“I Bleed Too”
Susan Sarandon in 2016 shared her disappointment with her pay, and many of us probably thought we wanted her pay, as it was better than ours. Well, she was complaining because her pay was not comparable to her male counterparts.
In 2012, there was a study that really showed how the female genius was sidelined in scientific positions. The results of the study show that women were viewed as just less of everything, and that included senior positions. The discrimination was and is horrendous, and expanded to race as well. The study was done by a female, and her test is said to assess the subconscious biases. And whether or not we want to be, even scientists can be lopsided in their judgment, especially towards race and sex.
There are many great women in the U.S., such as Ellen Swallow Richards, first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the first woman to be accepted into a science and technology school. We also have the first female self-made millionaire Sara Breedlove, an orphan of freed slaves, and the list goes on and on. Ladies such as Madame C.J. Walker of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company; Lettie Pate Whitehead was appointed to the board of The Coca-Cola Company in 1934; Katharine Graham president of The Washington Post; Muriel Siebert the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange; female billionaire in Africa, Folorunsho Alakija; and, Aretha Franklin is first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
There are many other educated women of varying races and ages that are in a position of influence, and one can write at length about this.
Google recently lost two female employees over racial discrimination. Qichen Zhang was not laughing when her colleague made a joke about her being hired because she was Asian and was good at math. Feeling isolated and stagnant, she quit. However, she was not alone. The executive wing, according to Zhang, is lonely when it comes to female workers, and those of other colors. Google also had a former employee, who said that she was the only black woman on her team always having to show her ID on campus, while non-blacks did not.
Google’s Yolanda Mangolini is their director of global diversity and inclusion, and is stating that change takes time. Another way to think about this though is that change is influenced, and its speed is controlled.
These instances show that racism and sexism are alive and well, and they are not exempt from the troubles of this world that we created for ourselves.
We are human as well, and being marginalized by men and fellow women because of our gender, race or economic bracket has to cease. We all need to live in the same world in comfort and peace.
