Monday, March 12, 2012

Women and Power

If I were to reflect on my experiences with gender and leadership in the workplace, this post would be pretty short, despite my mother's constant nagging for me to get a job. I can talk about my experiences with gender and leadership within sports. I've played soccer for the majority of my life; playing with both girls and boys. Reflecting on my experiences within that realm, I've noticed a substantial difference between playing with the two. When you are a girl on a boys team, there are usually two different scenarios that occur (that I've noted, anyway). One scenario is: the girls become intimidated, leaving the boys to exclude them from the game, or treating them like they're made of glass which leads to a horribly uninteresting, one-sided contest. Another scenario would be that the girls come out strong, not letting themselves become intimidated, leaving the game to be high-paced and fun to watch.

After reading some of the other posts, I feel as though I'm just echoing a common theme. From my experiences, I can't help but feel as though we as people, being unrelated to gender, reap what positions we put ourselves in. Traditionally, I think we can all agree that women are expected to stay at home and take care of the kids, etc. While I think there are many great women in power historically, millions and millions of women sit day-to-day accepting this inferiority. If we go back to my (somewhat) connecting soccer story, the girls who were played better or tougher against the boys were the girls who weren't scared of the boys and viewed themselves as being just as good, if not better, than them. I have to agree with other posters in my point being: women should stand up and start taking control of their own powers and strengths.

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