For International Women’s Day (IWD), we thought it’d be great to hear from women in the workplace. We spoke about the struggles they face and their perspective on such issues. We chatted with several women, and here’s a story:

I once worked at this company where, on a general level, I feel that women were favored and treated better than men. Historically, they had a reputation of men hitting on women; in fact, people had warned me before I joined the company. I don’t think that was the case, but it’s possible that no one did because I was a manager. So, there was a certain level of respect.

Generally, for many roles within the company, you had to travel a lot because we had different distributors and sites across the country. We had different places where we had to attend events or activations.

The Incidents

Some of the events happened at night. The men were never expected to give any excuses. They were more considerate of women than they were of men. It is not that you were excused from doing your work, but I know that they’ll call the man if push comes to shove.

I know that some of my male colleagues had to do some things that they would never have asked me to do. There were some places that they’d ask the guys to travel to that they wouldn’t have sent a lady to.

A lot of times, my boss would be like, “it’s getting late; you should go home.” We were supposed to do an important presentation, and I had to stay at the office the day before to make preparations. My boss waited till I left the office. He said that he wasn’t going to leave as long as I was there. He asked me to share my Uber trip with him and ensured I got home safely.

By the time I was leaving the company, there was a lot of reshuffling. Most of the senior managers in my department that were fired were men, not women. In fact, when they were re-hiring, they recruited more women.

By the time I came in, there was a conversation about them trying to do equality. So I say we have to be careful about this equality thing. We have to make sure that we’re hiring the best people for the job and not to fill a quota. A lot of times, we can get into that because we want to be politically correct.

#ChooseToChallenge

IWD aims to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness against bias, and take action for equality. Our goal is to be part of this much-needed conversation by highlighting and addressing gender-specific issues women face in the workplace. We hope that the stories we have gathered provoke thought and positive action towards making the workplace a conducive environment for everybody.

Also, for IWD, read, I'm just a girl who wants to sail the ocean, is that too much to ask?

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