Walmart

"Undergraduate students overwhelmingly described sexism as a less serious problem than racism. Despite the fact that those same students were more likely to have experienced, observed, or heard about acts of sexism than of racism on their campuses, and despite the fact that the sex-based ones were far more likely than the race-based ones to involved physical acts including violence, from men grabbing and groping women to raping them, the majority of our participants said that they find racism more upsetting and consider it more of a problem that needs to be dealt with than sexism. Sexism, some even suggested, is only natural" (Flanders).

The previous quote was taken from the article "Walmart: Too Big to Sue?" from CommonDreams.org. I find this quote interesting because before reading it, I would have agreed with the fact that racism is more of a problem than sexism. To me, this seems like a societal problem that must be dealt with. The fact that people find racism more of a problem might suggest that we are not doing a good enough job spreading awareness of sexism. Furthermore, this means that our society does not recognize what can be considered sexism. There are multiple instances in every day life where sexism can be detected. For instance, survey the number of professors or administrators on campus: is there a majority of men or women? In most cases, it will be men. This is due to the patriarchal hierarchy that our society relies on. Not only is sexism not being handled correctly on campuses, but it is clear that is not being handled on a corporate level, as Walmart clearly displays. For example, the following quote from the same article is one example of how Walmart is discriminating against women. "Wal-Mart paid women less in nearly every job category, even though women had, on average, better performance evaluations and more seniority."