Women on Top

Why aren't more women on top?

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3419916748001/why-arent-there-more-women-at-the-top-/#sp=show-clips

-Fox News Report from April 1, 2014

I found that this news report that aired on April 1, 2014 by Fox News correlated with our readings from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel, Herland. What I found particularly interesting was Susanne Venker's view of total equality between men and women. 

"White washing gender. Making us all the same. All doing the same things"

The women of Herland, although just being exposed to males for the first time, had the assumption that in their guests society that men and women were considered equals and were shocked to find that women were subordinate to men. 

"We do not allow our women to work. Women are loved-idolized-honored-kept in the home to care for the children." (Gilman 87)

"Tell me first, do no women work, really? (Gilman 87)

In their society, it was the expectation that everyone would contribute to society and no one job was seen as more important than another. Each person and their respective task was important to the functioning of their society and therefore each was cherished and valued equally. Together, the women worked for the good of society rather than for personal gain. 

Today, there is a major issue in the under representation of women in the work force, particularly the more knowledge based jobs. Women have made substantial gains in the past decades, but many large companies continue to be dominated by a majority of males. Susanne Venker believes that one of the main reason's for this issue is time. Not the lack of time, but the unequal division of time and how men are expected to work and women are expected to spend a majority of their time at home caring for the children.

"There's just so much time in the day and we have to work together to get it all done, and to respect each others roles and not try to one up each other" -Susanna Venker

The women of Herland valued their place in society and rejected the notion that childrearing was all that they were capable of. When the men told them of how the women are socially responsible for having and raising their own children, they were appalled. 

The important connection between this news report and Herland is the role of women in the labor force. The ideals of the women who make up Herland parallel those of the feminist today who aim for equality between men and women in the work force where the distribution is equal to 50/50. They aim to have not only equality in the work force, but also in the home where childrearing and raising is a more equal process.