Stigmas Against Working Women

Women are told to have it all, but not all at once which inevitably plagues women with limitations in the workplace that men will most likely never face. Corporate America has seemingly never been geared towards women let alone mothers. Rather, women and mothers have been expected to choose between career or child rearing due to decades of American status quo that reinforced the idea that women are to be homemakers rather than participate in the workforce. For many years in America, women were forced to assume roles that perpetuated gender inequality such as caring for the family, while men were tasked with being the sole provider for the family. However, as society progressed in America, women gained fairer rights and an increasingly equal

Yet, the role women play in the American workforce is consistently met with barriers that inhibit them from obtaining an equal position as men in the workplace. The challenges that women face happen to be most prevalent during the time after a woman gives birth, and when she is faced with taking time adjusting her career for family. Even though women have found means to attempt success in both family and work life, the federal government seems to be clinging on old stigmas that aim to prevent women’s place in the American workforce. The lack of federal policy that would provide paid family leave often hinders working women and mothers causing them to unjustly choose between family and work. At the same time, one may observe the lack of responsibility and accountability afforded men in the process of taking care of children. Due to lack of institutionalized paid family leave, mothers often assume full responsibility of raising a child; often times, the lack of government guaranteed family leave tends leaving women to sacrifice more than men in order to start a

In fact, in a 2013 Pew study, women were found more likely to experience sacrifices and interruptions in their work life in order to care for their family’s needs than men. The truth of the matter is that when couples make the choice to build a family, women- not men- are often penalized by Corporate and Federal America. The lack of federal policy to provide paid family leave takes aim at working women to get them to settle with adjusting their careers at their own expense in order to allow men to maintain the status as the primary financial provider for the family. This concept tends to leave America’s work environment unequal and unjust due to the freedom given to corporations to create family leave policy in accordance with whatever the corporation believes women deserve regarding maternity and family leave they desire. Women should not have to be concerned about choosing whether or not they can maintain both a career and a family, yet they are concerned because lack of paid leave not only puts their schedules and careers at disadvantage but leaves mothers at a financial disadvantage since they find themselves unable to work in order to take care of their child in the weeks following birth. The lack of paid