With the surge of internet companies and the relaxed dress code in offices these days, many women can find themselves not rising up the corporate ladder compared to their suit-wearing colleagues. Yet fashion continues to showcase a high-powered women’s wear on the runway.
Recently I watched a TED video with Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, talking about why there is still not equality in the workplace in the series, “18 Ideas worth sharing”. She is dressed impeccably on stage. In fact, contrary to Marissa Mayer from Google’s look when she started speaking publicly, Sheryl Sandberg has on high heels and a suit any time I have seen her speak at various tech conferences.
In the speech Mrs. Sandberg has three advice for young women:
1. Sit at the table
2. Make your partner a real partner
3. Don’t leave before you leave
The just of her speech was that women lack self confidence and often criticize themselves where men have an outstanding belief they are the best and proclaim it. That women often don’t claim their authority or be willing to speak up or even sit at the boardroom tables. That in the home even when they work a full time job they often come home to inequality doing more housework than their partner and caring on top of that for the children. They also start planning way in advance for children and therefore do not act as aggressively to climb the corporate ladder because they know at some point in the future they will have to leave for the childbearing process.
Perhaps it is because in China they have a close knit family structure that there are more women in higher positions. There is simply more support and time therefore, for them to dedicate to their careers. It is also engrained in their culture thanks to Mao’s statement that men and women are equal because women hold up half the sky. But there is one thing I have noticed in China which is that women in high powered positions retain their femininity and wear feminine suits. The corporate workplace in China for women’s apparel is much more formal, even for women lower down on the rung than in American culture.
I notice when I shoot a catalog for professional women such as I recently shot for a brand that wanted a CEO look. On the fitting the photographer who knows me was chuckling because he knows I am the CEO of a company. So I naturally had the standing posture and demeanor–but it was also because of the clothes that physically held me into place.
