I am an engineer because of feminism. I remember being told by a professor that I was a waste of a seat that could be filled by a male. (Yes – I reported him to the dean and he was forced to apologize to me and the other 2 women in the class.) I was told by a manager at an internship that he felt the internship should have been offered to a male student – he assumed I was like his daughter, at college to get the “MRS” degree. He also “encouraged” me to wear skirts to work, despite the fact that the job required climbing poles on top of buildings to retrieve the weather instrumentation for calibration. Feminism made these guys obsolete. I am proud to have the label “feminist” assigned to me because it suggests that I believe that women AND men should have all choices available – and should be compensated equivalently.
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Wanted to add that I also have my own discrimination story. Back when I worked in the corporate world (a group of related companies, mostly tech-related), I had worked my way up to management after a number of years. At the time, I had the highest level of education of the managers at my level, and had the longest time on the job with this group of companies. I was the only one to have worked for four of the companies, as they moved me from one company to another, and one department to another in order to troubleshoot inefficiencies and investigate a number of problems (I was able to improve efficiency and accuracy in every department, as well as make a number of other improvements); I was the only employee in any of the companies to ever be used in this way. And there were a series of events that proved my level of honesty and integrity, which they highly valued. I had experience in domestic and international sales, import/export, accounting, and operations. I was also involved in designing our business software because I knew how all of the different operations related to one another — the software company tried to hire me away from them. And when we had any kind of audit, I was either put in charge, or heavily involved, even when it was totally unrelated to my job/position — I was usually covering the work that should have been done my these other managers, but even they admitted that I was better at getting these things done right, and I was usually there at their request. I could go on, but there was no question that I was the most highly valued of the managers at my level. None of the other managers came close.
I was the only female at my level, out of ~5 managers. After awhile, I found out that all of the other managers were making more than I was. When I asked about the reason, my boss said, “because they’re men and they have families to provide for.” They offered me more after that, but I realized the deck was stacked against me. I quit about a year after that and went into teaching (and took a huge cut in pay) where everyone is paid equally, based on the same requirements, and everything is fully transparent…though that’s not the only reason I changed careers.
Oh, and I also have the job application that my mom filled out to work for IBM back in the late 50s/early 60s. They asked about the woman’s age, height, weight, marital/family status, etc. Yeah, we’ve come a long way, but we shouldn’t overshoot, and we should NEVER disparage those who make traditional choices. There is nothing wrong with being a woman, and unpaid “women’s work” is not inferior to wage earning.
So, I totally get the desire to have equal pay for equal work, and there is no question in my mind that women should have equal opportunities and access to positions of power, both in the corporate and in the political world (and men should have the right to care for their families, as well). But that’s not the issue here.
