Meme Comment #4
Mar. 13th, 2008 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psubratFrom ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crossreactivity:
What do you think is the biggest challenge women face today?
Wow. You've really hit me with a doozie.
If you had asked me this when I was still working and had a career, I would have said without a doubt that it was equality in the work place. But now that I'm a stay at home mom, I'm not sure that I'm qualified enough to answer this because I'm not "out there" anymore. Though I'm sure things haven't changed in six years.
I once worked for a company that was an old boys club. Yeah, that was a blast, let me tell you. Despite the fact that I had both a bachelors and masters degree, I was considered inferior to the manly engineers who worked there. Yes, I had been hired as a type of administrative assistant (because that's what I had been when I worked as a civilian for the Navy), but my boss -- a female engineer and VP -- quickly discovered that I was capable of much more. I moved up quickly, becoming a database programmer and then a project manager. However, that all stopped when the president's son joined the company. My boss had been grooming me to take her place, but with the son there, I suddenly became a non-entity especially after they pushed my boss out of the company. One day I was told by the president that I made far too much money (I made far less than those who were male and had the same amount of experience and time that I did) and that our customers would no longer want to hire me. It was a flat out lie because I'd brought in a TON of money for them over the five years I worked there. My customers adored me. I was a hard worker and a professional. More and more lies came out of the president's mouth and the other two VPs and the CFO decided that I was expendable. That's when my former boss told me that everything that was going on was because I was a woman and I was making the president's son look bad. WTF?
How could I continue to work there? I didn't. Armed with a spruced up resume, I applied to Lucent Technologies. My experience in opto-electronics with the government gave me an edge. Fortunately for me, the department head that hired me had never heard of my father-in-law (he holds three patents over forty plus years of service), but it was my last name that got me in the door. Anyway, Lucent was a dream compared to my old company. Women were held in higher regard and I was treated on equal footing with the engineers. However, that said, there still existed an attitude that women who were pregnant and then took maternity leave were some how considered less because of it, like they weren't taking their jobs seriously enough. This bugs the crap out of me.
Women are expected to be able to do it all, but when we do, it's held against us.
My job at Lucent was a dream job, but I have to wonder, if I hadn't been laid off, would I be considered inferior because I chose to start a family?
crossreactivity:What do you think is the biggest challenge women face today?
Wow. You've really hit me with a doozie.
If you had asked me this when I was still working and had a career, I would have said without a doubt that it was equality in the work place. But now that I'm a stay at home mom, I'm not sure that I'm qualified enough to answer this because I'm not "out there" anymore. Though I'm sure things haven't changed in six years.
I once worked for a company that was an old boys club. Yeah, that was a blast, let me tell you. Despite the fact that I had both a bachelors and masters degree, I was considered inferior to the manly engineers who worked there. Yes, I had been hired as a type of administrative assistant (because that's what I had been when I worked as a civilian for the Navy), but my boss -- a female engineer and VP -- quickly discovered that I was capable of much more. I moved up quickly, becoming a database programmer and then a project manager. However, that all stopped when the president's son joined the company. My boss had been grooming me to take her place, but with the son there, I suddenly became a non-entity especially after they pushed my boss out of the company. One day I was told by the president that I made far too much money (I made far less than those who were male and had the same amount of experience and time that I did) and that our customers would no longer want to hire me. It was a flat out lie because I'd brought in a TON of money for them over the five years I worked there. My customers adored me. I was a hard worker and a professional. More and more lies came out of the president's mouth and the other two VPs and the CFO decided that I was expendable. That's when my former boss told me that everything that was going on was because I was a woman and I was making the president's son look bad. WTF?
How could I continue to work there? I didn't. Armed with a spruced up resume, I applied to Lucent Technologies. My experience in opto-electronics with the government gave me an edge. Fortunately for me, the department head that hired me had never heard of my father-in-law (he holds three patents over forty plus years of service), but it was my last name that got me in the door. Anyway, Lucent was a dream compared to my old company. Women were held in higher regard and I was treated on equal footing with the engineers. However, that said, there still existed an attitude that women who were pregnant and then took maternity leave were some how considered less because of it, like they weren't taking their jobs seriously enough. This bugs the crap out of me.
Women are expected to be able to do it all, but when we do, it's held against us.
My job at Lucent was a dream job, but I have to wonder, if I hadn't been laid off, would I be considered inferior because I chose to start a family?
