Here’s to Working Women! …And Everyone Else, Too.
If you haven’t seen it already, check this week’s issue of the Jackson Hole News&Guide’s Working Women! special supplement. Not that I necessarily condone these types of blatant attempts to garner more advertising dollars from a limited pool of businesses, but Circumerro has a particularly fun ad in it. (If you didn’t notice, it’s right at the top of the post.)
Now, I certainly don’t mean to belittle the opportunity to acknowledge the hard work of our female co-workers—specifically in our company, and generally throughout the valley and beyond—but the way I see it there are at least two ways to look at this.
First, is it enough to simply acknowledge them in some kind of “special supplement” in the newspaper? From what I’ve heard and seen, women still aren’t compensated at the same level as men for the same jobs. (As one co-worker put it, “Screw the special section and just pay me fairly for what I do.”) If we can’t all be honest about it, at least I will: most of the women I work with work harder than I do. And I’m just talking about 8 to 5; forget about what happens once they get home. I know first-hand that my wife does; as I write this she’s in the other room working into the evening to get orders out to her customers (it’s 8:45 pm).
Second (and here’s my opportunity to get sexist), when was the last time the N&G (or any newspaper for that matter) published a Working Men! “special supplement”? If we’re going to be equal opportunity about this, let’s have a Working Men! supplement, and a Working Latino! supplement, and a Working African American! supplement (it would be pretty light here in Jackson Hole), and hell, what about a Working Beast of Burden! special supplement? Let’s give props to all those horses, cows, sled dogs and llamas out there!
OK, like I said at the beginning, I don’t mean to belittle the very hard work that women do. But let’s keep things in perspective here. It’s definitely not a balanced world and we each have an opportunity to help bring it more into balance ever day, with each interaction we have in the workplace.
And by the way, thank you to all the women of Circumerro…and beyond.
—Chris
