I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day which is Mar. 8.
Aug. 3, 2022 "No more office high heels: Women go back to work in sneakers": Today I found this article by Jo Constantz on the Financial Post:
For women in white-collar industries like law and finance, wearing high heels was taken for granted as part of what it meant to go to work, like an hour-long commute or a US$15 desk salad. Now, many of them are questioning whether it’s worth the foot pain.
Podiatrists are seeing an uptick in injuries brought on by a return to the office, in-person conferences and other professional events that require a return to more formal footwear. Dr. Miguel Cunha of Gotham Footcare in Manhattan said his offices have recently seen an influx of overuse injuries, from shin splints to plantar fasciitis, among patients wearing heels again after ditching them for two years. During the pandemic, lower levels of activity and going barefoot led to weakness and tightness of muscles and tendons.
“Once the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, many women resumed their use of heels for work without giving their body adequate time to transition back to their pre-pandemic activity levels,” Dr. Cunha said. For many, that’s led to intensified foot pain and discomfort.
“The body doesn’t like any kind of abrupt change,” said Dr. James Hanna, former president of the New York State Podiatric Medical Association.
“Whenever you’re forced to do something all at once, suddenly you’re going back to the office, and now you’re wearing these shoes you haven’t worn in two years, that’s really like asking for trouble.”
Jessica Cadmus, a personal shopper and stylist for Wall Street executives, said her clients have scaled back from wearing heels everyday to just once a week, or only for important meetings. Over the course of the pandemic, Alice Sofield mostly wore sneakers while working from home. But after a major industry conference in June, she said that after four days in high heels, her feet hurt so much she couldn’t even stand. She had to get cortisone injections in her heels to relieve the pain.
As the commitment to heels falls by the wayside, more casual workwear staples have emerged, including white sneakers. “The shift has been towards a more casual overall aesthetic across the board on Wall Street,” Cadmus said. “The clean white sneaker has been trending for both men and women.” It’s a look that works when paired with more formal pieces, which clients feel reluctant to wear now that the office aesthetic has relaxed, she said.
Sofield has noticed this trend, but still feels like she has to adhere to a certain standard of footwear professionalism for in-person meetings. “When I met my clients at the at the big industry meeting, they were all wearing sneakers,” she said. “I can’t, because they’re our clients so I have to look nice.”
The data, however, suggest that women are buying high heels again, just not for work. According to a July report by market research firm NPD Group, higher heels are gaining market share over lower heels as women buy shoes for special occasions. “Dress footwear sales are also shifting away from pumps — a more conservative and work-oriented style — to open-toe sandals, which are more occasion-oriented,” said Beth Goldstein, an analyst at NPD.
Whether for work or for play, wearing heels after a long hiatus puts you at risk of rocking a much less trendy shoe: a medical boot. “Heels are going to make you less stable, more likely to have lateral ankle sprains and other kinds of problems,” especially if you’re out of practice, Dr. Hanna said.
Nearly two months after the conference, Sofield said her feet still hurt when she wakes up in the morning. As she lines up another visit to the doctor to see if she needs another round of cortisone shots, she said she won’t be going back to the closet full of three-inch pumps she used to wear before the pandemic. “I have a pile of them that are going to Goodwill,” she said. “Like, what’s the point?”
No more office high heels: Women go back to work in sneakers | Financial Post
Jan. 18, 2023 "Women's tech collective Toast launches with aim to diversify hiring, reduce wage gaps": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps on BNN Bloomberg:
When Marissa McNeelands was hiring a senior artificial intelligence product manager last year, she asked recruiters to suggest an equal number of male and female candidates.
They didn't put forward any women, but she knew there had to be some who were more than qualified for the job.
"Really it was going into my network, talking to people, pushing people to apply," McNeelands, a Toronto artificial intelligence worker, recalled.
"I find with so many women they just need that extra little push to be like 'yeah, you are qualified, go for it, ask for more money.'"
That experience and others like it are why McNeelands thinks Canada needs Toast, a women's collective and talent organization, she and April Hicke, a digital product director in Calgary, dreamed up at Mont Tremblant's spa in Quebec last August.
By October, Toast had launched and in January, it opened for memberships with 2,000 women on the waitlist.
The name is "a play on toasting your nine to five goodbye" because the company strives to "get women out of the corporate jobs they hate" and is also a reference to making bread, a slang term for money, said McNeelands.
Members who pay $29 a month for Toast get access
to a community of women in tech,
online workshops,
in-person events,
job hunt and interview resources
and even legal advice during weekly Q&A sessions with a labour lawyer.
Toast also aims to unite employers
who pay,
promote
and treat women fairly with prospective hires.
Companies will pay Toast a commission fee when hiring someone based on a referral.
The fee, which is 20 per cent of the worker's base salary, will be returned within three months if the placement doesn't work out.
"Really our mission statement is to help women get to do the work that they want, at the pay that they deserve," McNeelands, Toast's chief executive, said.
Women had a 6.29 per cent chance of working in tech in 2001, but by 2016, that had fallen to 4.91 per cent, December research from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Toronto Metropolitan University showed.
Meanwhile, men had a 20 per cent chance of being a tech worker, which remained unchanged between 2001 and 2016.
Women in Canadian tech jobs were paid $68,900 on average in 2016,
while men made an average $76,200,
the report based on Statistics Canada added.
In 2021, those numbers rose to
$92,600 for men
and $75,600 for women,
report author Viet Vu said.
McNeelands and Hicke want women to be just as likely as men to work in tech and to earn the same wages.
They feel the imposter syndrome -- the belief that one's success is the product of luck rather than skill or experience --
and the way positions are marketed are contributing to the current inequities.
"We were hearing a lot of recruiters say that whenever postings go up, they don't even get women who will apply," Hicke said.
Many women won't make a play for the job unless they meet 100 per cent of the job criteria, McNeelands added.
"We had a woman approach us who was like 'I want this junior product manager job' and we were like 'you're a senior product manager. You're selling yourself short. We need to put you in a different role.'" she said.
Employers are contributing to women's inequities in tech too. Many companies have "flashy diversity, equity and inclusion pages and then you get into the organization and... it's an awful place to work," said Hicke, Toast's chief growth officer.
At least one business recently also told her "we don't really pay market value for roles but we make up for it with the culture."
Toast will vet employers and then match them with potential hires, but wants to bring anonymity to the process.
Through its system, candidates will build a digital profile that strips out their name, photo and other details that could bias a hiring committee from choosing to interview someone.
Employer names are replaced with descriptors like "big four firm" or "fintech startup."
University or college names and their location are removed, leaving only the degree or diploma received. Even years of experience are omitted.
"People that come with foreign experience, employers are ruling them out right off the bat, but these people have a crazy amount of experience that's so applicable," McNeelands said.
In organizations with more than 500 employees,
Asian-named applicants are 20 per cent less likely to receive a job interview callback
and in smaller organizations, the disadvantage is nearly 40 per cent,
a study from Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Toronto found in March 2018.
Experts have long believed similar biases may effect candidates who identify as a woman on their resume
or who have names someone could perceive as belonging to a minority group.
Hicke and McNeelands, who are running Toast while completing masters degrees, hope to eventually embed machine learning into their matching process.
They also dream of a day when resumes are obsolete, but realize that goal will take time.
"We'll get there eventually, but I think for now we are focused on building our name,
helping more women
and ensuring companies are hiring women and treating them fairly."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 18, 2023.
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