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From: chabot@miles.DEC (High Anxiety Workstations)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Discrimination
Message-ID: <2511@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 15:49:56 EDT
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Posted: Wed Jun  5 15:49:56 1985
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Well, jj, that was high school--how much of that kind of discrimination do you
get lately?  Like, when a meeting is held do you get asked to build the table?
Or when you came home from college on vacation did relatives say how great it
was you were getting an education because you could get a superior wife and
raise intelligent children, or that with your newly-learned skills you might get
a job as clerk at the mills?  :-)  Well, I'm poking a little fun, because I
imagine that your home town doesn't show much on you anymore.  In other words,
those who would be crass enough to think you not suited to your current job
because of a blue-collar home can't tell now.

But, on the other hand, only the weird can fail to determine that I'm female
(at least, in person).  I've been denied a job because I was a girl (at the
time, I was 8)(I'm happy to report that my sister got and held such a job, more
recently).  In my adult experience, I've been singled out to be asked to take
notes because I was the only woman present.  My uncle told me that a degree
from MIT would enable me to get a *good* job as a technical secretary.
(Probably why I dawdled at it.:-) ) My landlord won't let women sign the lease
(I compromise my ethics because of the company and the low price) (but not much
longer). I know men who expect the women in the office to make the coffee, 
(Not here, thank heavens) and even if one is a secretary, I don't think that
business school teaches you how to make coffee any more than graduate school
(probably less!).  Coffee is perhaps a trivial example, but a rankling one! and
it demonstrates a bias that some have that women are better than men at cooking
or at least at being handy and helpful at such things. 

Has anybody here had direct experience with not getting a job because of
Affirmative Action?  [General call, I'm curious (no venom).]  I had a summer
job under a program that recruited heavily from young chicano and black men and
women, but I got a job, and so did many young white men.  So my experience is
that when I needed a job, I was able to get one.  I've been lucky.

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot   chabot%amber.dec@decwrl.arpa