Women in Power

 Something we have talked about so much in class is that action needs to be taken somewhere at some point for anything to happen. For woman suffrage to be legal, women had to stand up and fight for it. We all see that this is something that needs to happen in the business sector as well, esp thanks to the recent 2012 Equal Pay Day posters. Many of the people running businesses and corporations are white privileged males and unfortunately employ other white privileged males for other higher up positions. Its that constant cycle of oppression we often talk about. My partner is the General Manager of two successful stores and the owner is of course, one of these white privileged men. Luckily she is extrememly good at her job and was able to work up the chain of command that way. However, now that she is here she finds it very hard to fight for women in the company, for wages in particular. What is even more upsetting to her is that the men who are being paid more, are doing even less.
When I started learning more and more about women oppression in business, I started reading some of the facts and data to her. One night we got into a conversation and I mentioned, I understand these facts upset you but you have the ability to do something about it. You are in the position to promote and give people raises, you need to act on what level you can for any change in these statistics to occur. She of course had already realized this and fought where she could, but I don't think she fully realized that she has the power to talk directly and matter to one of these white privileged males and hopefully make a difference. She thought about it and did say she would try to fight harder for women's wages and to bring up to the owner why its not okay for them to be getting paid less.
This makes me think of what Enei mentioned about one of the topics at her conference, that we need to help and teach the men. There is constant cycle of oppression that society is used to, where we have the power, we need to take action. The cycle cannot be broken unless we step up, inform, and act.