Friday, April 07, 2006

I like the way you talk.

After I graduated from college, I promised myself I would never apply for jobs that men wouldn't take, like receptionist, secretary or assistant. It was the only way I could think to start myself out of the gate at least equal to men in the work world. But before I could move from NYC to San Francisco, I had to make some quick cash, temping. That's where I got a crash course in a work environment stuck in the serious backwater of time. Financial service offices in the early 90s still required (required!) women to wear skirts. The men I worked for wouldn't use a computer, and still wrote long-hand on legal pads, or dictated into tape recorders. Straight out of college, where I thought I could do anything, this was an eye-opener. One of my friends from school was hired at Lazard Freres because they liked the way she answered the phone. ("All that college education, and they like the way I talk," as she put it.)

Not everything has changed. A story in Women's eNews says that despite the fact that women's numbers are growing, if not outnumbering men in college and graduate programs, the culture shock of the workplace still exists. Sex harassment on the job still exists. And pay inequity still exists. I at least hope that these days, in the offices I left long ago, women still don't have to wear skirts to the office.

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