Ethnography

The thought that a woman should only be a mother or stay at home mom flatters me. Now in today’s time, things have changed and the woman is coming up to become the bread winner for the family or main provider. Women used to be overlooked at as not being able to perform certain jobs are duties that were set out for only a man to accomplish. But thanks to many woman who spoke up and overcame many obstacles, have paved the way for many successful woman to climb the career ladder. Even though women have come a long ways in today’s workforce, I still think we have a long ways to go. Lately, we have been talking a lot about women in the workforce which is spoken about in FIFE. For this particular assignment I decided to research more about how do women who are working in a male dominated office feel like they are being treated as equals. Do they feel intimated or more motivated to succeed in the company? Are women being looked at as to succeed in companies?
The best person I knew to get more information on this is my older sister, who just graduated and entered the workforce world. Right now she is currently employed working as a computer programmer for Phillips Conoco. She is surrounded by many of men in her particular field daily. Since she lives here I decided to shadow her a little bit while she was at work to get some of my questions answered and to see if things were how I thought they may be.
Questions:
1. Do you feel like there are enough women in your field of work representing? No, I do not believe many women are representing this particular field because she thinks the computer field is mainly a man’s part of field and they do not promote it enough to women.
2. Being surrounded by all these men do you feel intimidated by them or more motivated to move up in the career ladder? I feel more motivated because sometimes I know more than they know and it is at the point where it does not really matter anymore
3. Does it bother you that there are not many women in your field? No, it does not bother me, but I wish that they were more women who where in my field of work to prove the fact that women are capable to do this job just like anyone else.
4. Are you getting treated the same as the men in your office? Yes, because they know I am able to do the work fine if not better
5. Do you have more women supervisor or men? Why do you think this? There are more men who are supervisor, but surprisingly there are a lot of women also which I love. This encourages me to do my job well so that I can move forward in the company.
After analyzing all my data and talking to my sister further about the situation. I came to realize that it is more of a mental issue to be surrounded by a lot of men in her work. People can either look at the situation and be intimidated by them or motivated to succeed. I agree that it should motivate woman to become and do more in the business. I was not surprised that not a lot of women were in her field since it seems that working with computer is targeted for men. What I think is missing is asking women what makes them not enter the computer field. This could answer a lot of questions for the reason why.