andrewducker | I'm disgusted

This is one of the reasons why I delayed announcing my pregnancy to people at work. I didn't want some key people to think that I suddenly wouldn't be trying for a post-doc or needing their support for funding applications.

I despair at attitudes like that. As for Alan Sugar, I always wondered what the fuss was about with him anyway.

I do wonder how we'll ever reach equal pay across the sexes though. Even when an employer makes all the allowances that it should do for a woman to take time off for pregnancy, I still don't see salaries averaging out the same.

We have a working culture where getting ahead usually involves working bonkers amounts of hours at work - finishing at six or seven in the evening every night. This obviously leads to higher productivity levels for men (and women without children) who are willing to 'live for work' like this.

The only thing I can think of to rectify that would be to have much stricter controls on how much time anyone is legally allowed to work. With the political and cultural climate of the UK, I really don't see us ever reaching that. Hope for European legislation?

OK, wierd thing that isn't mentioned in the article at all - *actual* effects of pregnancy, potential pregnancy, or motherhood on a woman's effectiveness in the workplace. I mean, come on, surely someone's done a study. Everyone's either assuming that it has a dreadful effect (Alan Sugar) or assuming it has no effect at all - surely there must be some, you know, at least semi-concrete statistics to add to the argument?

Given the statistics on diminishing efficiency with increasing working hours beyond 40, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many mothers who can't work 60-hour weeks are actually more efficient.

As a sometime employer, my first thought were "well, what do the numbers say?".

I'm going to defend Alan Sugar as that question is always taken out of context. Kate was a single mum, separated from her husband, with two young kids, applying for a job based 250 miles from her home and her parents who were also her primary childcare givers. He was asking her what her childcare arrangements would be - not saying she wasn't a worthy contender just bringing her down to earth.

Yes mothers are discriminated against - even in our own company, I'm happy to discuss this with you offline - myself and other mothers have _never_ been passed over for promotion etc. but we also never get asked to travel for work purposes - even when we are the most suitable person for the job.

You've certainly got a point about the relative efficiency of a burn-out worker in their 60th hour of work being reduced, but on the other hand a role like project manager is difficult to split between more than one person.

And overall, it's not about numbers, it's about the principle. Even if the numbers said pregnant women and mothers were less efficient hour by hour, it still wouldn't be grounds for allowing employers to discriminate.

am i right in thinking that companies pay maternity pay (and not the govt)? if so, while morally icky, there is a business case against risking the cost of having to pay that plus the second salary of a stand-in...

Edited 2008-04-23 18:16 (UTC)

But that's the point - the government steps in to tell you that you can't do that, so as to make things fairer.

We had three project managers on my last project - one was nominally in charge, but all three could make major decisions, and the work was split between them. It can be done.

companies pay maternity pay

Not really, they pay it initially but claim it back from the Govt. The bigger issue for most employers is paying someone to cover combined with lower return rates.

You hire a temp, don't advertise for a full replacement to train up, then the new mother doesn't come back or wants to go part time. Of course they have to have the right, but it can really mess things up (and even those that plan to return sometimes don't).

Then there are things like evening/weekend availability, ability to travel at short notice, etc. SB is at work now, I'm providing childcare as I work from home, but if I were to get an office job we'd have some serious rejigging to do, and I'd still be less flexible than a single bloke.

One of the things that Sugar is right on is that not being able to ask and discuss at all does sometimes mean that you can decide not to hire. And sometimes it's essential you don't do so. Once hired a temp for a 6 month contract who was three months pregnant but didn't say—there was no way she could complete the contract, but the last three months were the stressful all-hands-all-hours time. Legally she was covered, but it meant me and my deputy doing 80 hour weeks.

The laws need to reflect what's needed, and that includes ensuring families and mothers can work effectively, that employers frequently think they can't is partially due to outdated attitudes, and unfortunately partially due to overly idealistic regulations.

Horrible minefield to try to sort out though :-( (and sorry I started rambling, long day)

Fairer for who? As Sugar points out, some employers who are prohibited from asking the question are just going to mark down any woman of childbearing age who is in a long term relationship. This'll be especially acute for smaller companies who can't afford to train someone up and then have them disappear for months. That's less fair on the women who aren't actually planning on having kids.

One of the things that Sugar is right on is that not being able to ask and discuss at all does sometimes mean that you can decide not to hire.

I don't get this at all. You can ask them if they're ok with long hours, weekend work, travel, where do you see yourself in 5 years time, etc. There are all sorts of reasons why they might not be ok, of which kids are only one. Why pick on mothers?
If they strike you as the sort of person who's only going to realise on the first day of work that it interferes with picking up the kids from school then you've got a much better reason not to hire them than the fact that they're a mother.

Yes it sucks to be the employer when you employee changes their mind or has something unexpected come up, or lies in the interview, but that also happens for many reasons. I've never worked more than 3 years at any job despite having no kids, and I still usually outlast most of my (mostly male) colleagues. Had a contractor once who announced a few weeks in that actually, he'd had a better offer elsewhere, so was burning his bridges and out of here. It's what you have to put up with when hiring humans. Some of them suck. Most of them have a life outside work.
Maybe she'll get pregnant, maybe he'll suddenly decide it's time to achieve his dream of sailing around the world. You try to get their measure in the interview then take your chances.

Now that was sickening. I knew there was something about the Katie thing in the last Apprentice that didn't seem quite right...

Though I suspect that it doesn't matter if the big question is or isn't asked. As long as it is or isn't asked of both sexes:

"So Mr Smith, your CV is outstanding. We'd like to employ you, but it says here you'd like a family before you're forty. Would you care to reconsider before we make a decision...".

Though in my devious mind, the answer seems to be getting a contraceptive pellet injected into your arm and then (truthfully) telling a prospective employer you are incapable of having children in a very, very sad voice.

It's illegal for them to mark down all women of childbearing age too...

And another reason to quit working after I have kids. I hate the fact that this sort of sexist crap makes me feel this way. Although I'd love to be a strong independent woman and still to my guns, it'd be easier just not to have to risk putting myself through this...

OK, devil's advocate moment here, and please, please believe I'm not advocating for discrimination against mothers or pregnant women:

Why not?

We don't have a choice about our sex, fair enough. We also don't have a choice about our mathmatical ability, but I'm allowed to explicitly discriminate on that basis - if I'm hiring someone for a position requiring mathematical knowledge, I can totally say "you just don't have the maths aptitude. Sorry. Goodbye."

I can discriminate based on social aptitude (and we don't have a lot of choice about that either). I can discriminate based on random chance ("Oh, you worked with Bob? Cool. You're hired.").

What's the key difference here?

And companies never do anything illegal ... yeah, right.

One of the problems with hidden discrimination, is that it is hidden, and so hard to prove.

If you're asked "how will you arrange your job so you can do it and raise a family/run a convention/look after your disabled mother/have your kidney dialysis/handle your depressive episodes/run for city council/be a union rep" then you can reply and the prospective employer can choose to hire you based on full disclosure. But if you are potentially hiding something that will affect the company, then only the potentially pregnant are given legal protection for the hiring process (as I understand things).

And eventually, whatever is said about fairness, it usually comes down to a human making a decision based on "feeling" (predicting how well this person will do their job, how they will work with other members of their team, how quickly they will become productive, how likely they are to leave again quickly etc.) so leaving some factors to be hidden, makes it easier for the hirer to say "oh, no, I never gave that any thought at all, I just figured she wouldn't fit in with the current team and so hired the middle class white male instead")

But I don't have any answers ... it's one of those things where there's an obvious right answer in aggregate but it gets much more difficult when you try to apply that to small individual circumstances.

In your "acceptable" disciminations about say, mathematical ability, or social aptitude, or random chance, these can probably apply to anyone - male or female.

With pregnancy, this is a female-only thing. That alone makes the playing field instantly unbalanced. Since that's the starting point, it makes every other comparison moot, with the sole exception that you can choose to look at every male candidate from age 16 to 99 as having the potential to become a father to a child at any point. Most employers don't do that, though, from what I can gather.

The discrimination is based on a perception of biology. It strips away the possibility that some women *can* work through their pregnancies, some will want to come back to work asap, etc. It discriminates against all women of child-bearing age, even if they have no intention (or even the ability - don't forget many are infertile) to have a child, simply because they are the part of the species that is supposed to handle that particular job.

In short, it's wrong. It's damaging to society as a whole. I honestly believe there are more benefits to an employer who is willing to work with female employees around the issue of childcare and pregnancy than there are disincentives.

Let's look at the other things you're not allowed to discriminate on:

* Race. ("Sorry, I don't hire darkies, it'd annoy the other employees.")

* Age. ("30 is too old to be a programmer -- you can't possibly be flexible enough.")

* Religion. ("You're not Christian enough for me.")

* Sexual orientation. ("BDSM is against God's will. If I hired you I'd be subsidizing sin.")

...

In all of these cases, the reason for the ban is simple social engineering; it is deemed that people in a position of power will abuse it to the detriment of out-groups they feel they can discriminate against. It is also deemed to be a social ill to permit arbitrary exclusion on these bases.

The reason for including women of childbearing age in this basket of out-groups is that they are discriminated against; pregnancy/child rearing was frequently used as an excuse for firing them before they could acquire seniority, and still is. (In Japan, until relatively recently, respectable and large companies often fired their female employees when they married, "so they could devote themselves to their home life"). Seniority tends to accrue with age, but women have a relatively limited window of years in which to raise a family. By excluding women of child-bearing age from the workplace, women are prevented women rising to positions of significant social, corporate, or political status.

In Japan, until relatively recently, respectable and large companies often fired their female employees when they married
Also the case in Ireland thirty years ago - it was assumed that my mother would stop working when she got married. So she took her ring off every day on the way to work...

Oh, I agree. I think that the laws, in this case, are largely there for normative effect - to make it clear that some things are not acceptable. And for more egregious cases to be used as a public sign to that effect.

That makes sense, yep. Good explanation!

I'm really trying to come up with a crowbar to stick into the argument somewhere, but it does make sense.

Having said that - I thought the argument was about discriminating against people who are not just female, but who are both female and explicitly planning to have children soon? That's a different social group with voluntary inclusion, and not a significantly more out-group than women as a whole.

Edited 2008-04-25 12:24 (UTC)

Well, hence my earlier question about whether there are any hard facts on how pregnancy or the possibility therof affects work output. It's kinda seeming like there isn't any evidence that it *doesn't*, which would in turn, given that the intuitive belief is "yep, that's going to have an effect", makes employers' concerns seem more reasonable.

Having said that,

autopope's comments below are very sensible.

Note to people coming here from Andrew's LJ post - please read my comment above too (outwith this threaded view).

Edited 2008-04-25 12:26 (UTC)

The key difference is whether you can do the job or not. It's to the detriment of society and the economy if employers hire on the basis of characteristics which have nothing to do with whether you can do the job.

I think that the wider picture of health concerns in employing someone would suffice as a general comparison.

Can you assume that every person suitable to be hired won't at some point fall ill and need significant time off work? Can you assume that every person won't require leave for family or compassionate reasons, or that their situation won't change where something happens that requires more flexibility with their position?

It's tempting to believe that in an interview you can gauge all these things and come out with an employee that you can depend on, rain or shine, male or female. I just think that's the wrong attitude to take with the job interview process. Shit happens, people change, etc. To assume that a woman is going to be an unstable employee because she may become pregnant or may have a child is to undermine everything else that the woman may bring to the table: experience, hard work, loyalty, etc.

Edited 2008-04-25 12:27 (UTC)

I'm disgusted

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