AIBU to be disappointed that the new CEO of the NCT is a man?

[ArcheryAnnie]

The new CEO of the NCT is due to start work shortly - a man, Nick Wilkie.

The NCT's mission is to support parents during pregnancy, birth and early childhood. Their line re the new CEO is that men can be parents, but my line is that it's only women who get pregnant and give birth.

There are many, many senior, suitably qualified women in the UK who could perform this role. Furthermore, from my experience with the NCT, all the events I went to, it was women who do most of the work. I'm tired of organisations where women make up the majority of the volunteers, or the workers, but where a man is the CEO. I didn't expect it of the NCT.

AIBU to feel massively disappointed that the NCT are putting a man in charge?

many women choose to take time out of their careers, or they choose to work part time, therefore not gaining the same level of experience as male colleagues

Yes, 'choose'...

Isn't it such a coincidence that women 'choose' to stall their careers, en mass, in a way that men don't.

Isn't it such a coincidence that women 'choose' to stall their careers, en mass, in a way that men don't.

Isn't it such a coincidence that women choose to get pregnant, give birth and breastfeed in a way that men don't.

All of those things will dent a career. There seem to be few women who feel able to give birth and return to work immediately. If a man took paternity leave so she could do just that, his career would take a hit too.

But why is it the case when these things shouldn't dent a career, but should in fact be positively advantageous, that we should ignore them? Here people are claiming that to count them would be to discriminate against a perfectly capable man which I think it a bit of a double standard.

I had the pleasure to meet a male midwife who was a trustee of the organisation for some time. I don't think he's still in the role unfortunately.

He was AMAZING and googling revealed that I am not the only person of the same opinion.

He was exceptional in trying to respect women's choices and treat them as individuals. He was neither pro-natural birth nor pro-intervention. He was however instrumental in helping me get an ELCS as a first time mother, without it being a stressful process and has made an enormous difference to my life. This is about as far from the media representation of the NCT as you can get.

He had a special interest in birth fear and was a real advocate of women centred care. He lectured on the subject and has led the way in it in the UK. I do believe that this meant that in order to do his job he had to do something that some woman can't do. That is he couldn't draw from his own experiences and then separate that from what others might think and feel. He only could listen and work from that. So he listened mighty hard.

Sadly he left the hospital a couple of months before I had DS. I'd have liked to have had the opportunity to thank him.

My point is, that I genuinely and honestly believe you would struggle to get a better candidate than him for the role he had at the NCT. I would like to think that any CEO that the trustees appoint to the role would be of the same calibre.

I think it's very important to acknowledge that being a ceo of a business and delivering the service at grass roots level are hugely different. The suggestion that a man can't be ceo of the nct also suggest that Karren Brady shouldn't be involved in professional football. Her uterus and the fact she's never played professional football haven't hindered her ability and success in a massively male dominated area. There are outrageous "equality" double standards on this thread. I feel desperately sorry for women who don't or won't acknowledge the role men play in family life or how becoming and being a father impacts them as well. If you want support for the physical impact of pregnancy, birth and early parenting then use your midwife, it's what they're for. A room full of "fionas" channelling whale music and gazing at their fannies in mirrors while terrified "Nigels" treat them like glass princesses is laughable to the majority of the population. The nct has to change its image and become accessible in able to do good and become a really helpful organisation. Ofcourse that's going to infuriate the more staunch lentil knitters but there you go.

Absolutely 100% spot on. Really little else to say after this post.

The point is that sex is not irrelevant. The NCT was set up by women for women. It has now moved into talking about the needs of men.
There is so much wrong with maternity care in this country, it is not as if there is not enough for them to do fighting for women.

Why should taking time out beyond the normal 1 year of maternity leave be advantageous? Why should going part time, as many women choose to do be advantageous?

I can see that giving birth might be a useful thing to have experience of, but only very slightly seeing as no women is going to have experience of every type of birth possible anyway. I can't see how having extended periods of time away from work is going to be useful at work.

I'm appalled at the number of posts agreeing with the OP. People should be chosen for jobs on the basis of their skills and abilities, not whether they have ever pushed a baby out of themselves. He sounds like he was the best person for the job and that's why he was chosen.

There probably will be some disaffection within the organisation as a result of it. (I remember taking great pleasure in introducing my husband to the leader of the local Bumps and Babes group, who was very much 'mums are best for looking after children', and saying that he would be attending from now on as I was going back to work.) But that always happens when there is change and this may be a really positive step for the NCT.

OP YANBU.

Amummyatlast When DS was tiny DW took him to a weekly clinic at the GP surgery: I forget the details thirty years on. On one occasion I took him and was met in the waiting room by sullen silence and dirty looks. The HV (I think) who took the clinic assured me that it was nothing personal; the mothers were probably talking about matters such as bf or recovery from childbirth which they did not want to discuss with a male stranger's ears around - which I understood.

But DS later had a schoolfriend whose mother died when his brother was born some three years after he was. The baby made it, and father brought them both up and very successfully too. I remember thinking that that would have been one group of mothers who bloody well had to put up with a man being there!

NCT was set up by women for women

It was set up in the 50s or 70s by Grantley Dick-Reed, a male doctor who was one of the first advocates of the natural childbirth movement.

Why should taking time out beyond the normal 1 year of maternity leave be advantageous? Why should going part time, as many women choose to do be advantageous?

I'm not saying that taking more than a year out should be particularly advantageous but that having taken any time to experience pregnancy, childbirth and caring for a young infant should give a candidate the edge. The more times they do this the better, as multiple pregnancies and childbirth experiences etc gives you a better chance of experiencing different scenarios. After all, these are the things that the NCT is all about and someone with first hand experience should surely have more to offer. I'm just confused that so many people are claiming otherwise and these are probably the same people who would claim that there are so few female CEOs because women take time out and therefore have less direct experience in the workplace.

Btw, has this man ever taken time out of his career to look after young children esp babies? Because even if they couldn't find a woman who had done that, surely they could have found a man that had taken more than two weeks paternity leave?

YABU. Unless the job requires him to give birth, a man is just as capable in this role as a woman.

As long as he is the best person for the job it doesn't bother me. If he got the job at the expense of a better qualified women then yes it would. It should be about the person not their gender. I am all for women doing traditionally male jobs and vice versa as long as they are best suited to the role.

So you would all be happy with an organisation for black people, with a white CEO at the head of it?

The NCT isn't an organisation for women, Morage, but for parents.

Why are people so unquestioning about whether he is the best person for the job? Esp when he lacks one very important piece of experience, which no doubt many other candidates could have offered.

Let's start by putting paid to the idea that he applied for this role. He didn't: he was headhunted, as CEOs are, and there would also have been women on the shortlist. They didn't get it. He did.

It is shameful that there are so few women in senior roles in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. It will change and it is changing, but slowly. Amongst all the possible candidates for any CEO position, there are currently way more men who have the right experience. I don't think that the cause of women would be served by appointing a woman simply because she is a woman -- and then discovering that she does not do the best possible job.

I particularly feel that it is a terrible mistake to think that only women should lead 'women's organisations'. In fact, we shouldn't have 'women's organisations'. If we think like that we will end up with a ghastly two-tier system of men's organisations, led by men, in manly sectors such as finance and energy, and women's organisations, led by women, in nice cuddly sectors such as all things children-related. Which sector would get the most access to capital, do you think? The most respect from government? Which would pay best?

In addition, we should look at WHY women are currently underrepresented in the leadership pipeline. They are fighting against a whole load of beliefs and biases, but one of the strongest is the belief that they will have babies and opt out of the workforce. Or, even if they do not leave work altogether, they will take their collective foot off the career accelerator and head for the more comfortable mummy track. So promoting young women is seen as risky (even if they don't want children) and promoting young men isn't. One way to approach this is not actually to give more and more benefits to women but to make it as risky to promote a young man as a young woman, i.e. to make it more likely that men will take that shared parental leave, want to work part-time, stay at home when the children are ill, refuse to work all hours that God sends. And we are never going to do that if women claim sole mastery over parenting and deny men any involvement or opinion at the childbirth and newborn stage. It's why NCT is right to bill itself as a parenting organisation, and why there is no reason whatsoever that its CEO should not be a man.

I'm not saying that taking more than a year out should be particularly advantageous but that having taken any time to experience pregnancy, childbirth and caring for a young infant should give a candidate the edge.

I disagree. To allow someone to have 'an edge' because of their biological make up is discriminatory against those who do not have that biological make up through no fault of their own.

So you would all be happy with an organisation for black people, with a white CEO at the head of it?

If that person had the right experience and values, then yes, I would be perfectly happy. But I'm not black, so I don't feel that my opinion on that can carry as much weight as a black persons. I am a woman that has experienced pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding though, and I can't see a problem with a man being the CEO of the NCT.

Why are people so unquestioning about whether he is the best person for the job? Esp when he lacks one very important piece of experience, which no doubt many other candidates could have offered.

No candidate will have both given birth and fathered a child.

I disagree. To allow someone to have 'an edge' because of their biological make up is discriminatory against those who do not have that biological make up through no fault of their own.

I'll ask again. Has this man ever taken any time out to look after an infant? Because he could have some direct experience of some of the issues that this organisation focuses on if he had chosen to do so. I'm guessing that he hasn't, as if he had someone from the "he's the best candidate for the job" brigade would be telling us all about it.

I haven't rtft but has anyone here actually seen the job description or the guy's CV? Apart from the outrageous double standards from the OP and other posters, it's quite clear that they also have absolutely no clue as to what the role of a CEO entails.

What makes you think that Stinkersmum. Some of us have been CEOs and understand the job very much.

A significant part of the role of CEO of a campaigning organisation is being able to speak passionately about your cause. Usually people with personal experience of the issues are better at this.

who has been? And for what type businesses?