Post #36

Can corporate America lure the women back into the workforce? In my humble opinion, corporate America will not get women back into the work force until they become more flexible with the fact that women are as valuable to the workforce as men.

I know that personally I do not want to work in corporate America. Even working at the labor union I worked for over the summer felt like torture. What I found interesting was the complete lack of flexibility the union operated on, even with the male employees. One of my bosses was a single dad who had two children that he had complete custody of. His son has special needs and has doctor’s appointments all the time, but my boss was constantly forced to find someone else to go to them. The reason was because of the lack of flexibility with the job. They would not let him telecommute and if he took the morning off to go to an appointment but was 5 minutes late into the afternoon portion of the workday, he either had to take the entire day off unpaid, or be laid into by the management.

Another worker had a wife who was suffering from cancer, and he was her primary caregiver. I noticed that every day he came in to work right at the start time and left as soon as he was able to in the afternoon. It was only after he was gone for a few days that it came up with my boss that his wife was very sick and the management at the union offices would not give him paid time off to be able to care for her in her final months.

I feel like this relates a lot to what women face in the corporate world and why women steer away from it. I feel like this lack of flexibility to accommodate the fact that people’s live do not revolve around work is going to continue to keep women from pursuing corporate employment.