Keranakis1

Sara Keranakis
Cassandra Blandford
UWRT 1102

Do women of todays work force still feel the job sexism of the women in the
past? History shows us that throughout time, women were not treated equal to men.
Women used to be viewed as a lesser to man in every aspect of life. This view carried
over into the work place. There are certain jobs that people consider to be a mans job
and that women have no business getting involved in these careers. For example,
Engineering is a male dominant career field. When picking my major coming into
college I had no idea what I wanted to become. I sat down with my favorite teacher,
soccer coach and good friend Allie Urbanski and asked for her advice. She asked me a
few simple questions like, what is your favorite subject, what makes you happy and
what do you like to do with your free time. After answering all of these what seemed
like childish questions she told me that she thought my best fit would be engineering.
I had never considered engineering before and quite frankly I had no idea what it
was. After a lot of research and some soul searching I decided that engineering was
the way I wanted to go. Getting into the engineering program was a breeze and thats
when the comments started to hit me. I learned quickly that engineering was going to be
a bumpy road for me. I right away was judged on my gender. People told me that I only
got into engineering because I was a girl and that I only did it to find a husband.

Keranakis2
When getting into English and hearing about the inquiry question one of my
original thoughts for a project was women in a gender dominate career. I choose this
topic because of how much I could relate to it. I was going to just do women in
engineering until the class opened my eyes to a more wide based idea. After talking to a
few of my classmates I was set on the idea of inequality in the workplace and how it has
changed over the years.
So as we all know men and women do have different strengths. Men tend to be
more physical while women have a more emotional side. But do these tendencies carry
over into the work place? The Catalyst website wrote an article displaying the stats of
women and male dominated occupations in the U.S. Jobs that are considered to be
male dominant are more physical jobs. The top five male dominated occupations in the
U.S. are brick masons, cement masons, electrical power line installers, floor installers
and heating/air conditioning installers. These are all are labor-intensive jobs. They
require workers who can handle physical labor. The top ten women jobs tend to be
more inside desk job. They are secretaries, dental hygienists, early childhood
educators, court recorders and dietitians. These jobs are jobs that do not require many
physical abilities. (Knowledge Center) Why are female dominated jobs usually inside,
paper work based jobs? Yes women do not have the same physical ability to lift as
much as men, but does this mean that they have to be stuck inside all day? Not all men
have the same physical ability and some men may want to have more desk-type work
environments. Why should your gender decide where you should work?
Men and women have more differences than just their physical abilities. The
fiscal times author Drew Gannon wrote an article that goes into detail about the different

Keranakis3
strengths of each gender. The strengths talked about in this article were not about
physical abilities, but more towards the way each gender tends to think and act in the
workplace. Men like to make friends in high places and they are not afraid to ask for
what they want. This may help them get more promotions over women or even allow
them to get higher pay rates. On the other hand women are persuasive and they like a
challenge. These traits may be why women have tried to push there way up in the
corporate world. (Gannon) Women now hold more managerial or professional positions.
A Catalyst taken in July, 2011 shows that 52% of these positions are now help by
women. (Llopis) Women are working their way up in the workforce. Women of today
tend to be more dedicated to bettering their position in the workforce.
Even though most of my research has led me to think that women are viewed
less to men, I have to remember the other half of the story. Over the summer I worked
for an engineering firm in Virginia Beach. My boss kept telling me that being a woman in
the engineering field is positive for me and I would get a lot of opportunities because of
my gender. According to him some companies have to have a quota on the amount of
women to men ratio they have working. He said that there are never enough women in
the engineering field and that women engineers are usually thrown jobs left and right
because of their gender. This made me consider the fact that men could be at the
disadvantage because of these quotas. A male candidate could be passed over
because of the fact that a womens resume is in the same picking as his resume. This
could cause a problem of having unqualified individuals in the workforce. Even though
the quota could help against having extreme gender dominate careers, there are some
careers that the other gender is not well suited to be able to do.

Keranakis4
Forbes magazine wrote an article called 4 Skills that Give Women a Sustainable
Advantage Over Men. The article goes on to describe traits of women that make them
more likely to succeed with men. It says that women have an immigrant perspective on
business leadership. This allows them to be wired to survive in the ever-changing face
of the professional world.
Women only make about 77 cent to every dollar a man earned. (Harvard
Summer School) This has become known as the wage gap. The wage gap between the
two genders is what really struck my interest. So lets go into some of the facts of the
wage gap. Some people root the wage gap back on the fact that women are more likely
than men to let their family and kids take away from their career. Women tend to take
more reduced hours, time off, turn down a promotion or even quit a job in order to care
for their child. Majority of the public agrees that a main reason for the wage gap is that
men and women make different choices about how to balance work and family. (Pew
Research Center) Is this really the reason that employers are more likely to pay women
less?
My genre product is a PowerPoint that shows a video from John Olivers Last
Week Tonight giving his funny output on the subject and other facts about the wage gap.
John Oliver and his team of researchers have put together a bunch of video clippings
from other news sources. Most of the news sources say that women are paid less than
men because of the life choices they make. Women tend to want a family and this
causing them to lose focus on work. My product also displays information from Pew
Research Center. The information from the site is a collection of charts and tables from
a census they had taken. The data shows that in fact people do believe the wage gap is

Keranakis5
because of the different life choices the genders make. My genre product brought up a
lot of questions that I did not think of until after I had done my research.
Women in the past and today tend to play more of a part in the household. Over
the past 25 years men have been stepping up and taking more responsibility in
housework and childcare. Even though there is this significant change they still are far
below a womens contribution at home. People tend to think that every full time mother
has two jobs; one at work and one at home. (Harvard) Men could take more
responsibility in the household work. If men and women were able to split up household
duties 50/50 then maybe women could spend less time away from their careers. Less
women would need to take time off from work and they could worry about moving up in
their careers. Men and women could close the gap on the about of time they take off to
deal with family problems. This seems to be a main reason why women are view less in
the workplace. If this problem could be solved the gender equality would increase
throughout the workforce.
Generally speaking I can conclude from all of my data and research that men
and women are treated differently in the workplace. Men tend to have the upper hand in
the business world. They tend to get high-ranking positions faster and make more
money than women in the same career. But that is not always the case. Women can be
networking professionals as well as men. There are chances where women can use
their gender to succeed over their male coworkers. (Forbes) The gender inequality in
the workplace can ultimately be rooted back to the stereotypes of the genders.
Stereotypes seem to be a major factor on ever part of a humans life. Stereotypes
appear to be a deciding factor on how people are treated. Women and men are treated

Keranakis6
differently in the workplace but it is not so much as sexism against women as much as it
is stereotyping the genders. Women are viewed to have more impact on the household
actions, while men manage to have a bigger role in the workforce. If we as people could
view a person by their individual abilities instead of their gender stereotype then I
believe there would no longer be gender inequality in the work place.

Keranakis7
References

Gannon, Drew. "How Men and Women Differ in the Workplace." The Fiscal Time. The
Fiscal Time, 25 May 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.

Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace. Harvard Summer School, 1 Jan.
2014. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.

Llopis, Glenn. "4 Skills That Give Women a Sustainable Advantage Over Men." Forbes.
Forbes Magazine, 22 Aug. 2011. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

"On Pay Gap, Millennial Women Near Parity For Now." Pew Research Centers Social
Demographic Trends Project RSS. Pew Research Center, 10 Dec. 2013. Web.
20 Feb. 2015.

"Women in Male-Dominated Industries and Occupations in U.S. and Canada."

Knowledge Center. Catalyst, 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Wage Gap. Perf. John Oliver. Last Week Tonight,
204. Film.