Community can include your workplace, sports club, social networks, school, health providers and neighbourhood.
Have Your Say: Comment below.
Alternatively if you prefer to make your comments privately you can do so via email or phone 03 9688 0182.
Have Your Say: Comment below.
Alternatively if you prefer to make your comments privately you can do so via email or phone 03 9688 0182.
Generally, I would say yes. Within my communities home/work/social circles and areas of interest, I feel well respected and perceive that I have the same opportunities as men. However, my sister works in a corporate environment where her male contemporaries with less experience are getting promoted before she does. She has been told that she needs to take a more aggressive approach to handling staff and her superiors. She feels that she has to become 'one of the boys' and fit in with the male dominanted culture of her work place if she is to get ahead.
ReplyDeleteShe also struggles with handling her own domestic duties and the huge number of hours she is expected to do as part of her job. She says most of her male contemporaries are in partnerships and have told her that their wives and partners take care of the bulk of the domestic duties.
In my experience, the workforce is much more balanced for women and men, than it was 10-15 years ago. When I was a young woman starting out in the workforce, none of the businesses I worked for had female managers or bosses. There were no male assistants. A number of male bosses I worked for over the years made sexual advances towards me, a number were verbally abusive and many more were just out and out sexist and aggresive.
ReplyDeleteThose experiences certainly had a profound effect on me and effected my self-esteem. The benefit of age and hopefully a little wisdom lets me look back on those moments with clarity and proportion responsibility entirely to those men who were so inappropriate.
I am very pleased to say that in my current job, I have experienced none of the attitudes and behaviour that was rife in the corporate sector.
I used to work in a sector dominated by men. My role involved managing a number of men and I believe I received much resistance because of my gender and age. After time, I felt I was trying to adopt/ be seen to have behaviours which are typically seen as masculine. I did this because I felt people in the work place respected me for having those traits, they probably did. It doesn't seem right that we don't value those traits typically seen as feminine. We need to be careful, we can't think that we have achieved gender equity in Australia, that in itself is another one of our big barriers.
ReplyDeleteEven though I work in a very male dominated field, the management at my current company are committed to promoting talent regardless of gender, which is great.
ReplyDeleteI've definitely experienced gender inequity in other roles even if it were as simple as only asking the women at the company (regardless of position) to cover reception at lunch or bring coffees for guests. That kind of ingrained expectation is very frustrating to come up against in this day and age. Luckily I set them straight!
It is up to all of us to stand up when we see these kinds of behaviours.
That's a bit of a minefield of a question to be honest. "Same opportunities for both women and men..."? And how objective to you want my answer to be? I'm so netted in my community culture that it would be very simple to look at the base level and say - well, as a woman I can apply for the same positions as men in employment, I can walk down the same streets as men, I can go to the same cafes and get entry to the football and take part in other similar activities. So, on the face of it, then I could say, yes, generally, I do get provided with the same opportunities as men. But there are many unsaid, unconscious and un-negotiated areas where I'm sure that those opportunities are not provided for.. and these take place in ways that can do harm and damage to a woman's sense of worth and empowerment. Women are still very much valued in terms of what they do for others - and whether they are something to have sex with or be nurtured by. I recognise (and have faith) that this perception is changing... but to be honest - it's only been 50 years or so that women have had the vote, been in the workforce, even been considered anything other than creatures designed to look after others' needs. It's going to take a lot of extra leg work (especially from men) to genuinely change that perception.
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