Life

This Site Will Tell You If Your Company Is Sexist

by Emma Cueto

It's unfortunate that in 2015, women still have to think about whether or not a potential new workplace is friendly to women, but alas, here we are. Fortunately, there's a new website called InHerSight that allows women to anonymously rate their workplaces based on how they treat their female employees. Which is awesome, since that information is both hard to find and yet also vital to your future job happiness.

There are a lot of potential issues women have to put up with in the workplace, from sexual harassment to being "mommy tracked" to an office culture that's just not inclusive. And that's not even including legal inequalities like no mandated maternity leave and the fact that paying women less is still allowed. And while there's only so much you can do about any of that while choosing a job, it would still be nice to know you're not walking into a place where, for instance, sexual harassment is totally normal.

Plus, knowing that potential new hires — and anyone else with an Internet connection — can find out about any sexist company practices might inspire some companies to at least try to change.

"We believe that scoring employers on their support for women and making those scores public will hold companies accountable for their hard and soft policies," InHerSight's founder Ursula Mead told The Huffington Post. "And that providing women with a safe and anonymous way to share their insights is how we get there."

The site allows women to rate their companies anonymously on a wide variety of points, including maternity leave, management opportunities for women, and the office environment. People can also leave written reviews as well.

The site is still relatively new and doesn't have a lot of data yet, but what they have collected is fairly illuminating.

For instance, here's a general view of how women have rated Google so far.

Overall, Google seems to be one of the more women-friendly workplaces currently on the site.

The site also provides more detailed breakdowns of each company, too. Here's an in depth look at MIT, for example.

There are also written reviews on the site as well, which obviously aren't always representative of the company as a whole, but can definitely put things in perspective in a way the numbers can't. Here's an example for the Department of Defense, one of the worst rated workplaces on the site.

Other low-ranking workplaces include companies ranging from Comcast to The New York Times.

Mead says that In Her Sight would like to become "like TripAdvisor for women in the workplace," a place to both share experiences and gain information about potential career decisions.

Interestingly, the site currently doesn't seem to have any verification mechanisms in place to ensure that reviews and ratings really are submitted by female employees. Though the site does ask for some basic information about a reviewer's job, everything is anonymous, meaning no name or email are given, which obviously makes it impossible to verify someone is who they claim to be. This could cause some problems if companies ever decide to try to make themselves look better than they are.

Still, the idea of having a place where women can get information about sexism in various workplaces is awesome, and a resource that's long overdue.

So is your office on the site? Go take a look.

Image: Giphy