Native Women in the Labor Force

Women in the labor force, in my opinion are generally underestimated and ignored but when it comes to the accomplishments of minority women I think this problem is magnified immensely. Particularly, discussing Indigenous Women in the labor force is difficult because we rarely hear about the trials Native Women go through in the work force if we are privy to any of their struggles at all. So for me this assignment had to begin with a little research because I know so little about the struggles Native Women face in the work force other than like many minority groups then are subjected to discrimination AND sexism because they are female.

Today there is a popular image of Native Women as sexualized beings which is portrayed by the popular media and even in Disney’s Pocahontas we see the stereotypical image of a timid Indian woman with long flowing black hair, wearing buck skin, running scantily clothed through nature. To illustrate some of the stereotypes Native women face here's an interview with two Native girls who are talking about these issues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzck-_MROrI&feature=related

If you go to google images and search “Native American women” you will also find images of stereotypical Native women including some very sexual images and even some nude pictures of “Indian” women. Also, you can find pictures of Indian maiden costumes so that you can be an Indian maiden for Halloween. Here are urls to some of the images you find when you search Native American women in google images however, i suggest you google it for yourself because it is very interesting to see some of the things that come up.

http://www.utopiasprings.com/treegirl.jpg

http://www.properperiodproductions.com/images/native_american_woman_early_1600_s1.jpg

http://www.psychic-tarotreader.com/images/native%20american%20woman%20w%20moon.gif

http://www.sillyjokes.co.uk/images/dress-up/fancy/ladies/value/indian-woman.jpg

With these images being portrayed by the media and even Disney I feel that finding a place in today’s society and in the work force must be extremely difficult for Indigenous women to be accepted and to get the recognition they deserve because they have to deal with this sexualized image along with other negative stereotypes along with the sexism many women face while trying to do their jobs.

Other than this rudimentary understanding however, I don’t know the struggles Native women face in their jobs today so I began to look into it a little more. What I found is that "Women of color have made noteworthy gains, both in terms of workplace numbers and status," said Commission Chair Cari M. Dominguez in an EEOC press release” (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aawomeneeoc.htm) however, Native women comprise 0.3 percent of the workforce in the U.S. which seems like a very small number. But in relation to the number of Native people residing in the United States this number is probably not as small as it seems. Never the less with only 0.3 percent of the workforce being made up of Native women it’s easy to see why we rarely hear about the difficulties they go through. In fact, even as I was trying to find out about Native women in the workforce I found very little information regardless of what I searched. Mainly I found information on minority women but even this information was limited. So where can I find information on this issue? Why don’t we talk about these issues?