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Gender Inequality And The Status Of Women Within Canada

Decent Essays

Gender Inequality and the Status of Women within Canada
It was only after several years of working as an executive that I realized that I had been born with a natural aptitude for an executive role. Prior to this realization, I had perceived myself as someone who had ‘fluked’ into the job—it was my father’s business and he had passed away, the company needed a president and I was executor of the estate. Despite the fact that I was asked to stay on as Marketing Director by the two lawyers who bought the company, I still failed to recognize that they retained me because I showed an aptitude for the role. My inability to see myself as a ‘proper’ executive, along with the new owners’ relegation of my desk to the common area with the female administrative assistants (despite incompatible tasks and responsibilities) and paternally condescending behaviour, point to endemic gender issues that are so embedded in Canadian culture that they are scarcely noticed by many of those entrenched; notably, both myself and my bosses were unaware that we were all participating in the subjugation of women. In my role, I was utilized for my ‘masculine’ skills without the compensation or basic working environment a male in the same position would receive, even with similar work experience. All parties felt that I was getting a generous opportunity, and unfortunately, in our current social landscape in Canada, despite an obvious lack of justice, this may, in fact, be true. This essay will explore

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