Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (or maybe lost your smartphone as you were being stranded on a deserted island), you may have heard that the first woman Presidential candidate in the US, Hillary Clinton, has pneumonia.
And this may just have been the one single disease that has received this much media coverage in a while. In the midst of conspiracy theories about possible brain damage and other claims against her “stamina”, we’re left to wonder if the problem is the pneumonia, or the woman who has been powering through countless media and campaign events while sick.
Yet, in our day and age, this shouldn’t be news. Women have been working while sick for the longest time. To care for their families, to hold down jobs, to stay up all night with a crying baby, etc. And these same women have been suffering consistent prejudice in the workplace for being weaker than their male counterparts, while they have been doing twice the work for less than half of the recognition (hello gender gap!).
According to the 2015 American Time Survey, women still do more housework and handle more of the childcare than men, even when said men don’t work. Yet, how many of these same women, have to show up for work every morning and literally have to prove that they’re as competent as their male counterparts?
The answer is way too many.
A 2014 survey by the Public Health and Safety Organization finds sickness doesn’t prevent hard-working Americans in general to show up for work. At a certain level, it’s actually considered heroic and the emblem of masculine power in higher corporate circles. Or the equivalent of “extreme sports” office-style…
I personally don’t know any woman who hasn’t powered through illness or painful bouts of that “time of the month”, or even used her sick days to care for ill children or relatives instead of herself. That’s just what’s expected of women, at the risk of being seen as weak or incompetent at work.
Even though this episode is painted in the broader and more confused landscape of politics, it still serves well to remind us that the long-standing, insidious stereotypes about women’s frailty and lack of competence are still, well…long-standing. That if a female presidential candidate can be freely attacked by her detractors on account of her health, then the rest of us might as well forfeit our vacation days for the rest of our career…
What about you? Do you think this is a stark reminder that working sick is still not news for many women out there?
To Your Success,
The Corporate Sis.
