Male Privilege

First off, today’s discussion was one of the most interesting discussions we’ve had since the cycle of prejudice. What I got from today’s discussion was that Mrs. Baker, Ms. Sweeney, and Mrs. Tuorto have added to the evidence that we live in a patriarchal society. We still live in a society where there are still prejudices against women today, this might be male privileged, but I always thought that women complained about discrimination in the workplace. However contrary to my beliefs, my mind has been blown and it opened many minds as what women go through on a daily basis. I believe this also due to our male privilege, where because we don't have to think about those types of things, which is why we don't believe that it exists. In other words we just ignore it because that it isn't relevant to us, kind of similar to how a white person might say we live in a “post racial society” because they don't have any clue to how the person discriminated against feels, those who are affected.

This brings me to a discussion that we had yesterday in class about Reproductive and Productive factors of discrimination. Basically, if a woman's reproductive and they aren’t doing anything for their respective jobs they are seen as a nuisance and are pushed away. However, if they are productive and help out, you'll want to keep them around because they produce for you, that's what people care about the most. I’ll use one the examples given to us in class, if a woman becomes pregnant there is a cycle of prejudice that starts from a person in a high position. Such as questions like “Are you sure you can handle it,” or “I’ll give this to someone else because this too much for you.” There are also many cases in which the woman might go on maternity leave and is “replaced” by someone for the time being. This leads to them might not being able to return to the same position as before because that person might do it better, this in turn lowers their pay which isn't fair at all. This is most likely because they cannot perform as well as they have before, they are not able to produce, therefore keeping them would be un-beneficial and not necessary for them to stay.

What else surprised me were the experiences that Ms. Sweeney had while working for the government in Bolivia. How she elaborated on how just in this instance, because she was doing her job better than one of the men, getting interviews with clients with people from Britain etc, it automatically meant that she had to be sleeping with them to make things happen. Instead of acknowledging her as an asset to her firm, she was discredited because there couldn’t be any other reason that she would do her job better than a man.

What came to me as a surprise to me was that someone with as credentials as Mrs. Tuorto while in college and even at St. Benedict’s is treated as a secretary. Being asked questions such as “Are you taking notes” because she’s the only women and being the Dean of Faculty must be insulting at times. Especially when she said “Is that honestly all you see in me?"