Time Magazine’s cover for its February 8th issue is just one, pink, knitted hat with the words”The Resistance Rises” written above it. An estimated 500,000 women wore pink hats at the Women’s March in Washington on January 21, 2017. Listed below are eight strong reasons why you should wear a pink hat (and have a stand against sex and race discrimination in different ways).
1. So much has changed and yet so much remains stuck at the nostalgia of some other era. (Brigid Schulte, writer of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time)
2. The hard-won rights for women and girls that many of us now take for granted could be snatched away. Culturally, those rights are very shallowly embedded. They haven’t been around that long, historically, and they are not fervently believed in by everyone in the culture.
3. We are in new historic territory… Many countless horrified Americans are starting to grasp that we can not politely stand by watching families, lands and liberties get slashed beyond repair… politeness isn’t a substitute for morality, and will not save us at the end. We only get to choose who we are. As a writer and a person my bedrock is perennial hope for a better world than this one… (Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist, and poet, in an op-ed piece published in The Guardian)
4. We’re here and around the world for a profound democracy that says we will not be quiet, we will not be controlled, we’ll work for a world where all countries are connected. God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections. We’re at one with each other. We are looking at each other, not up. No more asking daddy. (Gloria Steinem in the Women’s March in Washington)
5. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) states that based on the small incremental changes Canada has made in gender equality at the senior management level over the last 20 years, it is going to take 228 years to close the gender gap in Canada. (I don’t know what the information is from the U.S. but it’s likely similar.)
6. A 2015 study from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company looked at data on promotion and attrition rates (as well as other aspects) in 118 different companies. Black, Hispanic, and Asian women are 43% more interested in becoming a top executive compared to white girls and 16% more interested than white men, but at a 2016″Women in the Workplace” study, researchers found that only 3% of those inhabiting the C-Suite are women of colour.
7. Women face sexual harassment in the workplace and they experience difficulties when they come forward. For each woman who complains, there are still many more girls who have left jobs, been demoted, or continue to be abused or harassed in the work place.
After working in education for 28 years, I’ve concluded that there is no such thing as a meritocracy, there’s absolutely no level playing field for women in regards to getting promoted to senior leadership positions, and the glass ceiling is alive and well in North America and in other parts of the world. Gender equality has not been completely achieved and women’s rights initiatives and quotas are totally relevant and even essential in today’s world.
Studies have identified that common barriers to girls who try to achieve senior leadership positions are traditional, patriarchal cultures, and perceived male dominance of management, but no uniform”glass” or”concrete” ceilings emerge because they are not consistent across cultures or societies, nor are they homogenous within each society or civilization.
The barriers experienced by women depend on religious and cultural beliefs and values, psychological dimensions, socio-economic and political factors. Not at all Squirrel Poop.