Does A Woman Who Cleans The Office Have The Option To Speak Up?

We need to listen to hear out the unuttered echoes, to raise our voice for them.

I got time, to hear the words of a single mother who effortlessly cleans and keeps places tidy. She told me that she doesn’t get her clothes ironed by her company or receives food, like the men in the same place do.

She is choiceless, unprivileged, and obliged to abide by the rules of the management and does not have the privilege to speak up. Furthermore, she also told me that people working there for more than twenty years did not have an issue with this.

Would her speaking up without the support of her work superior, and colleagues help her?

And if she did speak up, she would have possibly lost her job, leaving her with no money to send back to her twelve-year-old son in Bangladesh. As an individual in the office, she is vulnerable without an agency or has any backing, it is risky step if she demands equality.

We are always told to raise our voices against injustices and not tolerate such discrimination against us. If she left her job due to this, would she get another offer? Or have a black mark on her record because she ‘spoke up’?

We have come a long way, yet not far enough

It’s 2022, and we have come a long way in terms of gender discrimination, but it is painful to hear about such meekly lived miserable lives around us.

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To resolve gender inequality problems, we need everyone to be involved and not just women, it’s a human right, not a female right!

Image source: Kazra Visuals, and Still from the trailer of the film Jalsa, edited on CanvaPro

Published here first.

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