Trickle Down Feminism

Sarah Jaffe writes a very strong article on the issue of women in the workplace.  She describes that most feminists focus on the well recognized jobs that women hold, such a being the CEO of Facebook, or Yahoo’s CEO not calling herself a feminist.  Jaffe argues that the real issues women face in the workplace are overrepresentation in “minimum wage” fields.  60 percent of this workforce is represented by females. 73 percent of “tipped work” is made up of females as well.  I agree with Jaffe in the sense that feminists should focus  their time on the “little guys” and work toward equality in the sense that women in retail should get paid equal as men, and not 83 cents to their dollar.  As feminists, our ideal should be to create a playing field where both a male and a female can walk into a job interview, for any job, and gender not be a pro/con slot on their resume.   A major point that she brings up is the struggle women deal with, regarding the Great Recession that occurred in 2008.  I relate personally to this, because my dad lost his job during this time.  I watched how difficult it was for him, a college educated white male, to find a new job.  After reading this article, I can’t even imagine the struggle that women who lost their job felt, and still do.  Around 60 percent of jobs held were held by females, and only 12 percent have been regained since 2008.  On the other hand, men have taken back 63 percent of the jobs that were lost.  Not only is this an issue because its harder for women to obtain jobs in general, but Jaffe states that men are pushing women out of professions, which is a whole different story. An opposing view might state that of finding a job has nothing to do with gender, but is the harsh reality of the 2008 recession.  People might think this because of the difficulty men faced during this time as well.  However, Jaffe isn’t stating that only females had trouble during the recession, but that they had an even intensified adversity to find a career. The reality is that numbers show the truth, 39 percent of women gained their jobs back, compared to 45 percent of men.  6 percent is a lot when its related to livelihood. She writes that this is a major reason for the overrepresentation we see in domestic, tipped, and minimum wage style jobs.  The places where women are over represented, pay wages where the only option is living at the poverty level.  Its quite understandable that not every person can be a doctor, CEO, lawyer, etc.  What is not understandable is that a female cashier does not get the same wage as a male cashier, and that a female and male who both lost their jobs as an accountant, can’t both obtain the same job back.