The Enlightenment

Women are not advancing in the workplace at an appropriate rate.

Sharon Webster is angry. She has been an employee at Merrill Lynch for the past 18 years immediately after graduating from college. It’s a nice job with above the board benefits and perks and an excellent health care plan. So what could be the source of her indignation? Recently, she had applied for a vacant position but was betered by a male counterpart who is less qualified and has fewer years of experience. Sounds familiar? Studies have shown that there is still widespread discrimination of women in the workplace on various levels. Globally, the work world remains generally intractable and indifferent to the socio-economic ambitions of women. The corporate creature keeps them at arm’s-length, barring them from a ‘circle of fellowship’, whose price for admission is usually a cocktail of testosterone and connections. Society usually gives us the general impression that women are rapidly climbing the ladder of commercial success. But is this really true? The United Nations Chartered Council shows that in the workplace 73.2% of supervisors are men while a meagre 26.8% are women. Think about that for minute-that’s a gigantic gap. And what would you say if I told that in most countries- while women make up a significant portion of the work force- they are paid significantly less than men and are subjected to sub-level positions, would this surprise you? But it is true. Women in the work place are bearing the scars inflicted by the monster of gender discrimination which are as deep as the well of tears that has also marked their struggle. This discrimination manifests itself in various ways: while they are very much present in the workplace, they are hardly securing executive and managerial positions while being highly qualified; they are often not being paid at the same level as males for the same positions. Also, due to these gender biased blows and society’s entrenched gender gap they often times develop low self-esteem.

With respect to work relations, John Stuart Mill remarks, “Millions of women are enduring the brunt of gender bias in the workplace” (67). But this quote still leaves us with an abstracted sense of what is really going on; let us take a closer look at the underbelly of gender discrimination, particularly, the snubbing of scores of women for promotion even when they are more qualified than their male counterparts. Women have been stuck in the swamp of career stagnation - too often they fail to reach their potential. Mills tells us that “the work environment is not geared in favour of women; they have to work four times as hard as men in a similar position in order to advance” (34). In the United Kingdom for example 45% of the prominent companies still have exclusively male boards and throughout all the executive contingent of the companies nationwide only ten female executive directors were found in all. How sad! Women are also made comfortable by the argument that their mere presence in the workplace underscores their capability of advancement. But, to dispel this argument, the adage ‘who you know rather than what you know’ rings true particularly at the board level where old boy’s networks are still prevalent. Headhunting firms report difficulties in finding suitable women directors, this lower level of networking by women may be an important factor. “The Chicago Sun Times” points out that “a key criterion for board appointments is corporate experience at the board level”. But how can women provide this if they cannot get that first appointment? Think about it. According to them “over 900 past and present women brokers at Merrill Lynch assessed that they have experienced gender based discrimination resulting in their not advancing beyond entry level positions (A12). Officials at M I T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have also admitted to long standing and pervasive discrimination against women in its faculties, reaching all areas of employment: hiring, awards, promotions and allocations for funding research. Even with the promotion of a hand full of females to executive level positions, women still do not hold free rein over the corporate leviathan and in most cases are still denied the benefits of the position they hold which their male counterparts would have got if they held the same position. The Statistical Institute of Jamaica highlights this phenomenon in their 2003 findings of work relations which showed that “women in executive positions are still only receiving 65% of the perquisites and standard benefits of male executives in similar positions.” And in 2004 “for every four males selected for managerial internship programs there was only one female selected for the same” (112). This phenomenon significantly stymies the progression of women in the workplace and predicates itself on the discriminatory