The Future is Female
With the rise of the feminist movement, that began in the 1960s, women are beginning to take back their rights. Women gained their right to vote in 1920, that is not even a hundred years ago. Even at that time, there were barely any women in the workforce. As history shows, the only time women really had jobs outside of the home were during and right after the wars, which started with the civil war. It was a cycle of the men leaving and dying in the war so the women would have to become the providers until the men were able to recover and go back to their jobs so the women would go back to becoming the house caretaker. Women were not even allowed to serve in combat roles in the military until 1973, before that they served as mainly nurses and support staff. If women wanted to serve in combat roles before they were permitted to do so they had to disguise themselves as men. It has not even been fifty years since women were allowed to be themselves and serve their country in combat, while America has been involved in different wars for at least two hundred years.
The military is not the only workplace women had trouble getting into. Dr. Mary Walker, who became the first female surgeon in 1855 and to receive the medal of honor in 1865 for her work in the military. But before she was in the military she went into practice with her husband, Albert Miller, her practice soon failed though. It is thought that the reason it failed is because she refused to take her husband’s last name and she practiced as a woman. Then in 1917, Congress attempted to revoke it as she did not serve in direct combat but she refused to give it up and took it to her deathbed. Even today female surgeons have to fight tooth and nail to be thought of at the same level as their male counterparts. Dr. Sharon Ben-Or, a thoracic (throat) doctor, tells her story of how she was scheduled to see a male patient but then last minute the patient called in and requested to see her male colleague instead. Confused, she asked one of the patients other doctors why there was a change and she was told that “Mr. X doesn’t want to have a female surgeon, You know how it is”. At that moment, this woman, who spent countless amounts of hours and money to obtain her medical degree, was essentially told that she was not good enough based off of her gender, and her department just obliged with the man’s request. Women are twice as likely to be discriminated against in the workplace compared to men.
Stories like these are common amongst many different jobs types, form STEM, to construction work, to the arts. One job people may not realize the discrimination in is the broadcasting and film industry. When you think of the great directors of the past; Hitchcock, Spielberg, Lucas, and so on, all men. A woman didn’t even win an Academy Award for “Best Directing” until 2010 when Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker”. That is eighty years after the first Academy Awards ceremony. Very few people even know about the first female director, Dorothy Arzner, who directed films from 1926 to 1943, and was the person who invented the boom mic. Just as in the military, there are very few women known for being big names in the movie industry that aren't actresses.
I spoke to Laura Shureb, a graduate student at Central Michigan University in the broadcasting and cinematic arts program with a focus on sports broadcasting, to get her take on what it is like to work and study in a male-dominated field and why she chose that field.
“Why did you choose the sports broadcasting field?”
“How does it feel to work in a male-dominated field?”
This is a mutual feeling amongst most women. Walking into an office or workroom and knowing that it is most likely going to be mainly men is a little unnerving. There is a fear of being talked over and not getting the opportunity to voice your opinions or feelings out of fear that you will be seen as say, bossy or too emotional, for lack of a less explicit word. But it is important to know that what you have to say is important and if you have the drive and the passion you will be able to overcome this feeling and pave the way for other women in more male-dominated industries. Pixar recently came out with a short film called “Purl” that demonstrates this very nicely.
Purl felt out of place until she was able to figure out how she can fit in, and then a new female joins the office and Purl sees herself in her and we get to see Purl take a chance make the office a better place for everyone to work in, not just men. I take this as women need to stick together in order to make the workforce a better place for everyone to be in and excepted in. I also spoke with Laura about her hopes for the future of females in the sports broadcasting industry, which can really be applied to any industry that consists of mainly males.
We are still fairly far off from men and women being equal in the workforce. There are still significantly more men working than women, and not to even mention the wage gap or me too movement. Between the ages of 35 to 44, there is nearly 20% difference in the men in the workforce to the women. My guess is much of this stems from society and women being told that they have to get married, have kids and be a stay at home mom all by her thirties. Now I am not knocking stay at home moms, if that’s what they want to do then more power to them. But it should be of their own choice, not because society or anyone else is telling them that this is how they are supposed to live their life.
We have made strides just in the last hundred years, but there is still a long way to go. We are fighting now harder than ever for workplace equality and to break that glass ceiling. It is so important for young girls to have role models in all different types of jobs that they know that they can be whatever they want to be. The future is female, let’s just hope it doesn’t take another hundred years to get here.
