Woman dyes her blond hair brown to get ahead at work
From sexism to the gender pay gap, women in 2017 are still fighting an uphill battle in the workplace. Now, Eileen Carey, a CEO in Silicon Valley, has discovered yet another quiet form of discrimination that women have to endure — hair color.
Carey, a natural blonde, was advised by another woman in the industry to dye her hair in order to get ahead at work … and scarily enough, it worked.
Back from #summitatsea Game Face On!
A post shared by eileen carey (@eileenmcarey) on Nov 12, 2016 at 1:40pm PST
“Being a brunette helps me to look a bit older, and I needed that, I felt, in order to be taken seriously,” Carey told the BBC.
The software professional isn’t the first woman to change her appearance to try to get ahead in a male-dominated industry. While interviewing other blondes for her startup company, Carey discovered that a considerable number of other women had done the same thing.
“There’s the fetishization of blondes,” Carey explains, which means that men are more likely to objectify blond women than brunettes.
A post shared by eileen carey (@eileenmcarey) on Oct 12, 2015 at 3:41pm PDT
A post shared by Glassbreakers (@glassbreakers) on Jun 1, 2017 at 4:17pm PDT
Carey’s makeover did not stop there: She went as far as wearing glasses and baggy clothes “to be seen as a business leader and not as a sexual object.”
Carey’s personal story not only is shocking but also proves that we still have some serious work to do when it comes to equality in the workplace.
Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.
