Working Women Still Have a Long Way to Go

Making money is a universal goal. Some people want to sit home and make money while others want to go out into the world and earn it. Whatever your hustle is, the goal is that green paper and everyone should be afforded the opportunity to earn it. Women’s journey in the labor world has been a challenging one and in 2021 the challenges have been modernized. But at least we have the opportunity…right?

Brief History

Before the 1920s, married women were not allowed to work while any single woman was allowed to. Were those working women treated fairly? 1920 legislation passed that allowed all women to enter the labor force and it wasn’t until 1963 that President John F. Kennedy passed the Equal Pay Act. An act that was supposed to close the wage gap between men and women performing the same job at the same place of employment, but of course employers found loopholes to wiggle around that.

2021

I love working knowing that I am helping people and genuinely making small impressions as I go. I enjoy it even more knowing that I am getting paid for what I do. We all love to get paid and I don’t know about you, but I love to be respected more. I have resigned positions, transferred departments, and sent VP complaints due to mistreatment and blatant disrespect.

Being a 35 year old working woman who looks 18 creates some extra hardships in the labor world as well. It’s hard for people to respect a boss if they think they are younger than them no matter the qualifications. In fact, qualifications are often dismissed when age comes to play. Women fought so hard to be able to work and yet our presence is not respected or it’s downplayed.

Women in scrubs are assumed to be nurses and not the doctor. Women in business suits at a law firm are assumed to be paralegals and not the lawyer. Women in healthcare administration are assumed to be assistants and not the Director. I have been in “management” roles while still handling secretarial duties and having a male supervisor who performed the duties in my job description. Someone always needs help when your understaffed.

Women get paid less, are respected less, and are given promotions less, but the workload continues to pile up. Our multitasking abilities are severely taken advantage of. Working women roles are expected to be entry level, secretaries, and assistants who file paperwork, but handle everything with a smile and coffee cup. I have heard the remarks countless times in my almost 20 years employment history. I have also heard from male colleagues, “Well you’re not a man and I can intimidate him[our boss] in a way you can’t.”

Woah.

He’s right though. I am barely 5’3”, 120lbs after I eat, and look like I am 16 when wearing sweats and sneakers. My petiteness is cute, not respected. I have had most men talk to me like a child or a potential date during interviews, performance reviews, and/or promotion considerations. The best is the smile with the slight tilt of the head that comes with it all — the pats on the shoulders, back, and head as if you’re letting a child down easy.

The icing on the cake? The gaslighting at being told how much this issue doesn’t exist or we are exaggerating and misunderstanding. At this point, I should have 3rd degree burns at how much I have experienced it. I have had discussions with male colleagues about salary, PTO, and raises and majority of the time there was some difference with the scale tipping to the advantage of my male colleague.

One instance, I confronted a boss with information I had discovered about a raise difference between a male colleague and I (same position). Instead of negotiating with me, he reprimanded my male colleague and moved him to another department, citing the difference due to an upcoming transfer. That felt like a Twilight Zone moment so I looked for open positions within another department and requested a transfer myself. I could not work with such an Administrator. We had a bad falling out, but it was for the best.

Testimony

I worked for a surgical center that was starting up and still working on the accreditations while attending to patients. I created policy binders and ensured the front desk staff and books were up to par while functioning at full optimization. I trained new staff, I held meetings, and participated in fire trainings, emergency preparedness trainings, and management trainings. I was also the lead surgical scheduler, assisted with patient registration, and medical billing. I was paid $55,000 annually upon hire.

My position became Assistant Business Office Manager and that was created after my employment start date as everything was still being built from scratch. The Business Office Manager(BOM @ $80,000 annually) was a woman and the Director of Administration position was open. We had suggested to our VPs that our current BOM get the Director position and I would get the BOM position and we would only need to fill the Assistant BOM position, if they wanted to keep it. This seemed like a really great way to save them time and money. We both fulfilled the qualifications for each new role.

They decided to hire a male Director with a salary of $125,000 who had absolutely no relevant experience that contributed to the center. He sat in his office with his door closed, while the BOM and I still handled everything. They were paying this man for us to write his reports, but have him present them at meetings. They could have distributed that salary between our promotions and saved them money in the process.

His presence became so tumultuous and we had insurmountable evidence that he was not fit for the position, they let him go. When presented with our promotion idea for a second time, we received a second denial. I then proceeded with Plan B and asked for a raise since I was doing double duties and it was year since my hire and I was still at the same pay rate. I was also denied that request so next was Plan C — a resignation letter.

Months after I left, I found out they scratched my position and the BOM position while the Director position was waiting to be filled…again.

Insights

Why do employers make budget cuts with payroll especially towards women and technology maintenance? I don’t know what statistics CEOs are following, but me being a statistic, I can confidently say that payroll and technology are two very important priorities that should be at the top of the budget list. Maintaining these two at full optimization would eliminate half of their problems. Test it out, I dare you. You could significantly increase work quality and decrease IT problems, if you invested in high quality equipment such as Apple computers.

It’s not that working women do not want to work, we WANT to work, we enjoy working, but we want to be treated with respect and we want that reflected in our paychecks. We know we can get paid higher because we witness first hand how misdirected and misused the budget is. Some of us work the budget books and have ideas on how to allocate it differently to maximize profit and increase wages. You have to trust the workers you hired, they do work for you.

I also know that more working women in boss positions would help eradicate this problem as well. There’s challenges in that area too, but ask yourself this: why are we not going to the root of the problem for the solution? Why attempt to take advantage of a group of people who are willing and able to work and create avoidable turmoil? Is it really worth it?

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