They Say: I Say By Ellen Ullman

Women in the past as well as women today have had to fight harder than most for everything they have been able to achieve. As a woman, you are expected to keep a tidy home and raise the children to become successful entrepreneurs; but what if you love isn’t being a homemaker? What if your love is in the workplace or with your nose shoved in a book? I recently read in article in They Say/I Say by a woman who has fought her way to the top. Ellen Ullman wrote a compelling article, “How to be a ‘woman programmer.” Now being a woman in the workplace is hard enough, but being among the elite where she was surrounded by men, men who feel that there are certain things that women cannot do. I also watched a young lady, Jean Killbourne speak about the

Ellen Ullman in her article mentions that “The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.” Reading this infuriated me! Why should being a woman have anything to do with her ability to program adequately? Ullman in her article discusses about rising to the top and overcoming her bosses and their poor employee etiquette. As a woman, she was subjected to sexual harassment and judgmental tones, all because men at that time as well as now, do not see that women are due the same respect as men. That isn’t stopping women from climbing to the top and over achieving what men feel isn’t for

Now, not only have women in the work place been subjected to unfair conditions, we also have an impossible look to achieve. Jean killbourne, now a speaker, once a model was destroyed by societies standards on what women are to look like. When we watch television and we see a simple shampoo commercial we do not realize it at the time, but if we stop and look at the bigger picture we realize that the “girl next door” who is just washing her hair like every young lady does is anatomically perfect. Killbourne in her speech shows the audience a picture of a young woman that has been photoshopped to the point of distortion; it shows that young lady’s hips are smaller than her shoulders, and her waist no bigger than a child’s. We know that as women it is hard enough to focus on our careers, but now we must look like barbie’s as well? These impossible standards are setting women up for failure, but as the resilient women that we are we must recognize that it is our imperfections that make us unique and above the ignorance of what media is trying to drill in our youth’s