Triple 'W' | Working World of Women

Hello, World.

       An important part of feminism, and the equality they fight for, is the right to not only be able to work, which was hardly prominent before the Industrial Revolution, but to be able to be comfortable in a work environment and given the same professional experience as men.
       Often, women are challenged with not being viewed as capable beings of professional work and are often treated this way; this sometimes results in harassment, mistreatment, and lower payment. In Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she discusses this professional capability of women: "A fine woman, who inspires more usblime emotions by displaying intellectual beauty, may be overlooked or observed with indifference"(50). She says that not only is a woman's beauty more important than her intellectual curiosity and capability, women are usually overlooked, even if their "intellectual beauty" is valid and/or greater than a correspondent male's. This also reminds me of Hannah Rosin's article The End of Men, where she says despite the inequality that women face in the working world, they usually preform a better job then men do.
       In addition, jobs which are reserved solely for women still remain extremely critical and usually only hire women for a period of a few years. In The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf, Wolf gives us an example of a "waitress, fired because she had lost her Bunny Image" (32). The waitress, in normal english, was fired because she wasn't beautiful enough anymore. Wolf later tells us on what characteristics the waitresses are judge on: "A flawless beauty", "An exceptional beautiful girl", "Marginal [...] aging", and "Has lost Bunny Image [...] aging or an uncorrectable appearance problem" (32). I understand that being a Playboy waitress involves a certain degree of beauty, but am I the only who thinks that being sent to the street because of your appearance, especially once you've (usually) given up talent to become a type of model, is completely ludicrous? The pressure put on women in the working world is astonishing.
       Finally, women are often subject to discrimination and victims of harassment in the work environment. Wolf talks about the pressure women undergo even just choosing a suitable outfit for work, where formality becomes a catwalk (42-44). However, something extremely surprising and interesting is the fact that victims of harassment, I would expect, should be strong about defending their dignity and fighting for their betrayed position. Instead, women, who usually have already admitted to themselves that working men are 'greater' than they are, respond in court trials (not just to their friends), but legal court trials, that they may have "possibly provoked the comments by dressing inappropriately" (43). The men's lawyers also often convince the women to feel this way and in the end, the court that is meant to bring 'justice', enforces inequality and corruption.
       In all, the working world for women is yet another example of the inequality that women face in daily life. They fight so hard to even earn the right to work, and their reward for this tremendous effort is discrimination and harassment. Of course, not every working women undergoes mistreatment, yet professional jobs, to say the least, have  room for improvement.

Goodbye, World.