The Glass Ceiling

May 22, 2013 Topic of the Day:

Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel.

                 

Ok ladies, today I’m going to talk about something that probably impacts all of us: the glass ceiling. If you don’t know what that means, it is defined as “the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.” {source} Now, I’m a young little white girl from Northern California. I’m not going to pretend for a second that I know what it is like to be considered a minority. However, I do know what it is like to be a working woman.

I was catching up with an old friend at dinner the other night and we were having a discussion about how hard it is to be an educated, successful woman in the workplace. Not only does it affect us daily, but we shared stories about many of our girlfriends who experience the same thing. We came to the conclusion that we can’t wait for our generation to be in charge so that things will someday change.

Whether you get paid the same as your male co-workers or not {usually not}, there still is a level of respect that women need to earn in order to be accepted into this male-driven corporate world we live in. We shared stories of a man and woman doing the exact same job, but the man getting more compensation, credit and recognition, a woman having to prove herself for years through experience and further education just to have a less experienced and less educated man walk into the same position for higher pay. Or the girl who deals with rude comments from her male co-workers, but can’t say anything about sexual harassment to management because that will cause her to get in trouble.

THIS IS REAL LIFE.

All of the women in my examples are highly educated with bachelor’s degrees or higher from 4-year universities.  They don’t teach us this in school. They don’t warn you that there will be nights you go home crying because you feel like it isn’t worth it anymore. That there isn’t enough money in the world to keep you at a job where you are constantly feeling like you will never be good enough. Where you wish you were born a man or wish you could age yourself about 20 years so that people will take you seriously and come to terms with the fact that you are good, if not better, at your job then your male counterparts.

They don’t teach you any of this.

If you are in the same boat that most of us working women are in, then I don’t really have a solution for you. All I can tell you is to be the best you can be and do not let them beat you. Keep inspirational quotes at your desk to remind yourself that you are great. My favorite: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” And just know that you aren’t alone. Slowly but surely, our society is moving forward.

 It can't won’t be this way forever.