By Emily Riley
Two University of Maryland professors tackled the concepts of sex inequality within the workplace at an open book discussion in McKeldin Library on Thursday, Oct. 3.
The event was a part of the Speaking of Books series, which is hosted by UMD libraries for campus authors to hold open discussions about their published works. All Speaking of Books events are free for the university community.
Jessica Enoch, an associate professor of English, began the discussion by reading excerpts from a chapter of her most recent book “Domestic Occupations: Spatial Rhetorics and Women’s Work.” The book takes an excruciatingly close look at workplace discrimination during World War II, as well as advertisments and the propaganda that surrounded it.
These ads, Enoch explained, created what she calls a ‘spatial rhetoric,’ or a specific persuasion that evolves from the way items in a space are organized. Her book detailed how specific spatial rhetoric was portrayed in advertisements for women working: first as unfair for leaving their children without care and then beneficial as women were seen as necessary as childcare workers and teachers.
Even though women for a short time filled the workforce with success, their husbands returning from war allowed the spatial rhetoric to resume its original stance on women needing to exist exclusively in the household as a mother.
In her book Enoch also argued that when a place like school started to be seen spatially like a home, it became a sphere that women could enter. “When a place is seen as like a home and women can go there, but then when it’s not seen as a home anymore, like women and kids have to leave,” Enoch said.
In today’s society, Enoch explained, with the number of mass shootings rising exponentially in the past 10 years, the image of school has changed dramatically. “It doesn’t seem like this domestic place anymore,” she said. “Kids have been in bulletproof backpacks —it’s like it’s a war zone. It’s not [a] nurtur[ing] place.”
The second speaker, Carly Woods, an assistant communication professor and affiliate women’s studies faculty member, took the second half of the discussion by detailing her contributions “Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor.” It analyzed how female factory workers for the company Gossard were expected to stay ladylike, yet received heavy pushback from society when they began striking the pay inequality within the company.
“What was interesting to us was that the community really rallied around the [male] mineworkers previously, and that level of support [for women] was not there,” Woods said.
Even though both of the booksfocus on sex inequality within a certain era of the past, their work opened up a bigger discussion among the UMD community on the current status of sex and gender inequality.
Senior communications major Jordan Levine explained that the university is headed in the right direction with advances with women in STEM and other typically male dominated majors.
“I think it’s hard to kind of get rid of these implicit biases that we have,” she said. “But I think there’s movement toward trying to change that. The university is at least addressing it, not ignoring it. And that’s a step in the right direction.”
Although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prevents people from being discriminated against in the workplace, entering the job field can still be nerve wracking– especially as a senior.
“The university and past internships [have] really [prepared] me to speak my mind, have a voice and tear through that crowd if it needs to be,” Jordan said.