As Zack Linly at NewsOne so aptly pointed out, women joining the workforce is not a recent development:
OK, so, first of all, women began entering the workforce as early as the late 1800s and the number of professional women surged significantly between 1930 and 1950. During the late ’70s, “the percentage of women of childbearing age with a child under the age of 1 in the workplace rose dramatically, from 20 percent to 62 percent,” according to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
In other words: Candace Owens has literally never lived during a time when women weren’t common in the workplace. How TF would she know if things have gotten better or worse? (Not that there’s any point in citing historical facts to a person who doesn’t think abortion existed during slavery.)
What’s even more telling is Owens’ reasoning for how working women have made things worse in the workplace—because, predictably, it was 100% centered around how it affects men.
I’ve rarely worked anywhere where a woman was not involved at some level. The only time that situation occurred was in a workplace of two employees. Now after more than 20 years in the workforce, I still find it pretty easy to not sexually harass my coworkers.
I don’t know how I do it, because if you listened to Owens, you would think every day I would be making sexual advances inadvertently and unwittingly on my coworkers and they would feel creeped out by my existence. So far, I’ve managed to avoid that problem.
I’ve been thinking about this since she dropped her commentary and I can’t believe that I am the only person who has this superpower. I’m pretty sure there are women and men who work here at Daily Kos who also are not sexually harassing people daily. Then again, maybe it’s not just me.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Obviously workplace sexual harassment occurs, but the solution that women should stop worrying about it or that we should lower the number of women in the workplace to prevent harassment is absolutely the wrong idea.
It really isn’t that difficult to make sure that your coworkers know you respect them. I’ve been here at Daily Kos for quite some time and I have never thought to myself, boy, I really need to be careful to not sexually harass someone today! It’s really important today to not be creepy!
Apparently, for Owens, this is a pretty common problem.
This series is built around connecting us as a community and if you have an event upcoming, please let me know down below. I would love to attend virtually! If you have thoughts on if you’ve felt like you are unable to work around someone without harassing them, then feel free to confess. My gut is that more of our community will agree with the assessment that it is a lot easier to not harass people than to harass them.
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