Video Review: Barriers Hindering Women in the Workplace

Summary for Each Video
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Introduction
This paper gives a summary of the eight videos that reflect on general advice on how to achieve success, challenges facing women at home and workplace, and advice specifically to women on how to advance their careers and lead a successful life.
Video 1: Sheryl Sandberg’s advice for women
Sheryl Sandberg is a US author, activist, and technology executive. As of 2013 August, Sheryl was the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook. In the video, Sheryl argues that although, women have achieved progress concerning gender equality, this is not seen in leadership positions. Female board positions, parliament members, and heads of states are only 13-15 percent, which has made the improvement over the previous decade. Sheryl identifies that just like men, women also should create tougher decisions between lifestyle and work, citing that with 75% of married men serving leadership positions compared to 30% of married women.
Sheryl is talking about what women should do so that to remain active in the workforce and ascend toward leadership. She cites that typically men tend to overrate themselves whereas women normally underestimate their capabilities. Similarly, men tend to attribute the success they made of themselves, whereas women normally say they got success because somebody else assisted them or they obtained luck. She emphasizes that a woman cannot obtain a promotion if she does not believe in herself. Sheryl, therefore, urges women to have confidence in themselves to make contributions just like men do.
Sheryl acknowledges that sexism and discrimination are often barriers hindering women in the workplace. She believes that sometimes women are their own enemies in career development. Many women allow their professions to stagnate since they believe that having children interferes with their career development. Sheryl is a mother of two and has successfully managed to develop her career. She challenges mothers who are working to expect their husbands to share in housework and childcare duties instead of doing everything themselves. This is what Sheryl means by advising women to make their husband real partners.
Video two: Marissa Mayer’s ten rules for success
Marissa explains about top ten rules for achieving success. Marissa is a US businesswoman with a degree in Computer Science. She is currently working as the CEO of Yahoo and previously, she was a long-time Executive Officer for Google. Here is the summary of her top ten rules for success.
The first rule is to find a rhythm. A person can find his or her rhythm by understanding what makes her or him resentful and to prevent it. A person cannot have everything he or she wants, but she can choose important things. Thinking this manner empowers a person to work hard for a long time.
The second rule is to do something that an individual is not ready to do. This is how a person can work on the hurdles and eventually grows.
The third rule is balancing between execution and innovation. Innovation requires resources to be allocated effectively. Marissa says that the opposite of innovation is execution. She advises that it is important for people to devote time to innovating new ideas and be principled in executing such ideas to achieve success.
The fourth rule is to ruthlessly prioritize. Marissa opines that to manage all divergent plans, it is important to prioritize effectively. Prioritization is vital to strip away everything in life except things that matter most depending on the individual’s need. Her three key priorities include God, family, and work in that order. Work-life balance helps to cater for needs of the three key priorities.
The fifth rule is to surround oneself with the smart people who can challenge the person to think creatively, and to do something not ready to do so that to learn.
The sixth rule is to create a strong culture that impacts norms and values of a company and, therefore, keeps employees passionately and actively engaged.
The seventh rule is to work in small teams to become familiar with one another and learn how to work together.
The eighth rule is sharing information across the company to enable workers to understand what is important and what is happening in the business to reduce duplication of work.
The ninth rule is to fail fast. Often the key to achieving success is a failure. An individual must fail fast in an effort to become successful.
The tenth rule is to experiment with different things such as investing time in the career pursuit and other related business ideas to be innovative.
Video 3: Dr. Jenna Carpenter explains why many women do not pursue mathematics and other related courses
Dr. Jenna Carpenter, the Dean for the School of Engineering at Campbell University, gives a public lecture. She explains why the number of women is small in mathematics and engineering fields. She, therefore, encourages girls to pursue math and related courses in college. Also, Dr. Carpenter talks about challenges that face women who are working in mathematics particularly and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines. One of the key problems is the implicit bias (perceptions) that are ingrained in people living in the society by their surrounding culture.
Such biases shape peoples’ views of roles and gender. For example, at the early age, girls and boys similarly perceive that math subject is for boys. It is often the culture of the society that leads to such perception in which members of the society, parents, and teachers believes that mathematics is not for girls, but for boys. Research indicates that by the time young girls are in the second grade, both girls and boys are well aware that mathematics is for boys. Dr. Carpenter discloses that the society is losing too many capable, bright women early in their schooling. She advocates for key measures to be continuously adopted to assist everybody in realizing that anyone can do mathematics, and the subject is for everyone.
Dr. Carpenter explains that one approach to addressing such implicit bias is become aware of it because awareness can enable people to be more sensitive to methods which they can effectively give support to all students in learning mathematics and studying other related opportunities. Dr. Carpenter urges people who care about math subject not only to recall the women’s contribution to mathematics but also to encourage all students particularly females to study mathematics.
Video 4: Jocelyn Bell Burnell reflects on women in science
Scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell explains that it is due to the underrepresentation of women in the workforce, which has caused women not to make vital contributions in the workforce talent. Burnell says that culture is the limiting factor and not women’s brains. She explains that scientific development relies on the scientific talent. Nevertheless, that scientific talent is not inborn or inherent (it does not come naturally). Often it is developed through long hours of hard work and training, access to essential resources, and the guidance of mentors and colleagues.
Burnell recalls her early time in school when the girls used to be sent to the domestic science room while boys taken to the science lab. There was no idea of questioning why because it was a matter of following orders. The male dominated thinking maintained imbalances in the gender and racial representation in scientific fields. Burnell argues that there was no evidence that the capability to develop into or become scientists is male inherent identity. While male thinking explained that the reason women were underrepresented in science was because of biological and that women and men have different capability for aptitude which influences who to do science between men and women, Burnell refuted such claim explaining that there is no evidence to justify such claim.
Burnell explains that while in South-Ea...