Introduction and Observation

Welcome to my blog for the Introduction to Women's Studies 201 class I am taking during the Fall, 2012 semester! Since this is my first blog post, I will quickly introduce myself. My name is Christopher Noack and I am a senior at the Univeristy of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, majoring in speech communication with a minor in organizational communication https://twitter.com/cjnoack12. I am taking this women's studies course not only as elective credits, but also because I enjoy gender studies. I am enrolled in the Gender and Discourse (Communication/Women's Studies 316) this semester and I have already taken Gender in Communication Contexts (Communication 436) last winter interim. I am graduating in May, 2013 and I hope to use this blog as a possible professional reference – I will still speak very openly about what I think and believe with some examples from my own experience, while maintaining a professional composure.

For this specific blog post, I would like to highlight a personal observation example of gender in the workplace. I currently work at the Bergstrom Buick-GMC Truck dealership located in Appleton www.bergstromappletonbuick.com. We are currently undergoing a $2,000,000 renovation – almost a complete overhaul of the store's showroom and service departments. The dealership employs a ratio of approximately 90% male vs. 10% female workers, with 100% of the female employees enrolled in administrative and sales roles. About five years ago there were a few female employees working in the detail departments, but we have generally lost our female population in that service industry for our store. During the renovation, the wall between the men and women's bathroom/locker room in the service department was demolished, resulting in the creation of one large changing room for the male gender only. As soon as I noticed this, I immediately had come up with my first blog post idea. Since the workplace is more about gender equality in the year 2012 than ever before, it surprised me this change was made.

I asked myself three questions,

1) What if in the future we end up employing female detail or service technicians?

2) Would this be a form of discrimination?
3) Have any other employees in the company noticed this change? Or has anyone else thought as critically about the removal of a woman's bathroom as I have?

I spoke to the few female co-workers of mine about the renovation; most of them didn't even know the change had taken place, but ultimately expressed and questioned the same concerns as I have. I had to somewhat play devil's advocate to get some of the rational behind the change – some of the male co-workers had commented, “Of the .05% of women in the service field who would ever be employed at this dealership, they can use the women's bathroom in the showroom.” What do you think? Comment on your thoughts! Thanks again for checking out my blog... more posts to come.