workplace discrimination

Mary Elizabeth Williams doesn't want to be sold pants by an ugly person. In her recent article for Salon, Williams maintains that the appearance-centered hiring practices and employee regulations of retail giants American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch are just, you know, logical and unproblematic corporate tactics to uphold brands. They're not lookist, they're not racist, and they're not sexist. Based on the evidence, though, we can't give her analysis that much credit.

Newsweek has a piece on their website right now entitled, "How To Get A Raise: Stop Being Good" by Jessica Bennett. In it Bennett reviews a new book, Rachel Simmons' The Curse of the Good Girl which is about how raising girls to be "good" can actually be, well, bad when it comes to their careers. The book sounds pretty great, though not necessarily surprising. (Guess what? Women are socialized to be too nice to be taken seriously in the workplace!) Still, it's nice that Newsweek is addressing these issues for the not-necessarily-feminist set.

However, a lot was missing from the article, and a lot was there that frankly shouldn't have been. For example, as a photo essay accompaniment to the piece, Newsweek gives us "11 Powerful Women That Make Men (and Other Women) Squirm". While writing about the problems of the "psychological glass ceiling" that keeps many women from feeling confident in the workplace, isn't Newsweek perpetuating that same shit by basically calling women like Hilary Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Anna Wintour (and yes, they are all white women except for Yoko Ono) terrifying?

Every year, Advertising Age publishes a special report (and subsequent ceremonial luncheon) called Women to Watch that highlights the great work being done by women in the fields of advertising, marketing, PR, and social media. Apparently, because they are super-organized market-y type people, Ad Age also sends a question in advance to each of the honorees that they then answer in front of the group at the ceremonial luncheon. This year, the question posed was "Why do there continue to be so few female creative directors at ad agencies?"

Here is Tiffany Kosel of Crispin Porter & Bugusky with her answer:

Mickey Meece had a startling discovery in Saturday’s New York Times Business section: Women are never going to break the glass ceiling if they don't stop their cat fighting!

This article on "The New Power Girls" by Patricia Handschiegel in yesterday's Huffington Post posits that today's successful businesswomen don't think about gender, and perhaps that is one reason they are successful. But can we ever really ignore gender? Should we? Read on and give us your thoughts!

Turns out Versace is not just weird and sexually creepy in their print ads (see above), they're also weird and sexually creepy toward their employees! Or one in particular, anyway. Former Versace aide Fay Rodriguez sued the fashion giant on Wednesday for gender discrimination, saying she was forced to relay sexually explicit voicemail messages and was fired when she complained.

WTF?