Common Ground: Women in the Workplace
 

Common Ground is a short photographic series with a theme that addresses sexism in the business world. Through many hours of research on the topic of women in the workplace I’ve created a concept driven visual series that utilizes text, symbols, color, and dramatic lighting to open your mind to this topic. I address three topics: unequal opportunity, unequal pay, and sexual harassment. You will see two versions of each image, one with text and one without.

My intent was to have the imagery be visually appealing but also give a slight discomfort about the meaning. The series targets both men and women but with the text, it specifically speaks to women. I used a vintage business wardrobe to reference the past struggles with women’s equality in the workplace.

The first image, with the ceiling tiles, represents unequal opportunity. For me, unequal opportunity in the workplace means that someone isn’t getting fair treatment when it comes to promotions or job opportunities in general. There are numerous reasons women are not getting certain jobs and promotions, but many people’s first thought is that the reason is because there is sexism in the workplace. I believe that is part of the problem, but there are also other issues. One being that we have created stereotypical gender based jobs. For example, teachers, nurses, and administrative jobs are all considered “feminine”. Then we have what we consider “male” jobs like construction, the military, and corporate positions. Until we stop thinking of certain job fields as gender based, only then we can start to minimize the gender gap. This is why I chose the phrase, “Realizing your potential will raise this ceiling” to represent unequal opportunity. I think that women and men need to realize that they can do any job that they want. There is no limit to that.

The second image, with the briefcases, represents unequal pay. This one is fairly self-explanatory. I chose to show the average wage gap between men and women in the form of a math problem. Many sources say that this number is skewed and it misrepresents the actual wage gap. This is true in some ways, though through my research I’ve found that this statistic is just the average wage for women based on all industries. Woman’s pay average is so low is because most of the jobs that have the majority of workers as female are actually lower paying as well. This is where the skewed number comes from. However, I still chose to use this statistic because I wanted to use the drastic wage difference. I chose to the phrase, “22¢ to go” to show that although there is a long way to go, there is still continuous progress in tackling the gender wage gap.

The final image, with the typewriter, represents sexual harassment. I wanted this image to show a subtle form of sexual harassment. From my own experience, this is something I’ve seen much more often than what we normally think about for this topic, which would probably fall under the sexual assault category. The statistic that I used, “Over 50% of women don’t report sexual harassment” comes from a telephone poll with one specific company. It is not an overall statistic and can be misleading, however I thought that it was a very powerful statistic and I related to it. I also used the phrase, “He won’t listen if you don’t speak up.” This statement relates back to putting the woman in charge of the situation. If someone is making you feel uncomfortable you should inform that person so that they can change the behavior. It really can work.

Common Ground as a concept driven series should open your mind to the fact that women are still subject to gender discrimination in the workplace today. We have come a long way in the right direction but there is still more that can be done.  

Shustack Photography   |   2015