Insurgents' Ink: Top 10 Jobs According to Comcast

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Top 10 Jobs According to Comcast

Let's play a game! It's called "Which gender best represents the top 10 jobs according to Comcast?"

Here's how it works: First, click on the link below (or click on the title of this posting); then as you scroll through the top 10 jobs, guess which gender represents each job.

http://www.comcast.net/slideshow/finance-bestjobsinamerica/Sales-Director/

When I played, I guessed correctly 100% of the time! This, unfortunately, means that the majority of the best jobs are filled by men (they seem to be especially adept at technology and leadership), and the few instances of women filling the best positions involve some kind of nurturing, care-taking role (but certainly not as doctors!).

I know I was often told by teachers and family members that I, as a female, should focus on English and stay away from math and science (technology had only come as far as "Oregon Trail"). And I also know that there are people who scoff at the idea that our society plays any part in the male-dominated technological and scientific fields. But there have been serious efforts lately to attract more females into these male-dominated fields as early as junior high school, suggesting that there is a general acknowledgment of society's influence on females' career choices. But Comcast's slideshow seems to be undermining these efforts and instead promoting the old "Women as Nurturers / Men as high-powered corporate executives" model.

Side note: How can they say that being a college professor is one of the best jobs right now? Furloughs, long hours, increasing expectations to both teach and publish, and diminishing funds for such basic supplies as paper--how is this job in the top 10?

2 comments:

Josh NeelyOctober 13, 2009 at 12:18 PM
GAH. Did they purposefully pick the worst stock photos they could find?

I like your assessment, but have to wonder if Comcast is a remotely credible information provider.
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AmberOctober 19, 2009 at 10:43 AM
Ha! Yes, point taken. And speaking of stock photos, that reminds me of when I tried to find some clip art for a handout I was creating for an organizational communication class I used to teach: Not a single work-related image of a female... Very annoying when I had an all-female class!
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1. We are currently seeking critical essay submissions on the topic of the intersectionality of sexism and racism,

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Amber Dickey- Co-Editor
She received an M.A. in English with an emphasis on literature and a B.A. in English with an American literature concentration from CSU Sacramento. As an undergraduate, Amber won second place in the Bazzanella Literary Awards for her critical analysis of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. She is an avid fan of the Lost Generation writers, Héléne Cixous, bell hooks, Judith Butler, and many, many others. Her interests lie in the arts, poverty and race studies, gender studies, queer theory, pedagogy, and the Feminist Movement debate. She credits her mother's strength and perseverance as a single mother of three with inspiring her to work hard for everything she wants and never take shit from anyone.

Autumn Newman- Co-Editor
Autumn is a feminist new-formalist poet who received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast low-residency program where she had the opportunity to work with poets Annie Finch, Baron Wormser and many other talented writers. She also holds a BA in English from California State University, Sacramento, where the poet and professor Joshua McKinney infected her with a seemingly innocent, yet unyielding, addiction to formal poetics. Autumn’s poems have appeared in various small poetry journals and most recently online at Able Muse and Cider Press Review. Aside from poetry and feminism, Autumn’s passions include: pedagogy, graphic novels, music, film, domestic violence education, race relations and all issues that affect and contribute to the unequal power structure of our society.

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Insurgents’ Ink is a labor of love, and at no moment were the labor pains more evident than when we struggled to come up with an appropriate name for this blog. French feminist Héléne Cixous in her well-known piece from the 1970s, Laugh of the Medusa, famously explicated her concept of insurgency. In it, she urges her female readers to commit an act of insurgency by the simple act of writing, an act, she argues, that allows females to actively resist the historical imperative that women remain in the background. Writing allows women to reclaim their bodies and their minds.

Of course, the term “insurgent” has taken on a far more insidious connotation in our post-9/11 world; read anachronistically, Cixous seems to be likening écriture féminine to terrorism. While we certainly do not wish to take Cixous’ words out of context, we got a chuckle out of the female-writer-as-terrorist connection. But more importantly, we wanted to acknowledge the feminist thinkers who have come before us.

But “Insurgents” is only one half of the name; “Ink” forms the other half and is inspired by the same source. Cixous extends her insurgency metaphor to include writing with white ink: a dual reference to maternity and invisibility. It was important to us that our blog not only provoke our readers, but also inspire them to write. And it is our hope that Insurgents’ Ink will do just that.

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Unlike many blogs, Insurgents’ Ink is not intended as a forum for one individual’s personal opinions. Rather, the purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for a number of people not only to express their opinions, but also to contribute critical essays as well as poems and short works of fiction.

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Whether you are female or male, a believer in a “fourth wave” of feminism or a champion of the Nietzschean-like declaration that “Feminism is Dead”—we believe that virtually anything can be approached through a feminist lens. And perhaps more importantly, we believe that contemporary issues confronting feminists and females should be discussed amongst a broad collective of writers.

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