Activism Reflection 1

Week of 3/29/2012

1. Activism: 

This week I participated in two events. My classmate, Charlotte and I went around the city of Ovideo for VOX to ask for donations to their upcoming event. Then I helped with the LOL event here on UCF campus. Overall, I think asking for donations went okay. A lot of the places we went to were cooperation and they wanted us to go through their head quarters in order to set something up. We weren't asking for money, it was for miscellaneous items that we could use for prizes at the event (coupons, gift card, ect). We ended up getting a lot of contact information though. The LOL event was a little more successful even if all I did was type up some papers for them. I felt like I had accomplished at least something, even if it was very small task.

2. Reflection:

In class this week, we discussed many topics surrounding women and their home and work life. My volunteer work for VOX reflects this idea in several different ways. To start, in “Making a Home, Making a Living,” the main idea is focusing on the well being of women both financially and personally in their home and career life. Women in this country are sometimes expected to be like the somewhat empowering 1970's “super mom” (Kirk,Okazawa-Rey) who does everything: raise the children, have successful careers and be an outstanding homemaker. This ideal, however, is taxing for women and can make them emotionally drained. Women in this country have had to make sacrifices on what they wanted to do most. For instance, a women who has a successful career might not have children in order to gain a higher position. Another women in the same career, however, might choose to do the “mommy track,” (Kirk,Okazawa-Rey) which allows them to combine family time with work, by working “longer hours, taking little vacation time and doing whatever the work demanded” ( Kirk,Okazawa-Rey). This comes down to making choices and sacrifices that men would never have to make. In my work with VOX, however, I went around to many different businesses and found a surprising number of whom had women as their store mangers (some of them were major companies, such as Bed, Bath and Beyond and PetSmart). And while this isn't that uncommon today, there was a time in our country's history where women mangers were virtual unheard of. In order to be a manger of a store, people have to get some type of college education. So, to see this many women as mangers proves the point that many of them probably went to college and are breaking through the “glass ceiling” (an unseen barrier that prevents women from promotions into higher seats of power) (Kirk,Okazawa-Rey). On a macro level, this shift in power probably gives women a more equal playing field as men. They are going to college, getting an education and becoming a more powerful force in the workplace. At the same time, these women probably were also subjected to the discriminates that come with being a women in the workforce and had to learn to balance out their lives. As this is a personal reflection about what I personally experienced while working with VOX, I believe doing this was something of an eye-opening experience for me. I think that I was never really aware about just how many women there are in workforce today. And it made me think about how there needs to be more awareness about these issues with women in workforce such as still not getting paid as equally as men and treated in a negative light. I think there needs to be a lot more work done in this area as there are still many glass ceilings to breakthrough.

3. Reciprocity:  This week's volunteer work really helped me see just how many women are in the management level of work and opened my eyes to new possibilities. While I live in a modern era where women have been able to work in many new and innovating fields, there is still a huge inequality gap, where women are still not getting as paid as much as men and many people view women bosses in a negative light. For me personally, I felt good about trying to get donations for organizations like VOX, who help promote women activism and education. And while VOX is main goal is in reproductive health, through them, I was able to learn something else about feminist ideas in the workplace.

 Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Rey. Women's lives: multicultural perspectives. 3rd ed. Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.