Women in Power

My mom just recently got a new job offer after being with her previous employer for over thirty years. Switching companies and starting a new job at the start of a recession in our country was terrifying to her, but she was so excited for the opportunity of a lifetime to work her dream job. 

In her previous role, every boss she ever had – and she switched jobs pretty often over the course of thirty years – was male. And every boss above her boss was also always male. She mentioned she was the only female at dinner parties and work events surrounded by men.  When she got her new job, she was surrounded by female bosses and CEO’s everywhere. She was so shocked to see so many women on a zoom call that she actually texted me telling me to come downstairs to her office to look! We discussed after this how it has been an adjustment for her to be surrounded by women in the workforce and how she acts and feels around them is completely different than with men. 

A major issue that is talked about all over social media and even the news in politics is how many men are in power in our country. All the way from presidents, to any field in the government, to CEO’s of businesses. 33.4% of bosses are women and 66.6% of bosses are men.

I saw a TikTok of a debate where one man was saying women are ‘too emotional’ to be in a position of power, but a man will get the job done because his emotions are not in the way of his logical decision making. The other man came back at him saying, there was actually a study done that proved women and men had the same decision making over one thousand different companies and most of the women were actually menstruating during the study. The argument that women are “too emotional” is honestly just comical to me. We see men and boys using emotion to guide their decision making and logical thinking and carry out horrific acts that women almost never carry out. An example of this is the fact that nearly all school shootings have been carried out by men – a staggering 98% of these crimes. How is that not their emotions interfering with their logical thinking or decision making??  

There are obviously differences in how men and women decide to handle power that is given to them, but why are women given the power way less often? In my sociology of gender class, we watched a Ted Talk about a transgender man who started working at his company prior to his transition to male. They went into depth about the differences in how he was treated as a female compared to as a male in the same work environment. He mentioned the main difference was that as a male, he was never questioned twice about the decisions he made or the opinions he gave, but as a female, he was always needing evidence and proof to back up his statements by his male peers. This was really interesting to me because it truly shows that women are looked down upon in work settings, whether that be just needing to prove themselves more or even do extra work for the same task given to everyone. 

Overall, women need to be represented more in positions of power, and as feminists we need to be the spokesperson for change. Posting on social media and watching debates will help to educate us more about why this occurs, but actually choosing jobs where women are adequately represented is what is really going to start a small change for women all over the country.