Thank you Madam Secretary. Thank you for giving women a voice. Having worked in male dominated professions my entire life (IT engineer and general contractor) I choked back tears when I heard, “ That’s why organizations like Glassdoor that promote transparency are important for helping women negotiate equal pay. It’s why we need legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act, so people won’t be fired or retaliated against for asking what their co-workers make.”
In 2008, quite unplanned and unexpectedly the bottom fell out of my personal and professional life. At 48 years old, I found myself living in a three season RV, doing any and everything possible to survive. In 2001 I had left my IT career and invested my 401K to become a North Carolina licensed general contractor and start a small construction business. All was going very well until 2008. When the housing and construction industries took a dive, my business and that of many other hard working subcontractors fell into a black hole, never to recover.
I tried to return to IT, completed thousands of applications between 2008 and 2012, literally thousands, all to little or no acknowledgement or response. Health care insurance played a major role in my growing concern that I may not be able to secure a job and I was genetically predisposed to significant and potentially crippling illnesses.
President Obama and passage of the ACA brought tears of joy. For those who oppose I ask, “what would you do, just step over uninsured persons in the street?”
A friend called me to offer a “temporary” job, which thankfully has turned into a full time position with health care insurance coverage. Without it, I very likely would have been immobilized from health issues and possibly living on the street. All because of situations beyond my control.
I did not mean to go on this long. Madame Secretary, just please know that there are so many of us out there, who NOW feel someone has “got our backs”, cares and KNOWS we ARE able to contribute. We WANT to contribute. Just because we are over 50, doesn’t mean we cannot contribute. We deserve to be considered for those upper management and executive positions, we did our time, have our experiences, but are all too often looked over. In my case, I did not have the $$ to get an MBA, so I educated myself and started my own company. In IT, I did not have the $$ to go to college and pay for a PhD, so I turned my Manpower temporary secretarial job in 1983 into an IT position using the first IBM PC (with one floppy disk) and an IBM Displaywriter word processor (size of VW) to archive and manage patient cases for the MD I was working for at the time. I created ALL those positions, without degrees and yet was told, “well, I can’t put you in that upper level position because you do not have your bachelor or master or PhD degrees.” So, my doing the work apparently doesn’t count for comparable title or compensation as male colleagues. I don’t buy it and I didn’t let it stop me. In 2008 I reached down, grabbed my bootstraps and stayed on it, not giving up, accepting what was offered and striving to win the case for what I deserved.
Now, I have you to catch my back.
I’m with you. And yes, John Wesley said it best … “ Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. John Wesley. Good, Means, Ways. I look upon the whole world as my parish.” For now, born Southern Baptist and converted UMC in 2010 … I am thankful, give thanks, and will not give up. Just like you.
Peace Sister …. God’s Peace, Blessings and Protection — Clinton/Kaine 2016. Looking forward to tears of joy on November 9th, 2016.
Geri Cox
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