According to a recent study, the average woman in Manitoba earns 71 cents for every dollar a man earns. Racialized and Indigenous women earn even less, at 58 cents and 59 cents, respectively. For most women, this is not surprising. When we work comparable jobs to our male counterparts, we’re not valued equally.
Objective data is reassuring, because anecdotally, I’ve experienced this for my entire working life. I’ve juggled many freelance jobs. When I started part-time work at one job, I had to use their assigned computer for security reasons. Every job teaches me things, I thought, as I struggled with the camera and security features.
The computer already had my name in the system, but with a surprise. It was misspelled. OK, I thought, mistakes happen. I politely asked for it to be fixed.
According to a recent study, the average woman in Manitoba earns 71 cents for every dollar a man earns. (Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press files)
I was told this takes time. Eventually I land an appointment with an IT professional who fixes a few things. I feel relieved. Then, my name pops up again… still misspelled.
Meanwhile, in emails, both my first and last name are misspelled. In online meetings, both are mispronounced. OK, I think, it’s just a mistake. These things happen. I try to model the correct spelling and pronunciation. The computer issues never get fixed. The IT professional never returns, although I send him polite requests.
As a freelancer with no personal IT department, I often fix my computer myself, but this time, I can’t. The changes require an administrator to log in. Fearful of breaking the organization’s rules, I don’t attempt a hack.
I change my “author” name in Microsoft. This results in a series of older documents which now say: “author: misspelled name, edited by: corrected name.” My boss and I wonder how poorly it reflects on the office when documents go out with these issues.
I work behind the scenes, so I keep writing. It’s time for the annual inventory. A different IT professional does this inventory, so I ask, can you fix my computer?
He finds the situation to be complicated enough that he must ask Microsoft questions to avoid losing my files. (I think that if it had been fixed months ago, this wouldn’t be a problem.) Can’t I just put everything on a thumb drive, delete the old files and set up a new identity/folder/drive on the system, I ask? He demurs, saying the fix will take a while.
Then, he says, “OK, but how does this affect your work?” I pause, attempting to be polite.
There’s an awkward silence.
I explain that my title is: writer and researcher… so I often send things with my name on them.
Also, people in the community might recognize my misspelled name and suspect spam… and question if it’s safe to interact. This has already happened once! A colleague reassured the person that yes, I was working with them.
Third, I take a deep breath and say, “Fundamentally, the place I work should spell my name correctly.”
Here I am, a middle aged professional, having to say that yes, my name matters. The power dynamics are weird. I’m a woman, telling a male colleague that spelling my name correctly is important. I realize that while this situation seems ridiculous, imagine how small this might make some people feel. In suggesting that using my proper name isn’t necessary to my work, they imply that the organization only needs my work. They don’t value me, which becomes abundantly clear when reading that according to the data, my work is work 71 cents in comparison to a man’s.
Another colleague laughs. “You work for places that deal with dignity and human rights! They can’t use your correct name?” Yes.
We are lucky in Canada. There are some laws in place about working conditions, pay, and most of us even have access to clean water, food, housing and the other necessities. Yet nothing, it seems, can require people to respect each other. There are basic things that offer dignity, like pay equity or having the manners to learn and use someone’s name correctly. We all deserve to have our names spelled and pronounced properly. Finally, that name should appear on a paycheque that pays us fairly, too.
Joanne Seiff is an opinion writer and author from Winnipeg.
