such blatant disregard for the wellbeing of employees, in particular the younger females that by the way, worked their ASSES OFF keeping that place running.”

——

Women of all ages, professions, and backgrounds experience sexism/gender discrimination in a plethora of ways while at the workplace. More companies are becoming stricter when it comes to these types of reports of incidents. The culprits are starting to face consequences for their actions, but is it enough?

Check out the following links for tips on how you can help prevent gender discrimination in the workplace, or even tips on what to do if you experience gender discrimination, or see it happen.

https://chronus.com/blog/how-to-overcome-gender-bias-in-the-workplace

https://fairygodboss.com/career-topics/gender-discrimination-in-the-workplace

http://www.jaburgwilk.com/news-publications/ten-ways-to-prevent-sex-discrimination-in-the-workplace

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/sex-discrimination/

https://www.equalrights.org/issue/economic-workplace-equality/discrimination-at-work/

Written by Rene B.

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