Double Standards and Gender Inequality

By FIONA MORIARTY-MCLAUGHLINBoth U.S. senators from California are women, three of the nine Supreme Court justices are women, the head of Yahoo! is a woman and so is the second in command at Facebook. Despite these triumphs, workingwomen today still face a tougher road to success than men. They are held back by double standards still in place and gender inequality in pay and promotion.One of those Supreme Court justices, Sonia Sotomayor, openly acknowledged a double standard during her confirmation hearings in 2009. Sotomayor, who faced much resistance during her rise from the South Bronx to the highest court in this country, was troubled that mostly male senators would ask questions about her private life that they would never think to ask a man."There were private questions I was offended by. I was convinced they were not asking those questions of the male applicants," Sotomayor told law students at Northwestern University soon after being named to the court. "Many single male colleagues who are judges who date often, bring dates to court affairs and nobody ever talks about them. I knew if I did the same thing, my morals would be questioned."The double standard doesn’t just exist in law. Women have always earned less than men for the exact same work. Women earned an average yearly salary of almost $12,000 less than men in 2012, according to a survey by Catalyst Group. And companies put them in positions where they often have to choose between having a family and falling off the corporate ladder of promotions or living for their career at the expense of their personal life. As the experience of Sallie Krawcheck, who rose to executive positions on Wall Street before being fired,  shows us, women — unlike men — truly can’t have it all because gender inequality is alive and well in the workplace."I have woken up earlier than my husband almost every day since we have been married," Krawcheck wrote in 2012 on LinkedIn. "We [women] are tired of working to fit into corporate cultures that on the whole are still geared more toward traditional male qualities; or because at home we do two times the housework and three times the childcare."These double standards are to blame for women holding down just 3% of all positions as CEOs of companies in the United States. But statistics only begin to tell the story of bullying and gender inequality in the workplace. Most of the bullying faced by women is never reported — for fear of retaliation.Men often trap or intimidate female co-workers by threatening to hold back raises, promotions, or even firing them if they don't do what the bullying male wants. This could consist of sexual harassment or verbal abuse. A growing target of bullying at work is a talented employee who is getting ahead and must be stopped — see Sallie Krawcheck above.Gender inequality is rampant in the workplace and women often must put up with double standards, such as being treated as sexual accessories, to get ahead. Women like Justice Sotomayor explain that they had to work much harder than men with similar talent to be successful. While it’s great that many women have succeeded, there is still much work to be done to make the workplace an even playing field free from bullying, gender inequality and double standards.