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.