Women Entering Workforce Face Culture Shock

Posted on April 11, 2006

A Women's eNews article says young women often face culture shock with they enter the corporate culture for the first time.

Dr. Anna Fels, a New York-based psychiatrist and author of "Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives," published in 2004, said that while women's access to education at all levels has improved, their second-class citizenship often kicks in when they hit work.
Alfia Muzio, 23, who graduated from Columbia University in New York last spring, said that entering the work force can be "exciting and full of promise."
But she also said it can be lonely and intimidating. "The men at my office are totally inappropriate," she said. "They say things of a sexual nature, commenting on appearance in an unwelcome way using 'honey' or 'sweetie' instead of names. It gets very uncomfortable. One guy actually just got fired for sexual harassment. That kind of stuff would have never happened in college."
According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions statistics, women filed 85 percent of all sexual harassment charges in 2004.

Articles like these are great resources for young women. Young women need to prepare themselves for a different environment than they experienced in college. They also need to learn negotiating skills according to Carol Frohlinger, an attorney and the co-founder of Negotiating Women. Frohlinger told Women's eNews that "If you are a female college graduate and you don't negotiate on your first salary, the research says that you will lose out on $1.2 million over the course of your career." That's not just culture shock its financial shock.