#feministfriday

Fridays are great for a lot of reasons: the end of classes, a relaxing weekend, the chance to step away from academia with a good bottle of your choice of poison and let loose with your friends. 

But I'm going to take a moment to promote something here at SRU that Fridays are all about: feminism. 

The #feministfriday pins worn weekly by FMLA

This semester, the Slippery Rock chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance celebrates feminism by tweeting out reasons why they celebrate womanhood and equality with the hashtag #feministfriday. Members of the organization also wear pins (like the one pictured here) around campus on Fridays to spread the word and get people talking about gender equality. 

The discussion is a simple one, and a hashtag isn't going to fix the gender disparity in this country, but it's a good place for a group of undergraduate activists to start.

By making a solid effort to take part in #feministfriday, FMLA and SRU take part in a national conversation about feminism and gender equality; on October 30, several feminist organizations took to Twitter using the hashtag to discuss women's healthcare, women's roles in the workforce, and women's safety concerns. 

The goal is to talk about women's issues until they become everyone's issues and must necessarily be addressed.

Take a moment on this rainy Friday to consider what equality means to you, and to celebrate the women in your life.

And happy #feministfriday, y'all!

This photo (taken from the SRU FMLA twitter) is why #feministfriday is important

I'm too tired to fight the workforce

Last week, a friend of mine got the internship of her dreams. Naturally, I was ecstatic for 
her . . . until she came home on her first day looking severely discomforted. When I asked her what was wrong, she said that nothing had happened, that the day went fairly well -- except her new boss had asked that she not wear heels again.

The shoes with the power to eliminate my friend's credentials 

Why?

"Because the heels made her taller than the men in the office, and really, how can you expect the men to respect you professionally when you're taller than they are? It's just  not right."

That's right: my friend, an accounting student who had beat out fifty other applicants to get this position, was told that she would not be treated fairly, or judged on the merits of her work, if she was taller than the men in her office.

Hopefully this sounds as absurd and offensive to you as it did to me. I had hoped this was an isolated incident, but I wasn't surprised that it's not.

Women already have a more difficult time in the work force when it comes to wage disparity and expectations from employers to lean in (a concept introduced by Sheryl Sandberg), but apparently, in some workplaces, this is not enough: women must also take care of their coworkers egos.

Graphic courtesy of  Brandon Gaille

This isn't uncommon: one-third of all women report feeling some sort of bias or discrimination at work. What's disappointing is that it isn't uncommon.

I don't have a solution for this, or frankly, much energy to fight it. The sad fact is that we live in a world that necessitates articles that teach women how to get respect in the workplace, but coddles men who feel threatened by female colleagues, or even fight back against female bosses for the sake of their fragile masculinity.

Tomorrow, my friend will return to her internship, hoping to advance in the company but perhaps to join the ranks of the one-in-three women who are sexually harassed at work. 

Regardless, she'll do it in flats.