Time for a call to HR

Are you curious about the heroine work life? Great! It includes sexual harassment from your boss, constant comparison of your work to a male colleagues and excessive overtime that will hopefully kill you and let you reincarnate as a villainess in your favourite web novel. (If only!)

Now don’t get me wrong- I have no problem with showcasing the reality of misogyny in the workplace and bringing to light the issues that are often covered up by the industry. So you ask, what is it I have a problem with?

Incompetent FL’s that are in a passionless job and are mediocre at it, FL’s that don’t have a healthy work-life balance, and worst of all-  FL’s that wait for a man to solve all her workplace problems.

Why can’t we just have one written without the perfect good-looking male boss that forces her to work overtime, has terrible communication with the rest of his team and makes them terrified of him but is somehow is great at his job and goes from enemy to lover with the main character.

I’m sick of it!! You hear me? I’m sick of it!!

I think a healthy example of a relationship between the heroine and her boss is in the manga Sweet for Sweets where he clearly draws a line between personal and professional boundaries but is still kind to her and his employees and I love the fact that he’s unafraid to eat a parfait in public by himself despite a lot of men viewing that as emasculating.

Moreover, at the start of the manga it’s mentioned that she’s long due a promotion at work and as the book progresses, we- the audience can see she’s not incompetent at her job, so I think it’s just down to whether you interpret it as bad luck or workplace discrimination.

On a more obvious example, when reading Shuuden no Kankei I noticed that her male co-worker often steals a lot of the FL’s things from her desk without notice or warning- completely disregarding her feelings and human rights.

Additionally, this same co-worker pushes off his work to go on a date and ends up being added to the heroine’s workload. When he returns to work, he offers no thanks or apology and the only one to empathise with her is a female colleague. As if this wasn’t bad enough, when she hands in her work and there’s minor problems (because she’s only human- aren’t we all?) her boss immediately wants to pass it onto a more ‘capable’ worker -who just so happens to be a man! Whoopee doo! - and only hands her work back after a lot of negotiation.

But after these events it was nice to see her learn to stick up for herself at work and draw clear boundaries and it was a shame to see similar incidents repeat.

However, I have to ask whether the sexist workplace was written in as an obstacle to improve the heroine and get a backbone or just another plot point to make her seem exhausted and pitiable by the male lead to advance the romance.

I’m interested to read more positive examples of a healthy workplace environment in shoujo manga where we can explore even more diverse themes such as balancing a work-heavy lifestyle and personal passions or an effort to keep improving one’s work ethic.

Ps. I think it would also be nice to see more females in positions of power influencing the younger girls of that world.

My personal inspiration was Kyoko Mogami from Skip Beat!