Time Magazine’s cover because of its February 8th issue is a single, 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 need to wear a pink hat (and take a stand against gender and race discrimination in different ways).
1. So much has changed and yet so much remains stuck in 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 aren’t fervently believed in by everyone in the culture.
3. We’re in new historical territory… Many millions of horrified Americans have started to grasp that we can’t politely stand by watching families, lands and liberties become slashed beyond repair… politeness is no substitute for morality, and will not save us in the end. We only get to choose who we are. As a writer and a person my bedrock is continuing 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 deep democracy that says we won’t be quiet, we will not be controlled, we’ll work for a world in which all nations are connected. God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections. We are at one with each other. We’re looking at each other, not up. No longer asking daddy. (Gloria Steinem in the Women’s March in Washington)
5. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) says that based on the small incremental changes Canada has made in gender equality in the senior management level during the last 20 years, it will require 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 (in addition to other facets ) in 118 different companies. Black, Hispanic, and Asian women are 43 percent more interested in becoming a top executive than white girls and 16 percent more interested than white guys, but in a 2016″Women in the Workplace” study, researchers found that only 3% of those occupying the C-Suite are women of colour.
7. Women face sexual harassment at work and they encounter problems when they come forward. For every woman who complains, there are still many more women who have left jobs, been demoted, or continue to be abused or harassed in the work area. (Sasha Patterson, author of Chasing Justice, Challenging Power: Legal Consciousness and the Mobilization of Sexual Harassment Law)
After working in education for 28 years, I’ve concluded that there is no such thing as a meritocracy, there is no level playing field for girls when it comes to getting promoted to senior leadership positions, and the glass ceiling is alive and well in North America and in other areas of the world. Gender equality hasn’t been completely achieved and women’s rights initiatives and quotas are entirely relevant and even necessary in today’s world.
Studies have identified that common barriers to girls who try to attain senior leadership positions are traditional, patriarchal cultures, and perceived male dominance of direction, but no uniform”glass” or”concrete” ceilings emerge because they aren’t consistent across cultures or societies, nor are they homogenous within each society or civilization.
The barriers experienced by women are determined by religious and cultural beliefs and values, psychological dimensions, socio-economic and political elements. Not with Squirrel Poop.