Woman Job Hunting On Craigslist Finds A Posting For A Gutter Cleaner Job That Clearly States They Do Not Hire Females
There was no good reason why the company refused to hire women, which is extremely telling of their workplace environment.
fizkes | Shutterstock People often use Craigslist as a way to find items for sale, different services, community events, or even pets that are up for adoption.
Some people scour the site for job listings and openings, which was the case for a woman named Brooke. She was shocked when she stumbled upon a job posting that had specific requirements for who they wanted to hire and specific requirements about who they didn't want to hire.
She found a posting for a gutter cleaning job that clearly stated they do not hire 'females.'
"So, I’m sitting here, scrolling through Craigslist, helping my man look for jobs," Brooke began in her video. "And I was like, 'Oh, cool, roof cleaner repair tech.' He goes to the job application form. Look at this."
Brooke turned the camera to show her computer screen and the Google Forms application for the job, which included a screening survey. For one of the questions on the survey, it read, "Do you understand that we don’t hire females?"
Pulling up the name of the company, Vasil Home Services, Brooke demanded to know why they didn't think a woman could do the job and what made them think it was a good idea to put that bluntly on the application.
Also, their use of the word "females" instead of simply saying women is very telling of the kind of environment they must have at their workplace.
While it may not seem like something to gripe about, men often use the term "females" in a derogatory way to criticize and bring down women.
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It's an extremely exclusionary term and downright disrespectful because not everyone who was born a female identifies as a woman, and not every woman was born a female.
It doesn't take much to just say "women" instead of "females" because we're not animals. Men need to stop reducing women to their reproductive organs.
For a company to put it in their job posting is likely a blessing in disguise because no woman should ever work for a business like that.
A large percentage of women experience gender-based discrimination in the workplace quite often.
This job posting also brings up the unfortunate reality for many women, and that's the fact that we're either completely shunned from certain jobs or we're treated as less than.
According to the Pew Research Center, about four in ten working women (42%) in the United States say they have faced discrimination on the job because of their gender.
They reported a wide array of personal experiences, ranging from earning less than their male counterparts for doing the same job to being passed over for important assignments.
One of the biggest gender gaps is in income: One-in-four working women (25%) say they have earned less than a man who was doing the same job; one in twenty working men (5%) say they have earned less than a female peer.
Women are also roughly four times as likely as men to say they have been treated as if they were not competent because of their gender (23% of employed women versus 6% of men), and they are about three times as likely as men to say they have experienced repeated small slights at work because of their gender (16% versus 5%).
It's not some otherworldly phenomenon when women talk about the amount of misogyny and discrimination they face in the workplace, and companies that have a large ratio of men compared to women need to be doing their part to ensure that things like that aren't happening under their watch.
While that Craigslist job posting was quite telling, it's an important reminder that the fight for equality is far from over, and we should all be doing our part to make sure that people are being kind to one another, no matter what.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.