Currently, I work for an organization that is gung-ho in its mission to create equality amongst employees. However, I haven't always experienced this kind of determined justice. For a year I worked at a job that could very easily be compared to Christine Williams' position within each of her toy stores. For instance, in both places there was a defined sense of gender roles.
For Williams she found that only women worked at the cash registers in her stores and white men often times held leadership roles. In my former position, which I will not name for fear of my former employers wrath, there were such distinct gender roles that I almost lost my mind. The women with whom I worked and I had a very distinct set of expectations that included kitchen maintenance, cleaning, decorating, and interacting with young children. These were very stereotypically feminine tasks. The only time we could convince a male coworker to perform any of those task was to directly ask for help, otherwise they would completely disregard these tasks. Also, our male coworkers were given tasks that included building and leadership positions.
In addition to this obvious sexism, every employee at this "family owned and family friendly" business were all from the same racial and economic circumstances. Not a single minority was employed and one had not been employed for many, many years. I find that this relates to Diamond Toys, in that very few minorities were employed at this high scale store.
No comments:
Post a Comment