NewsFlash: Women in the Workplace

Link to Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/id/234657

The fight for women’s rights has been underway for a little more than a century now. Over this century, women have gain many opportunities, rights, and privileges that were once only deemed appropriate for men. However, there are still many injustices placed against women in present day society. Sexism continues to place a role in the workplace. Women are still fighting for equal rights and equal pay as men in the labor force.
In their Newsweek article, Jessica Bennett (2010) and Jesse Ellison (2010) discuss how female employees are still facing injustices in the work place because of their sex. They claim that present day women still face discriminatory pay and hiring practices. The World Economic Forum (Bennett and Ellison 2010), citied within Bennett and Elliso , reports that even though women have increased within the labor force, an improvement from just a century ago., they still face economic and political injustice.
A news report by the World Economic Forum finds that even though more women are employed around the world than ever before, and now make up 52 percent of U.S. workers, major multinational companies are failing to capitalize on their talents. In surveys with human-resources executives at 600 companies across 16 industries and 20 countries, the Forum's Corporate Gender Gap Report found that disparities in education and health have all but disappeared worldwide, but when it comes to political empowerment and economic participation, women haven't advanced much [Bennett and Ellison 2010).

The forum also goes on to claim that “female employees still tend to be concentrated in entry- or mid-level positions” (Bennett and Ellison 2010). The report does not point out motherhood as the biggest barrier; instead it claims that the patriarchal system is to blame for women’s inequality in the workplace. There is popular belief that one of the reasons that women still face inequality in the work force is due to the traditional view that the role of women revolves around motherhood and domestic life.
In her article, Anne Fausto -Sterling discusses how the woman’s body has been used and viewed as a means to deem women inappropriate for certain jobs. According to her, the hormonal difference that exists between me and women have been used to support claims that The uterus and the menstrual cycle are viewed as making women weak and incapable of performing the strenuous labor. This argument also extended to exclude women from the right to higher education.
Although dated in some of the particulars, the turn-of-the-century scientific belief that women’s reproductive functions make them unsuitable for higher education remains with us today. Some industries bar fertile women from certain positions because of workplace hazards that might cause birth defects, while simultaneously deeming equally vulnerable men fit for the job. Some modern psychologists and biologists suggest that women perform more poorly than do men on mathematics test because hormonal sex differences alter male and female structures; and many people believe women to be unfit for certain professions because the menstruate [Fausto-Sterling ]

Based on this argument, women are thus viewed as unfit in the workplace and more fit as mothers.
In another article Betty Freidman (1994) identifies a phenomenon know as the feminine mystique. She identifies feminine mystique as the ideology that women could “achieve happiness in life only through marriage and motherhood” (Friedan 1994: 48-49). However, Friedman identifies women who question this mystique. According to them, there feminine mystique is not fulfilling at all. They fell that their lives are meaningless and pointless and ask the question, Is this it?
The feminine mystique continues to be common ideology today. While women have gained many rights and opportunities within the last fifty years, present day ideology still place women’s roles as more so in the home with the children. Our media and publications enforce these roles. Advertisements, magazines, and television commercials often promote the ideology of women as domesticated beings-house cleaning products our anything that as to do with the house or children in general are almost always centered towards women.
Amanda Diva, a spoken word and hip -hop artist, spoke of the difficulties and challenges of being a woman in the hip hop industry. At a recent lecture at Colgate, she discussed how she is often sexualized and objectified within the industry. She discussed how difficult it was to gain respect within the industry because she was a woman and was seen as not having the talent as men have although her productions are among the best in the business. While she has made it and stands as one of the leaders in her field, she continues to fight the sexism that is present within the hip-hop industry.


Since the Feminist movement started at the beginning of the century, is as went through many generations and many waves of changes. With these changes, the movement has brought women closer to finally being able to be treated equally as men and to enjoy the same privileges that men enjoy. Fortunately, this has led to present day women being able to enjoy many of the rights and privileges that was originally denied to women of past generations. However, the fight is not over because women are still facing many injustices and inequalities within the economic system. Many of the ideologies that were used against women of the past are still being used today. The fact of the matter is women have gained many opportunities, particularly within the workplace, the patriarchal system still continues to oppress them through unequal pay and unfair hiring.