An article I read earlier this week entitled "Forget the Glass Ceiling, We Have Hemlines to Consider" was very intriguing. Apparently, it has been shown that as a job applicant, females are more well recieved if they dress in a more feminine manner, more along these lines:
rather than something like this:
which is all just so interesting to me. I just bought my first skirt suit last year, partially because I thought it was the best blend between my love of dresses and the current male-like 'requirements' in my industry. Now I have to ask myself - maybe I'm just playing into the whole stereotype unintentionally? The article does bring up a question - how can we get this female judgement trend to stop? What will it take for men to seriously consider any female candidate, regardless of what she comes in wearing? My qualifications should get me the job, regardless of whether I am in pants and flats or heels and a skirt! I don't see how change can effectively occur if women have to play into the stereotype to get a job, which just reinforces the bias, and the cycle never ends. It is such a tricky line right now for women to walk along. In some ways, this reminds me of what I've read about bloomers coming into fashion for women, but not so extreme. This is just subtle gender biasing that should not occur. I just want to wear something that I feel comfortable in, flatters my body type, expresses my personality, and does not cater to the men in my industry who think women should be weaker and less dominant. Is that too much to ask for?
Maybe you're reading this and think it is silly that I think so much about what I wear, but it is precisely because I, as a female, am so quickly judged based on my appearance (and interacted with accordingly), that I have to think carefully about the way I dress. Cyclic, ain't it?
2 comments:
I think I said something similar last time you posted on this topic, but men are not exempt from judgement based on their appearances. At my alma mater, you could always tell how old an engineering student was by the length of their hair, because the closer they go to graduation, the shorter they wore their hair in an attempt to look presentable to employers. I like to think the culture up here is more tolerant than in the south (to tattoos and piercings as well), but I still got my hair cut in preparation for job hunting.
nope, men are not exempt from judgement based on their appearance, and women really aren't ever either, but the fact that being a 'woman' causes you to be judged incompetent by male interviewers and that you have to think about that fact when dressing for an interview should not happen.
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