Ladies Can be Bosses Too

I remember when I was a senior in high-school, my mom picked me up from school and we were talking as usual. This conversation however, I will never forget. We got to talking about the future and I remember saying to her how limited I felt as a black female. I looked at her and I said "I am black and I'm a female! Boy am I going to have to work hard." I find it crazy that at that age, I had already began to place limitations on myself. Subconsciously, I had acquired the societies limitations on women and made them my reality.We have lived, for so many years in a patriarchal society where men are typically the breadwinners and women the caregivers. To some extent, we haven't yet completely transitioned from that and quite frankly we may not ever completely steer away from it simply because of our human nature.

Although women will always have that nurturing nature, it is now more so than ever transitioned outside of the home and into the workplace. Nurturing has taken on a whole new meaning where women in some cases are the breadwinner in the household. Despite, being the source of income in some families, the fact still remains that women face inequality in the workplace from the positions that they hold as well as their salaries compared to their male counterparts. According to a recent Wall Street Journal Article, we are not any closer to gender equality in the workplace than we were 100 years ago. Women are still underrepresented at every corporate level and hold less than 30% of roles in senior management. These challenges are even more pronounced for women of color.

The problems faced by women in the workplace stem from the stereotypes built around the woman and the expectations that she is held up against. Women are typically expected to be collaborative and not supposed to negotiate. She is also expected to be nurturing rather than assertive. When a woman goes against this, men who hold the higher positions view them as bossy which according to their norms is not acceptable.

Now that we know the problem, how do we change it? It is neither a woman's issue nor a man's issue. Rather it is a societal issue. Our job as a society is to become educated about the reality that we live in and empower one another.