Deja vu
Last week I posted about a mom who stole from a bank. I was even so bold to say that I thought due to the headline “Mom, daughter, sister, wife & grandma” it would get a lot of clicks. I was wrong. I have been thinking about why the story did not get as much attention as my other stories about pink collar crime. It may be déjà vu to the time that Dr. Freda Adler wrote Sisters in Crime. As you may remember, Dr. Adler wrote Sisters in Crime in 1975 during the time of women’s liberation. She had over 300 media events including the Tonight Show and being interviewed by Barbara Walters. But all she got was pushback from people stating she was taking away from women advancing in the workplace. She even told me on the phone that if she knew how much grief she got she may never have written the book. Her thesis was that women would be incarcerated in greater numbers due to more women being in the workplace.
I tweet regularly about #pinkcollarcrime. There are amazing news articles daily (thanks to Google alerts) about women stealing in the workplace. However, deep down I am starting to think that people don’t want to hear about nice women breaking rules and stealing.
Like Dr. Adler in no uncertain terms do I want to take away from women and their gains in the workplace. What I want to do is to educate business owners and managers about the potential of pink collar crime. With more and more women in the workplace and with an increasing number of women being the primary breadwinners pink collar crime will increase just due to the numbers.
Recently I was asked if I was “picking” on women. My answer was an unequivocal no. But if a man were doing “Catch Her If You Can - Today’s Pink Collar Criminal" he may have a more difficult time than myself. I have touched the glass ceiling, my daughter is a staunch activist (even though she still is in high school) and my family has always supported my passion for work.
There is no honesty chromosome that women possess. That is what Dr. Adler brought up over 40 years ago. I will keep drawing attention to pink collar crime and as Dr. Adler told me someday there just might be a Bernice Madoff.