I have been following the discussion for sometime and i find it very
interesting from lots of point of view.
Please don't fight and let's just considerhe facts and think about it .
I am from côte d'Ivoire that is a developping country in West Africa.
Hearing i can tell the long way we have to go. But somehow these
discussions show the shortcut we can use . So, i want to congratulate
Edequity and thank again Sophia Huyer for giving me that opprtunity to
participate.
Now let's come to the facts.
Regarding salaries gap the rules are not written. But they are well knowned
by male supervisers or managers whose education haven't given then the
opportunity to apprecaite women as total human being with intelligence,
potentiality,emotion and also as a social economic and demographic actor of
her country and the world.
I know this chairmain, who one day call one very dynamic and well educated
( graduate school) young lady and told her : please help me set up a new
department , the director i have nominated is not doing the job. Knowing
your experience and your strong and driving caracter , you are the best
person for the job. Very flattered by such a consideration from the
chairman, the young lady accepted the job without condition ,confident
salary and nomination as the director will follow. And helped by the
chairman( she was reporting directly to the chairman for every thing, you
can understand that director didn't appreciate !) she set up the department
that start working .
In the meantimes they join to her a BS degree senior executive to help run
the one part of the department. She was the one fixing the working
procedures and so one. One day, she starts hearing every where that she has
to calm down ,and couple months later they sent her in another department
with the same position and same salary and nominated the senior executive
with the Bs Degree as a director of the deprtment.Three years later she
learned at an informal occasion from the chairman that he heard that she
couldn't get along with people ! WHO ? She was greatly appreciated by her
workers.So who was he talking about ?
That is one way to reduce salaries of women in enterprise because in the
meantimes instead of getting promotion, they hold you down and keep you
away from the competition with same salary for years.In developping
countries it is devastating because we don't have so much enterprises to
move from one to another.This is just the summum of the iceberg.There are
much examples of the way top management keep women salaries up to 30% lower
than men's salaries for the same level of competance or higher level of
education.
Second history :
I went 2 years ago, in girl's highschool with some women scientist for a
conference about engineering and scientist caeers. We talk to last year
scientist highschool degree girls.
The only questions i had to answer where : don't you have troubles with
your husband for being so educated !
Dont' you have trouble with your peers at work being an woman engineer ?
How do you manage your personal life with your job ?
I just answered : do all the diploma you want and go as far you can , then
pray GOD for the rest.
After that conference i was so discourage.
Then to conclude , i will just say, that it is time for feminists to go on
the road again .Differently , but we should go again. Our girls and sisters
are loosing the meaning of what has been done and they might lose most of
the things we have gotten if we dont react.
I learned and got a lot from the feminists movment of the seventies. I was
hardly twenty years hold and was going to engineering school in France .
Regards
Issié
YGUEYE@cie.ci
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