wtf are work thinking?

Telling women to challenge discrimination is about as useful as those posters that tell women to watch how they dress so they don't get raped.

Wrong target, wrong message.

I have a feeling I know which company this is, the flaming bastards. Unfortunately I cannot comment fully or openly due to legal agreements around the women they have discriminated against for pregnancy/maternity related reasons. Although I will say their opportunities for working fathers are excellent. Presumably it helps because as a man you're more likely to hold a senior position and can call your own tune and there's none of this tricky having babies business to contend with for months at a time that means you have to "prove yourself again".

Anything that has the message "oppressed, don't let the oppressors oppress you so much" deserves to be shoved up the back passage of the person who wrote it and anyone who promotes it.

"whether they remove personal information like names from CVs to reduce the risk of unconscious bias in recruiting." Oh that would be such a good idea. And would work on many discriminatory levels, not just sexism.

I do challenge discrimination in my workplace. Responses have been:

• It's not the Company Working Men's Club, though. (Pointing out why there is a need for the women's network, and why isn't there a men's network which you girls should set up for us, because we don't actually care enough to do it ourselves.)
• Women have just as many opportunities as men, if they choose to take them. (I am the f'ing STEM coordinator; do none if you listen when I talk about barriers to girls and women in IT? I've sat on a stage talking about it - oh, but you don't go to diversity events, because you know you don't have a problem, because you're working here, Bear.)
• HR responded to a query about whether they remove personal information like names from CVs to reduce the risk of unconscious bias in recruiting. They don't, because all our managers are aware of this and it's not an issue. (But they're not all aware, and it is an issue. Well, not currently, as we're not recruiting just now, but when we are it is.)

I could go on, but my blood pressure says it's best not to.

I need [crying tears of frustration] and [bleeding forehead from banging head on desk].

Surely the solution to ending stigma of p-t men is for them to challenge discrimination? If your reading of the report was correct and it's those who was being discriminated against who should challenge the discrimination (although I interpreted it as meaning that everyone should challenge discrimination).

I don't get the point of this report,though. It appears to have had absolutely nothing to say that hasn't already been said. Your new CEO appears to have wanted to make the point that women are holding themselves back by applying the 100% instead of the 60% rule. But some useful advice on how companies can assist in the breaking of that mentality might be useful - we've talked on here about the wording of adverts (particularly the need not to state that competencies are essential when they aren't). Internal recruiting managers could make it a point to invite candidates to apply and all recruiting managers could be willing not to recruit a candidate who only fits the 60% rule. It's a poor, lazy choice for an organisation - but apparently that isn't the problem?!

They recommend that women challenge discrimination

Do they recommend that organisations take reports of discrimination seriously and act on them? Or create an environment where people feel it's not career suicide to report stuff?

Of course there is Yops. It's a very obvious pattern and there's no mystery as to why it exists.

LR, I don't want you to reveal anything that risks your job. Apologies if it read that way. And I am not going to start speculating.

Your later comment (which wasn't there before I posted) about your CEO-elect's privileged upbringing is very important, I think. I work for a multi-national in another industry, and we have a woman CEO. Rich, white, no kids. Other companies in the same industry have similar on their boards. There is a pattern here.

The other reason we are supporting you is because we understand where you are coming from. We've experienced that exasperation or the sense of not being quite able to articulate why something annoys you so much. We can imagine what the report says because we've seen these "recommendations" before in one guise or another and basically they all centre round the men with privilege telling the little ladies how they need to behave in order to get on in the world that they created for themselves specifically to exclude women in the first place.

Yes Yops because surprise surprise we actually listen to women and support them here. And you know what we don't need "recommendations." I've fucking had it with "recommendations."

At the end of the report they made 12 recommendations on how to get more women into business.... 3 were for women. They were basically, act like men.

Well, I'm annoyed, so it didn't say act like men outright.

But you knew you could come on here with your annoyance and get roundly supported, without actually stating what the 12 recommendations were. Why do that? If you listed them, there might be some good stuff in there that other people here could use in their own places of work, for example. This could benefit other women in other workplaces in the long run.

The 60% statistic is from Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean in". An interesting read, except she writes from such a position of privilege it is hard to equate it to real life. i read it on holiday and it almost went in the sea several times i was so cross with it.

"ending stigmatisation of men who do childcare" Really? What about the stigma, assumptions and barriers attached to women who do childcare? Are women just meant to suck that up?

There really doesn't appear to be any analysis of root causes or as cailin pointed out, changes to the attitudes and behaviours of the men in the workplace.

Let me guess - enhanced paternity pay wasn't on that list ? Or anything in fact that puts men in the position of being equal carers thus facilitating more women to put the hours in and have the flexibility to take on senior leadership roles....

In my mind this is related to the "men who parade how feminist they are" thing. And in some ways I think it's more damaging than outright misogyny. It's men patting themselves on the back thinking they're so enlightened by producing these endless reports and recommendations without ever once looking at their own attitudes and their own behaviours. My own DH started spouting off about a guy at work (who is a misogynist dickhead and very obviously so) but shut up PDQ when I pointed out some of his own attitudes and behaviours that weren't a million miles away from that guy's.

I am entirely and utterly sick of men doing the head tilt and the helping hand as if women are pitiable creatures who just need a bit of mollycoddling.

Sorry that grin was to Alternative.