1. Passport Vintage
@passportvintageA Conversation with Maria Oliveria co-owner of Passport Vintage. Passport an award winning vintage store focused on curating denim from the 60s-90s that aligns with current trends. Passport has just expanded so check it out!
How balanced is the retail industry, in terms of number of gender, titles and responsibility?
I don’t want to say it’s a female dominated field because I don’t know the exact stats but I can say that me myself, even when I was at the highest ranks at American Apparel, there were male employees below me that made the same amount of money I made or more. That was really frustrating. So, I think that’s still a think that women deal with. That’s why I really loved being an entrepreneur, because I don’t like someone controlling my paycheck. Obviously, that’s not realistic at every stage of your career.
What systems do you impliment to make an equal workplace?
I think that the most critical thing in retail, this is something that I’m willing to stand behind 100% and be an activist for is. The biggest problem with retail is scheduling so they schedule week to week and a lot of people have on call shifts, so you don’t know if you are going to be working. If you are a woman that needs child services, how the hell are you going to be on call? You have to arrange for child services and then if you don’t get called into your work, you lose money. Like that’s insane. So, one thing that we do at Passport, that should be required, is that we always schedule our schedule a month in advance.
I don’t want to say it’s a female dominated field because I don’t know the exact stats but I can say that me myself, even when I was at the highest ranks at American Apparel, there were male employees below me that made the same amount of money I made or more. That was really frustrating. So, I think that’s still a think that women deal with. That’s why I really loved being an entrepreneur, because I don’t like someone controlling my paycheck. Obviously, that’s not realistic at every stage of your career.
What systems do you impliment to make an equal workplace?
I think that the most critical thing in retail, this is something that I’m willing to stand behind 100% and be an activist for is. The biggest problem with retail is scheduling so they schedule week to week and a lot of people have on call shifts, so you don’t know if you are going to be working. If you are a woman that needs child services, how the hell are you going to be on call? You have to arrange for child services and then if you don’t get called into your work, you lose money. Like that’s insane. So, one thing that we do at Passport, that should be required, is that we always schedule our schedule a month in advance.
