Spitting with rage

[taimatsu]

It is a long, long time since a news story has made me quite this FURIOUS. This Guardian piece by Kira Cochrane describes just how prevalent and blatant discrimination against pregnant women and mothers STILL is in this country despite it being ILLEGAL. I find it utterly horrifying and rage-inducing that employers are still so ready to make the lives of women difficult because they dare to have children and work at the same time, or even dare to be 'of child-bearing age' (as Cochrane says, that's very nearly ANY woman who is looking for a job. ANYONE, these days.) Men do not get asked if they plan to have children, when they got married, or anything of the sort. Their family lives are of the most minimal interest in a job interview. If a man announces he is becoming a father he is not an instant target for constructive dismissal, bullying, or a sacking. It is sexism pure and simple, because women happen to be saddled with the apparatus that carries children for nine months, whereas men's biological contribution is delivered inside a minute. Men can have a career and a family and no-one questions it, but when women want to do EXACTLY the same thing suddenly they're 'trying to have it all' and this is seen as greedy or irresponsible or over-the-top.

IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. And it makes me feel sick and scared that it is not at all unlikely that this very thing will happen to me inside the next ten years. That is all.

Comments

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

Whilst I'm not excusing the behaviour, it's only sexist due to biology. If men had the same level of paternity leave, or maternity leave was shared equally amongst men and women you'd soon see changes - and not for the better. As it is, I've seen employers being less than happy about the two weeks paternity leave they are legally obligated to provide.

Family lives of men are generally of minimal interest because they do not impact hugely on work. I have also seen cases where men's family situation is significantly more constrained than average (in terms of working hours, travel, etc) and this does impact on how they are treated at work.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Men also tend to actually work longer hours once they have children - either trying to get more overtime to help cover the extra costs of raising the children, or else working extra hours in an effort to seem more conscientious. Bosses like their male workers to be fathers because they are aware of these work patterns. If a child is ill, it's more likely to be the mother who has to take time off work to look after the child.

Whereas with women, sadly it's still very much a case of pick one: family or career, because it's damned unlikely you can do both. The ones that do invariably find they can't pay enough attention to either, and it's the children that suffer the most.

Of course, if you happen to actually want to be a stay-at-home mother, you then have to face all the crap of being treated as a second-class citizen who has somehow let down the great sisterhood of feminism by not going out to work. One of the benefits of modern emancipation of women is that you're supposed to have a choice - but woe betide you if you don't make that choice.

(Hello, been here, done this before, currently doing it the second time around and nothing has changed since the first time around fifteen years ago, I'm afraid. And people wonder why I treat feminism like it's a dirty word....)

[taimatsu]

I am well aware that there are feminists who disdain women who genuinely want to take on traditional caring roles. However, doesn't the 'second-class citizen' treatment come even more from society as a whole, because unpaid work/"women's work" is devalued or not valued at all?

Yes, homemaker women are caught from both sides these days, and it sucks. I think there are strands of feminism out there which don't make that mistake. Certainly I consider myself a feminist and strive to avoid falling into that trap.

[taimatsu]

I'm not sure you would see changes, in the sense that if men had the right to the same kind of parental leave as women, they would be pressured not to take it and because of the influence of traditional family structures, the breast-feeding issue, the pay gap etc. they would still find it easier to not take their leave than women would. I see what you mean and I may be slightly missing the point of your comment.

Family lives of men are generally of minimal interest because they do not impact hugely on work. Yes - *because* they are assumed to have a woman at home doing the baby-wrangling. Family life impacts proportionately more on women at work because historically family duties have been women's responsibility. It just drives me nuts that employers do not assume that a man might have caring responsibilities in the way a woman might.

Re. your point about men in non-traditional situations - yes, I imagine it is hard for them, just as it is for women.

I suppose in the past 'family' was the responsibility of the partner who was not part of the labour force; now that has definitively changed, so employers and the law are somehow going to have to find a way to achieve parity for people who have families. Or extend the same discrimination to *all* people with families, male or female. I don't think that's a better option.

I may not be terribly coherent, I'm pissed off.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

employers and the law are somehow going to have to find a way to achieve parity for people who have families

I think you're hitting on the key issue here... but I'm much less optimistic than you. Employers are going to do no such thing. Nor will the law, because it can't.

The problem is an economic one. Staff who take substantial career breaks and/or have non-negligible family duties are less productive. (Yes, that's a topic sometimes debated, but in my experience it's unfortunately quite obvious.) So the real question is who pays for the massive productivity cut. If the answer is "employers" (as it currently is) then obviously they'll often do everything they can to avoid hiring such people.

Policy questions which come down to "Who pays?" are always tricky. I don't expect to see significant progress on this in our lifetimes. In fact it may get worse as our continued rejection of traditional lifestyle stereotypes leads us to view having children as a lifestyle choice more like a hobby. Consequently "parents pay" will seem fair to many people (especially non-parents).

[taimatsu]

I do have some sympathy for the 'lifestyle choice' thing; it is easy to find anecdotes from irritated non-child-associated workers who resent having to cover for colleagues who rush off to school sports day/Johnny's tummy bug/childcare letdown emergencies. And it is indeed unfair in that sense. But at the same time, and I am not equipped with the information or the ability to make this argument so I'm going to stab wildly at it and run away, doesn't society *need* people to have children? I mean, don't older people always need younger people to, um, work in various useful jobs, pay taxes to support government services, and eventually look after them when they are aged and frail? So isn't parenting actually a thing society needs and should somehow foster?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

doesn't society *need* people to have children?

Yes, but if you pay people to do something they will do more of that thing. So the argument some people would advance is that we shouldn't subsidise raising children since we're not short of population.

For me the question is more complex. I feel that having children shouldn't be reserved for the wealthy. For all sorts of reasons both moral and practical.

As such, the whole thing's a monster can of worms. :-/

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

we're not short of population

That depends how you define 'we'. As I understand it, the UK's fertility rate is below replacement level (ah, here we go - latest ONS statistics are 1.84 children per woman (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=951)), so if the UK wants a self-sustaining population, it does need to encourage people to have more children. Obviously, worldwide that isn't the case, and the alternative is to make up the difference with immigrants.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, but there are two additional relevant factors:

1) Current immigration is not zero and nor will it be for the foreseeable future. Currently our population is increasing across almost all age bands. Barring a massive political change causing a large drop in immigration our population will continue to rise.

2) Even if our population were falling, this would not necessarily be a bad thing provided it stabilised somewhere sensible. We really don't know what factors would come into play. (For example, if smaller population led to a house price drop that might influence the average number of children upwards.)

[taimatsu]

the whole thing's a monster can of worms.
Yes indeed :(

I guess I'm just sounding off about the component of it which is still screwing life up for an awful lot of people who are disproportionately women. aaaargh.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Sound off all you like, you're not wrong.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

Hum. Well I'm not sure.

I'm not happy being made to help bring up other peoples children.

I'm happy to pay some money (tax) to pay for education, childcare and so on.

But I'm not happy to be told I have to be given unexpected stress on a regular basis because other people have sickly kids, and to be expected to think thats OK, and not have any choice on the matter.

I can see how employers feel the same way.

[mistress-carrot.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately there are too many women who expect to be able to have children, only work a 35 hour week, be allowed to leave work at any point in the day at short notice in case of emergency and still want to be considered for promotion, when their male and career female colleagues are working 45+ hours a day and are generally more reliable.

I'm sure there is discrimination in the work place against mothers and women of child bearing age. But I think a large portion of this could be stopped by potential mothers taking a step back and realising "one minute, I'm probably going to be out of work for 6 months while I have this kid and then I'm not going to want to work as hard as I previously did so that I can look after it, am I happy with the effects that will have on my career?" To few women realise that it's a choice, not a right, to have children and that in most circumstances you have a choice of a high powered career or an alright career that gives you the opportunity to spend the time you want with your children.

Yes, some women can juggle children with a high powered career, but most put their children first at the expense of their employer and so get overlooked.


Now that I've ranted I want you to know that I do intend to have children at some point, but when I do it'll be an informed decision and I'll be aware of the career implications.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure most women do realise this. I certainly did, and so did the mums I know who've gone back to work already (I'm still at home full time).

Also, promotions should be about who'll do the job best, not some sort of reward for putting in the hours.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and just in case it wasn't clear, the flipside of that is that if a woman has taken steps to ensure she can maintain her previous levels of commitment to work (whether that's by hiring a live-in nanny, having the father as primary carer etc.) then the fact she's a mother shouldn't affect how she is treated by her employer.

[mistress-carrot.livejournal.com]

But generally the person that will do the job best is the person that will put in the hours.

[liv]

I disagree. It's not only sexist due to biology, it's sexist due to sexism. Here in Sweden, men do get the same entitlement to "parental" leave as women do, and the situation is better. There's not an assumption that a woman who has a child or children is automatically not interested in career advancement. There's no real incentive for employers to prefer male over female employees (though in practice, women do take more parental leave than men).

It's not by any means perfect and utopian; women still do more than half the childcare in the country as a whole and most individual het relationships. But even with a slightly unequal situation, both direct employment discrimination and general sexist assumptions are much less prevalent.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

That sounds good, but research (http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2002/01/study/index.htm) still showed an 18% pay gap as recently as 2000. This suggests that when you say "there's no incentive" you're being a bit too optimistic. Unless there's been a dramatic improvement in recent years?

[liv]

I think you're missing my point a little. I certainly didn't intend to claim that everything is perfectly egalitarian in Sweden; that would be really naive. Gender-blind parental leave is not the solution to all problems. My point is that the situation is better for Swedish women than for English women, whereas syllopsium appeared to be saying that if we had paternity leave, it would make things worse. My point is that if employers are inconvenienced by everybody, then it balances out; not employing anybody at all is hardly a viable option, whereas not employing women can be and this is very often an outcome of unbalanced maternity laws in practice.

My experience is limited, of course; I'm comparing academia in the two countries, and academia is in some ways better for women and parents, and in some ways worse, than more standard professions. I certainly haven't been exposed to a real cross-section of attitudes towards the sexes either.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK. I'd read syllopsium's comments a little differently and thought he/she was saying that discrimination against women would just shift to discrimination against people taking parental leave generally. (Which would actually still be an improvement to my way of thinking, but that's another story.)

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

That is exactly what I'm saying, yes, and chimes with my experience of how maternity/paternity leave has been perceived in my (non expert) view.

However, I am of course open to correction, and can also see whereby if it was an issue that affected more people it might possibly be improved.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I know that in the UK nurseries take babies but most the nurseries started taking babies when they were 6 months old although they say they take the baby from 3 months. I assume it is the mother's decision being concerned about bounding issues and properly health issues if they want to breast feed. How is it in Sweden? Are they taking them even earlier? I saw short clip about Sweden Early Years and School education. I know they also have babies in their nurseries. I was impressed about their successful education.

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

Hmm... that is encouraging.

I do wonder how Swedish society is an improvement over UK society employment wise, though?

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Well, it happens primarily because small businesses often can't afford to cover women for maternity leave. As in literally cannot remain solvent as a business whilst paying someone on maternity leave and also paying for their replacement. They probably can't afford to get caught breaking employment law either, but given the choice between the two, they'll pick the one that's least likely to have them go under.

It's far easier for them to just not employ women full stop; it's considerably more difficult to police, and then they never get put in that position. It's an example of legislation put in place to protect women's rights actually resulting in them receiving more discrimination.

I've been thinking about this problem on and off for the past few months, and beyond radically redesigning how maternity leave works, I cannot see a way around it.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that sufficiently small businesses actually get the statutory maternity pay paid back to them by the Government -- so it's not the very smallest businesses who have this problem, it's the ones who don't quite qualify for that... (disclaimer: small business owner who does not have staff at present, has had in the past, but has never had to pay SMP)

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

Isn't statitory maternity leave REALLY REALLY bad though?

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

It starts off okayish -- 90% of average weekly earnings for the first six weeks -- but then goes down to 117.18/week (or 90% of average earnings if lower than that).

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Not sure if this is what you mean by 'radically redesigning' it, but if maternity leave was paid directly as a benefit from the state, rather than from the employer, that would reduce the strain considerably, although admittedly, it wouldn't get round the hassle of needing to employ maternity cover.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Actually, if employers get away with paying the absolute minimum wage they possibly can to women, invariably those women find that their wages aren't above the threshold at which the employer is obliged to pay maternity pay - at which point they end up on Statutory Maternity Pay instead, which is a state benefit rather than a payment from the employer. All the employer has to worry about then is just covering the missing staff member during their absence.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

The levels of Statutory pay are rubbish though aren't they?

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Yup; not much better than income support, to be honest. :-/

[ladyfrances.livejournal.com]

Radically redesigning how maternity leave works is exactly what needs doing imho.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

It's not just down to biology. As my mum says, the system would work perfectly if everyone (male and female) had a wife, to look after them and any children. Unfortunately, that's not the case and it's still women tha are expected to pick up the slack, while being penalised for doing so (both financially and career-wise and culturally by being blamed for any and all societies ills.)

[barakta]

Yes I concur with this. Many 'successful' career people are only able to be so because they have someone at home doing all the domestic and family stuff.

I'd like to see more options like viable part-time working, flexitime, home-working and indeed more of a mixed gender choice about people doing that inevitable domestic stuff.

[danfossydan.livejournal.com]

I think there is an issue of life work balance. And the ammount of work that is needed to be done. Its all a huge issue.

One day (may be already?) most people wouldn't need to work to make survial of their families an option. Like we don't all have to go out hunting any more. In fact hunting makes up nearly none of our GNP this days (tourist aspect may be?)

Idea's are what makes money for us I guess really, and we have idea making processes. Idea's for energy production, food production.

Less and less people might be needed to create all the energy and food that we need.

Everyone else gets to do paperwork, and management of people who aren't involved in energy and food. And gets to make nice things we like. And go on holiday.

Which way is society heading?

I suggest.

Less people in creation of food.
Less people in production of energy.
More people in ideas.
More people in Govenment, Law, order.
More people in academics.
more people unemployeed.

And I think those trends are likely to continue. So you have important lives, and less important lives. Breaking it all down to "trends" is horrible. But I think its how it is.

And mixed life balance, taking one bits of that. I think looking after family and children is a great choice, and men/women both should be encouraged to do it.

But how?

[emma-b79.livejournal.com]

I'm about to say this as devils advocate knowing that i'm going to get flamed and I've not actually bothered to read the article. please take that into account before anyone replies....

However from a small to medium sized companies point of view....having a woman of "child bearing age" (hate that phrase) who is planning on a family is very expensive. You not only have to pay the SMP of the employee but also pay the person who replaces the member of staff for anything up to a year with no guarantee that the original member of staff will ever come back.

This means that any training that was spent on the employee is wasted if the lady decides not to return to work.

Especially for a small company this cost becomes prohibitively high.

Although I dont agree with constructive dismissal or anything of that kind I can certainly see why a small to medium sized company would ask about someones family life/plans in an interview and base their employment decision on that information.

In a lot of cases I am aware of (one in particular springs to mind) the family has a stay at home father but as soon as the child is ill the mother has to take a day off work to take care of him.

I can certainly see why this would strike a difficult chord with many employers especially smaller ones.

[taimatsu]

I do see why this is a problem, and agree that the current scheme must be very difficult for some employers. (Actually, asking about someone's plans to have kids in an interview is illegal, so - as the article says - some clients are asking recruitment agencies to just avoid picking candidates who are women of childbearing age. This means, well, me and you, despite the fact that only one of us has any interest in doing the baby thing. *sigh*)

Um, I think what I'm saying is, yes, I know it's difficult, but discriminating against women should not be the answer. *sigh*

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

It's worth remembering some important points:

People will almost always take the easiest option.
If a law is enacted that significantly disadvantages people, they will find ways to work around it, particularly if there is no social pressure to do so.

Directly rejecting women of childbearing age is also illegal, as the age discrimination legislation works both ways. However, there are always ways round this..

The options to fix the situation are probably :

1) greater provision of services/allowances to employees so they're not disadvantaged. There is probably no money for this as government basically only supports people on the minimum wage.
2) change society so that prejudicing maternity leave is socially unacceptable.
3) integrate children into work - local subsidised creches, etc.

I would, however, in a rather unPC way and being single and having *no* desire for children note that I accept a proportion of my taxes to support parents, and that children are necessary - I would even support a (mild) tax increase if it went directly to providing child/work integration (of course taxes do not work in that way).

However, I do not support curtailing my life for the convenience of parents. I'm selfish enough not to want children - they're selfish enough to have children as it's certainly not done for the benefit of the community 99.999% of the time. In short - your choice, your problem.

I'm not completely unsympathetic to a biological imperative, but it is still a choice. Alternatively, as sex is a biological imperative too, can I please have Brad Pitt or Drew Barrymore?

[octalbunny.livejournal.com]

I was going to say "at least she's suing the bastards", but on reading it again see she was stressed in to a settlement.

[medusa.livejournal.com]

I find this really depressing. As you know, I am starting to think about my long term plans once my children are old enough to go to school and am already pessimistic enough about the chances of anyone wanting to employ me after such a long career break.

I think the atheist's employers talk about family commitments in their interviews (and they only ever have men applying for jobs in his department as they work with VMS which is a bit male geek orientated) but that is because it involves pretty heavy duty shift work and they want employees to be absolutely clear about what they are getting into. They don't discriminate against men who have wives and children and in fact are very lenient and nice about paternity leave - one of the atheist's team had over a month off when his child was born last year and no one in an all male team minded at all even though it was over Christmas and the New Year. Dave is getting two weeks paternity leave when our baby is born, which we are fine with.

[taimatsu]

It's possible, as livredor says above, that the sort of academic or high-cultural things I have the impression you are thinking about might be better at this sort of thing. Maybe. I certainly want to work in some kind of public service anyway, and I am hoping that means they will be a little better at sticking to the law and treating people fairly than profit-driven corporate hellholes. Maybe.

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the companies I've worked for would have been/are difficult about their legal obligations (and they all make up both paternity and maternity pay to full salary). Overall I imagine you're more likely to find crappy ones in the private sector, though; and it wouldn't surprise me if our cleaning staff etc, who are employed through contractors, do rather worse.

[aendr.livejournal.com]

Well, as you know I'm in a branch of the civil service. I did inform my current boss during a transfer interview that I hoped to be working on a family, and he said that he wasn't allowed to ask about it and it wasn't allowed to make a difference. I felt it best to be up front about it, then there's no surprises.

A mother who has been working is entitled to:

• up to 52 weeks maternity leave


• First 6 weeks - 90% of your average weekly earnings with no upper limit


• Next 33 weeks - Standard rate or a rate equal to 90% of your average weekly earnings. You will get whichever rate is lower.


• Last 13 weeks - nothing


• The standard rate from 6 April 2008 is £117.18 per week.

And it is this which I believe the government helps the employer out with. See http://www.dwp.gov.uk/lifeevent/benefits/statutory_maternity_pay.asp for details.

My employer is very good, paying full pay for the first 26 weeks (if you've been there a certain minimum length of time before getting pregnant), then the statutory entitlement for the rest. On the other hand, friends in the teaching profession only get the statutory entitlement and seem to be expected to try to make their leave fit in with school terms as far as possible. Even in the public sector employers vary.

I have observed that colleagues (I only know those on office rather than shift hours) returning from maternity leave or paternity leave are able to go part time, work flexible hours and for couples both working for my employer, work complementary hours. While my employer's policies are good, the working culture we have means that managers and colleagues are very supportive and this is also a very important component. The trouble with interviewing for jobs is that it is very difficult to find out how an employer (corporate entity), managers and colleagues will actually treat parental and child care issues (rather than what their corporate policies say). Working environments are heavily influenced by the attitudes of colleagues, no matter what the corporate policies are. Snide comments are snide comments, supportive attitudes are supportive attitudes.

[medusa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think they generally are. In my experience of being pregnant the worst company was the all female run London Marriage Guidance Council who were floundering financially and did their best to harass me out of a job. The best was DEFRA, who were great. I was actually a temp working via Adecco but had worked for them for so long that Adecco had to pay me full maternity pay when I had Felix, which was apparently a really rare situation. I don't think many people realise that temps are actually entitled to the same rights from their agencies depending on the length of their contracts.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

*wonders vaguely what would happen if a woman "of child-bearing age" took to her interview a medical note explaining that she'd had a tubal litigation/permanent contraception, and so was no longer able to produce children*?