Recycling Garbage Detrimental to Women
A couple of months ago I wrote that even de facto gender diversity wasn't really changing how people actually think and that traditional prejudices are alive and healthy.
More proof of that came in a study from McKinsey (requires free registration) regarding the potential for women to contribute to a US business resurgence and what's holding them back. And it's not the typical stuff you read about—flexible hours, affordable child care, desire to be a full-time mom, etc.
"Instead, entrenched mind-sets and behaviors—at companies and among women themselves—are two of the biggest culprits in preventing women from advancing.
These include senior executives’ perceptions that certain jobs just shouldn’t be available to women and a tendency to reward men for their potential but women only for their performance."
My reaction was two-fold—'good grief, same old garbage' and 'why am I not surprised'.
I often hear people saying that the current generation of parents are raising kids who will think differently and that will change things even if it's 20 years from now.
But the same thing was being said 20 years ago.
Many of today's parents still follow gender stereotypes when raising their kids and those who don't often face public heckling, if not actual harassment.
Instead of progress, the old stereotypes are recycled using current language for the old justifications, rather than being thrown out with the trash.
Some forty years ago Bella Abzug said, "Our struggle today...is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel."
Still the same struggle and the same goal.
Sheesh, you'd think by now we'd be further along by now.
Flickr image credit: advencap
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