Blog 1: Interview with a woman of a different generation- My Mother

For this interview project I have chosen to interview my mother for a woman of a different generation. My mother worked in the business world my whole childhood and has recently retired from a large corporation. I wanted to focus mainly on how she was treated in the business world by men for being a woman, what her experiences have been with feminism and limitations related to her gender. My mother was employed at a company that she would like to keep anonymous for certain reasons that had locations all over the world that she had to travel to. This gave her the opportunity to take in different cultures but she also got to learn how women are treated in different countries by men. She was a Business Process Specialist in the Business Process and Information Technology department in a major chemical company.

To summarize what the interview consisted of I asked her how she was treated by her fellow coworkers as a woman in the business world. She stated that she was mainly treated fairly by her coworkers and peers but there were two men that loved to try to intimidate women and were unfortunately allowed to get away with it. She was not affected by these men because she had been employed there for so long and worked alongside these men that she could hold her own but she did watch these men intimidate other fellow female employees.

The second to last boss my mother had was a man from India. She was on a team with all men at one point and there was an apparent unfair difference in how he treated women over men. The men on the team were given cash rewards every year and were given more opportunities to work on projects that would help them develop their roles. He eventually was no longer her manager but the company started to go through huge organizational changes and 99% of the business process managers that were males were being replaced by women. You did not see this very much because most of the higher manager roles were male roles but you could see that the company was trying to change things around to be more fair. Through a lot of our readings so far in this class there have been a bunch of instances where you learn about the way women were treated years ago and how those ways are slowly changing. The business world has been a majority male atmosphere for years and now women are starting to take over and have the same responsibilities that men have.

Another interview question was if she was ever treated differently for being a woman. Her response was that in the early 90’s women in her department went to HR and had complained that a man who had been working there for a shorter period of time was making more money than the. Human Resources did an investigation and it came to their attention that this had been going on for a long period of time. They actually gave every woman that was hired prior to 1993 a certain % increase to balance the pay that was unequal. The things that my mother went through and saw amazed me. I have never really thought of how men are treated totally differently than women until taking this course.

One thing that stood out to me that my mother had to deal with was when she and another male coworker went to Japan for business and they had just gotten off the airplane and her. There was one American man who she had traveled with to visit a customer and this man had lived and worked in Japan for a few years and married a woman from there.  She found it interesting that when they were walking through the airport, he always rushed to walk a few feet in front of her.  She had understood that this was the culture in Japan so thought he must have been doing it because he had lived there.  She would rush to catch up with him and next thing she knew, he was doing everything he could to get a few steps in front of her again.  My mother was offended and disgusted with him and eventually just dropped way back and went at her leisure. This is a huge thing in the business world, different cultures treat women differently and even though women have more rights now-a-days in the United States it is far different for women in foreign countries and this is very sad but it is reality.

            A lot of the information that I have gotten from this interview with my mother has made me think about Judith Lorber's piece "The Social Construction of Gender". In this piece she talks about the Gender as a process, stratification and structure. What my mother had to deal with in the business world would have been considered a stratification system where gender ranks men above women of the same race and class. In a gender-stratified society, what men do is usually valued more highly than what women do because men do it, even when these activities are very similar or the same. In this profession that my mother had, she had been working along side men with the same educational experience with the same job and responsibilities but she was still treated differently because of her gender.

My mother made this comment that made me feel like we were raised the same way. She stated at the end of the interview that she her mother raised her to be independent and be able to stand on her own two feet and take care of herself and not depend on a man to take care of her in the case that she may never marry or lose a spouse. This was how my sister and I were brought up in life and I feel that every girl should be raised this way. To strive to gain what she deserves in this world, to be equal to a man in every way and to be treated the same way. We need the help of the opposite sex if this is to happen, men need to start to treat women as if they are equal and I feel that this is starting to happen in the world it just will take more time for things to change fully. This interview made me realize a lot about how women are treated differently than men, more than I have learned from the articles because I got to see firsthand the things that my mother went through.