Labor And Nursing

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             One of the reasons women are not found in top business positions is because they do not see other women at the top. As Elizabeth Perle McKenna, a former publisher, says, "Women are bailing because they"re looking up and saying, "Hey, there's nobody who looks like me up there. Am I going to knock myself out for the next twenty years only to be passed over for a man? . . . Let me out. I want to do something in my life that matters."" (Jones 1997). The fact that there are so few women at the top of the ladder is very discouraging to them, let alone the fact that women still only earn approximately 75 percent of what a man earns in the same career. Oftentimes when they see that their superiors are all men, they think that there is no chance of becoming a superior and bail out into a different business that has more to do with women. The majority of businesses that have women in top positions deal with mostly women. "Whatever kind of people populate the heart of the business . . . they"re going to have a better chance at becoming the company's president" (Jones 1997). This also goes along with the "syndrome" employers tend to have - they seem to feel the most comfortable hiring people who look like them (Redwood 1996). So if there are many women in a large retail corporation, they are more likely to hire a woman than a male, just as if there were many males doing the hiring they would more likely hire a man than a female. .
             There is also the problem of appearances. When men work with a woman, they expect her to look a certain way. Many of them still hold the age-old stereotype that women should not be working side by side with men, and they do not like to be reminded of the fact that women are equals to them, if not their superior. A woman cannot look too feminine or sexy, because this reminds the men they are working with a woman, and they would probably get distracted from their work. But a woman also cannot look overly unfeminine, such as in the Price Waterhouse case where a woman was denied a partnership because "she didn't wear lipstick" (Jones 1997).