The Gender Identi-Tree
Leaves
The most important influences in our life are personal relationships. These are the family members, friends, and the mentors that we either form relationships through our own choosing or by familial happenstance. Either way, their influence on us may seem voluntary, but more than media and history, these people, what they say, and how they treat us will alter the way we think about ourselves. It is through these relationships and the exchange of our values and ideas that we come to develop our identities. That is why it is so important that everyone see the value in the continuation of feminism. It is not enough that there are laws that help to promote equality; both men and women must recognize that there is still more to be done. We must enact the 'theory' of feminsim into the way we live our lives. In theory, women have it all, but there is still a silent battle that must be won; the only way this will happen is if we change the way we act in our relationships.
JOBS
Female Bosses
I’ve had a lot of different jobs - twelve different positions since I began working at the age of fifteen, and yet, I have only ever had one female boss. I worked as a barista at a small local coffee shop. It was run by a woman named Susan, who on her better days would be considered slightly overbearing. There were about fifteen other employees my age and there was a pretty even split on the ratio of girls to guys. However, despite this ratio, none of the girl employees were given permission to close the shop at the end of the night or had access to the keys to the outside storage unit. Why did my female boss not trust us with this? Are women inclined to believe that men can handle more responsibility in the workforce? If female superiors are not rooting for their female employees, who is?
Male Dominated Work Environments
One of my favorite jobs has been being a bartender at Rick’s American Café. It’s a loud and dimly lit college bar that I have considered a second home for the past three years. While the pay is great and I have a lot of fun during work, being one of four female employees in a staff of over fifty and being the only female bartender out of twelve guys can get difficult. I have always been comfortable in male-dominated situations, and for the most part, the boys I work with have become a sort of family to me over the past three years. But it doesn’t change the fact that I am constantly trying to prove that I am just as capable or just as important as them. For example, every holiday and every summer we order new shirts for the staff. Never once have they agreed to order a women’s fit – unless of course I wanted to design and pay for it myself. They say it’s because we have so few female employees. Five percent of the staff, they say, isn’t worth the extra money. After two years of bartending, my boss also doesn’t seem to trust me like he does the other male bartenders. We have three bars at Rick's –main bar, side bar, and back bar. At main bar, we split tips, but at the other two bars, there is no one to split tips with and so those bartenders walk away with a lot more money each night. I'm not able to work alone at either of those bars because it’s a “safety issue” for me (whatever that is). It's situations like these that make me feel like there’s something inherently wrong with me because I’m a woman. If I were a guy, would I be treated differently? Why do I constantly feel like I can never truly compete with the other male bartenders because they will always be favored? Is it a self-esteem issue, or does my boss just trust his male employees more?
In a few of the jobs I worked, I didn’t really have a position in mind when I applied. Instead, the hiring manager chose for me. When I was hired at Friendly’s, a chain restaurant that specializes in ice cream, I was hired as an ice cream scooper (a position that was exclusively girls). When I was hired at Rick’s I was hired as a waitress (even though I begged to be allowed to check ids at the front door). When I applied to work for the chain restaurant called Ruby Tuesday, I was hired as a hostess (exclusively female) and started training with another boy named Richie who was hired for the position of bus boy. His position allow him to get tips for doing work that I also performed (I cleaned and cleared tables every night to make for speedier seating), but he was able to learn the computer system that servers use to type in food and drink orders. After just two months, Richie started to substitute for servers that were late and then eventually became a fulltime server. Over the next year, two more busboys became servers, and I remained a hostesss. Because both Richie and I shared the same work experience before we were hired, why was he put on the fast track for promotion? Why was I placed in more feminized starting positions in all of these jobs when I proved I could handle the work just as much as a male employee could? What do these immediate assumptions that my managers made when hiring me say about the way society views men and women in a work setting? Does my being a woman make me seem less capable or confined to a certain role?
Feminine and Masculine Positions
I started my first job as a lifeguard. While I worked with a majority of girls, the pool I worked at had other male lifeguards as well and there was never any separation of job duties. I took out the trash and mopped up spills just as much as everyone else did; I, more often than I would like to admit, cleaned out the pool filters that were filled with spiders, beetles, and sometimes dead animals. I never felt like any of my male employees had it better or worse than me. I did, however, sometimes feel that I excelled more than they did. Perhaps this was recognizable to my superiors because I was promoted to head guard after two summers when Peter, the previous head guard, left for college. In that position, I noticed I received some slack from other female employees and the transition to the role of their superior was not exactly a smooth one. It is possible that our similarities in ages and our friendship outside of work put a strain on our work relationship. However, my question is, have women been trained to feel more comfortable with men as their superiors? Or maybe, have women been trained to feel threatened by other women’s success?
Promotions
Female Friends
I have a friend. We’ll call her Jane. Jane and I have been good friends since we met freshman year of college. It was the immediate camaraderie and the excitement of our first year in college that formed the initial stages of our friendship. While we are still close, it is her lack of understanding, or her lack of desire to understand, the importance of feminism that makes me question the foundation of our friendship. She sides with those in our generation that are “proud to NOT be a feminist”. For me, this movement is almost laughable, but she is firm in her belief of ‘traditional families’. She’s extremely smart – she chose a difficult major here and has truly excelled in the past four years, and yet she does not consider what her beliefs say about women’s roles. She has plans to work for a few years but then quit her job and raise her children. She has been dating a decent guy for a few years, and already seems to have made her five year plan to have a baby on the way by twenty-five. I have no problem with other women who want to be mothers – truly, I think being a parent is a blessing and a truly honorable role. But I do have a problem with the way she talks about it, like she HAS to do this. Who has made her think that this is what her life should look like? Is it enough that women now have the choice to choose caregiver over a career if they still feel swayed to be just the former? What does it say about our society that there are women who think that ‘feminism’ is a dirty word? And can we get rid of this tradition bullsh*t already?
I have another friend. We will call her Candace. Candace and I have been best friends since grade school and it is through the long years of being apart and staying in touch that our friendship has grown into a relationship I know I will have for the rest of my life. Candace has had a boyfriend for over six years: he is a funny and likeable guy that would do just about anything for Candace. While they are committed to one another, I admire that they have decided to maintain separate sphere of their lives throughout college and when Candace goes off to medical school and her boyfriend (we’ll call him John) enters into his father’s business. They see each other often, but neither is in any rush to give up their own career aspirations for a while. I like that they have this balance of selfishness in the relationship: both committed to one another but also wholeheartedly to themselves. Which is why I was surprised – shocked – that she said she wasn’t a feminist. I don’t know how this idea came into women my age’s mind, but Candace seemed generally unsure why she should be a feminist. When I explained that it was really just about women achieving equality in all aspects of women’s life, she was almost ashamed for ever siding with this anti-feminist group. Candace is extremely intelligent and applies all the ideas of feminism in her life, so how did this idea that ‘feminism is dirty’ become appealing? Have the media and our history books made other women believe that this cause is a pointless one?
So, I don’t want you to think I only have friends that don’t believe in feminism and follow these traditional roles. In fact, some of them are just as angry and disappointed as I am that girls, girls that are our friends, feel this way. But there is only so much we can say to them to try to change their minds. We cross the fuzzy line of judging another woman for how she chooses to live her life and suggesting that she could be doing more with her life. Our friendships do not need to be based on our career goals, but I long to be able to talk to ANY woman in the future and know that she doesn't feel pressured by gender roles of what a woman should or shouldn't be. For now, the friends who call themselves femininsts are there for when we experience sexism in our daily lives. We support each other and help each other find ways to let the important people in our lives know that we are not okay with how things are.
Male Friends
I have another friend. We’ll call him Tom. Tom and I have been best friends since freshman year of college when we met one night at his fraternity’s party; despite the problems people associate with male-female friendships, I consider him one of my closest and most trusted friends. Tom has always been honest with me when I ask him difficult questions, and I appreciate this openness in our relationship. There are very few things the two of us cannot discuss or talk about; we share the same political views, we have similar aspirations in life, we enjoy the same spicy foods, we have a passion for travel, we love the same music, and the list goes on. We don’t, however, share a similar view on feminism. As I’ve said before, I usually have an easy time getting along in male dominated situations because after a while, I don’t see it as a girl and a few guys hanging out – I just see it as people hanging out. But Tom is always there to remind me that most guys don’t feel this way.
Question: Why won’t anyone let me play beer pong?
Answer: It’s a double edged sword. If they beat you, it’s irrelevant because why would they gloat about beating a girl. If they lose to you, it’s more shameful to lose to a girl than any guy. Girls aren't supposed to be good at beer pong.
Question: Why does everyone find that girl so attractive? She doesn’t eat, wears too much makeup, and wears little to no clothing?
Answer: Guys and girls have different opinions of what pretty is. That’s what guys think is pretty.
Tom is a smart and progressive thinker, and yet some of the things both he and his friends have said throughout the years have made me feel like I am living in a world that doesn’t believe in equality. Society portrays an outside appearance of equality, so it seems that some men see that as being enough for now. Enacting this 'theory' of equality seems to have been lost over the years. How can intelligent men in our society still find it acceptable to think and act in a sexist manner? If some women don’t consider themselves feminists, why should men?