Written By: Shaloo Tiwari | Published : October 9, 2017 1:42 PM IST
This World Mental health day the theme is workplace wellness. It's very important that we address the issue of sexism faced by women across the world at the workplace. Facing sexism isn't an easy thing. Men sometimes even pretend not to understand the concept of sexism and that ignorance is a form of injustice towards issues related to women. We asked a few women about their experiences with sexism at the workplace and the answers were infuriating:
Reshma Desai, HR at an IT company says, "IT companies and sexism goes hand in hand. In my company, there were a total of 3 HR personnel including me and two others who were males. Although we were at the same level of the hierarchy, any information given by me was mostly crosschecked by the two male HRs, as they assumed that a woman wouldn't know much. In the beginning, when I had joined, I thought it was because I was new but I realised that it was not the case."
Ananya Koli works at a mobile parts repair company says, "Even though I am not very educated, I have done my training and know my craft very well. Whenever it came to talking to a customer or client, our boss always sent the men in our company. The explanation he gave was that people believed men more when it came to technology. He claimed that his intentions were not sexist."
Debjani Arora, a senior content writer says, "Long back in 2003, when I was working in a call centre and had targets to achieve the team leaders always made it look like a big deal for women. They always thought that telesales target was easily achievable by men and not by women and that women are not smart enough to achieve sales targets."
Archana Mohan, Photographer says, "Photography has always been a male-dominated field and somehow people fail to trust women photographers which is very annoying. We don't develop in the career like the way men do because they get more opportunities. Photography is a tough task. Holding a heavy camera and lenses for hours is difficult so they just pass a casual one-liner, 'Ladki nahi kar paegi'."
We should also talk about the women who are looking for jobs. Ruchita Iyer who has worked as an analyst and is now pursuing MBA says, "Some firms look for male candidates only for no particular reason. It is extremely discouraging."
We would love to hear from you. If you have something to share please put it down in the comment section below.
Note: A few names have been changed to protect identity.
Image: Shutterstock
