Women and Discrimination at Work (Essay Sample)

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Women and Discrimination at Work
The number of women providing labor and services in different work settings has been increasing over the years. The ability for more women to get a better education and to change careers, and communicate with other people while looking for a job, has increased labor for women, thus, they have been able to get works that men dominated. Through competition and merit in careers, women are now able to have careers in areas that people thought only men could prosper. On the other hand, there are different debates and speculations of femininity that are associated with the services they provide. Thus, the societies where women work in view them differently. In this direction, the purpose of this work is to evaluate the opportunities and experiences of black women working in corporate America and Korean women working in Korean owned salons in New York City.
To start with, by looking at how the two sets of women (American and Korean) get to get into the careers they have and how the society perceives their attempts to be in those careers will form the backbone of this analysis. This paper explores the perception given to these women at their work place plus what the society expects of them. In addition, the paper will explain the working conditions these women face in contrast to the reasons why they decide to pursue these jobs. In doing this, the paper will do the analysis while considering the perception of femininity in these two different working places and how the women operate in these environments. The black women in corporate America and the Korean women in the salons face different challenges because of factors like their race, sexual orientation, class, and ethnicity.
The Korean women in the nail salons are usually immigrants from Korea who are looking for a way to sustain their stay in the United States. Most salons owned by Koreans employ manicurists who have legal work permits and are legal immigrants themselves or have American citizenship. When the manicurists are employed, they are promised to be helped to get legal immigrant status and to be shown how not to get into trouble with the law. The manicurists, who work in the different salons, are expected to be dependent on the class of customers they are serving and the racial ethnic background of the customers. Unlike the common perception that the salons would be operating in a uniform manner because they are serving women, there are boundaries that demarcate who gets to be served by which manicurists and for how much.
The manicurists serve as the people who help the women who work in different places and come to get salon services able to fit into the image or perception of how they are supposed to look. Kang (26) writes that the manicurists should adhere to what the client wants despite the health and safety implications that could affect them. The immigrant workers face long hours of exploitation at the hands of the employers who define the kind of interactions the manicurists are to have with the customers. Kang states that in the different classes of the salons that are in the New York area, the women have formed different perceptions according to race about how the salons are supposed to be operating. It is important to note that the general expectation is that within these salons, the women are expected to be one large community that identify with the same struggles, hopes and inspirations. However, what the study by Kang reveals is that the women are actually divided along race, immigration, and class.
Black women who work in corporate America get entry into the corporate world after having successfully graduated from the top universities in the country and in the world. They are perceived as being able to bring something different to the table with their various perspectives on things like business and governance (Harris-Perry 69). Despite the fact that most of the black women in corporate America attained the merit thresholds needed for them to be employed in the different positions they hold, the common perception is that there is some form of favoritism that was involved in how they have to get their jobs in the very competitive corporate world. Majority of the black women in corporate America work as managers, executives, vice presidents, presidents, personal assistants, secretaries, financial officers and even founders of corporations that have an influential role in the United States of America.
While at work, they face stiff competition from not only their male counterparts who see them as being inferior to them but also people from other races, ethnicities and classes. The fact that they are black women itself subjects them to different forms of discrimination first as women, and secondly, as people who are seen as coming from a race that is less deserving of opportunities in the corporate world. The services they provide are most of the time managerial, secretarial, financial and analytical duties that do not include much manual work. However, their schedules can at times be very hectic to the extent of them being very fatigued at the end of the day. At the work place, these women are expected to perform their duties but to be submissive to their male counter parts and Caucasian people. They are most of the time discriminated against in ways that target their race, class and sexual orientation. Within the corporate world, the higher a black woman goes up the ladder, the more she manages to insulate herself from the discriminations that those black women in lower positions face. It is surprising that in some cases, even the black women at the top do not sometimes want to identify with the challenges that the black women at the bottom of the ladder in the corporate world face. In some cases, though working conditions in the corporate world are generally good, black women at lower levels in the corporate world will face challenges such as lack of access to some important resources that they need to carry out their duties effectively.
In the manicurists’ role, the main purpose of their occupation is to beautify the clients who come to their salons. According to Kang (89), the manicurists work to pamper the white middle class women and at the same time they help the working class African American women to achieve some sense of personal artistic expression through the image they create of themselves. The manicurists are expected to work to their best levels so that they retain the customers as a way of making sure that the business always has a steady flow of customers at all times. The black women who work in corporate America on the other hand take on duties that require them to enable the organization to be able to meet its goals. They do this through performing duties that are either complementary to senior positions like the presidents or chairpersons of leading businesses or through being in the leading positions themselves. In both of these two scenarios, there is a significant amount of discrimination that they are faced with as they try to carry out their duties.
The Korean women who work as manicurists in the salons in New York do not enjoy any benefits that come with them being employed in the salons. They instead work in poor conditions as a way of sustaining themselves in the United States. Kang (96) states that despite the fact these women had some jobs in their country that are considered to be good, they, however, come to the United States to work as manicurists simply because it pays better than the job they had back home in Korea. The manicurists are in a job that does not offer enough mobility and they are simple held hostage by their occupations because they do not have any other options as far supporting themselves and their families is concerned. They work between 10 and 12 hours a day, are underpaid and are extremely exploited. There are approximately 30,000 registered immigrants working as registered manicurists in New York. The number of the undocumented manicurists is approximately 10,000. In this industry, there is a caste system that puts the Korean immigrants above other manicurists who are also immigrants. The immigrants undergo training after paying between $100 and $200 to the owners of the salons. The manicurists are paid $2 an hour.
In corporate America, the black women enjoy the same benefits as the other professionals from other races and ethnicities. Employment in corporate America comes with a lot of benefits like access to loans and mortgages. The average income in American corporate is $100,000 per annum for those in lower positions and an average of $1,000,000 per annum for those in senior positions. The mobility opportunities in corporate America for black women are many though they face a lot of discrimination as they attempt to do this. It is said that there women of color take up just 11.9% of all the corporate jobs in America. Out this percentage, 5.3% are black women (Covert 1). The findings proves that this is clearly not a female oriented occupation because of the very unequal ratio of men to women in the numbers of those employed in the corporate world. However, the manicure business in New York is a female dominated business (Harris-Perry 53).
The structuring of the occupation of the manicurists makes them come to direct and indirect impact with discrimination along lines of class, race and ethnicity. It is not biased to believe that this is the same for the black women who work in corporate America. The socialization of people in these two occupations places women at receiving end of ridicule and discrimination based on the historical and political backgrounds of these two societies. The key features of the social relations at work for the manicurists is to please the clients by doing exactly what they want without asking questions about the safety and health implications. In...