I think DH is upholding the glass ceiling (not DIY). WIBU?

[Pa1oma]

DH has a company which employs maybe a thousand people, of which probably about 40% are women. It’s not a traditionally male industry like construction, however, in 15 years, there has never been a female director. Whenever I’ve asked him why this is, he says he would like this to change but no women seem to apply.

Then last night I heard him in the phone to someone discussing restructuring the board of directors and his words were, “She’d be worth consideration, but she’ll probably have a baby or something soon” . When he got off the phone, I told him what I’d heard and asked him if he knew for a fact that this woman was pregnant. He said, “Well I wouldn’t know but she’s in her late 30s and I think she’s been discussing it”.

His argument is he’s not going to risk over £100k on someone if he’s not sure they’re going to see “the next phase” through. My argument is, he is not in a position to presume anything about anyone. WIBU?

and the government covers maternity pay anyway

Only for six weeks, then it's limited to £145 a week, according to the page I've just googled. (Though from memory I don't think employers have to supplement SMP pay themselves, they can choose to pay nothing.)

A lot of this has to depend on the size of a business and it's genuine ability to absorb the cost of a woman not returning post maternity. For small businesses this has got to be a major issue that could impact all employees. A firm that has around a thousand sounds big though and surely the benefits of hiring a female (role model for younger female hires) has to offset the potential financial risk of her leaving because she MIGHT have a kid.
The DH's voiced opinion sounds very old fashioned for someone who presumably isn't very old?

Polly you’d change your attitude if you were not a “woman of childbearing age” but a woman who has one child and is 1 year post return from maternity leave

I absolutely fundamentally do not buy the small business crippling financially argument.

Government pays the SMP, so effectively pays the wage of the roger on maternity leave. Company hires another temporary staff member. Yes, that’s a PITA in terms of recruitment- but that’s all. It’s actually a business opportunity if you do it right - proper handover, right person in to cover, potential fur that person to be an asset to the business in the future, either by expanding your employee pool if you can afford it by doing great business, or just through new contacts in the future when they move on after maternity cover is over, which most businesses thrive on.

So I think it’s just a lazy excuse, frankly. Depressing to see it trotted out on this thread.

Yy to this strategy

"Next dinner time you should say to dd that she should look at companies before joining them, If they have no senior women don’t touch them with a barge pole. It clearly shows they don’t value women."

I've had this with a couple of fellas I thought knew better. Men I've known and respected for decades, but who turned out to have pockets of previously unrevealed sexist dinosaur shit. Such a disappointment.

One of the was a guy arguing that the reason there were few women in a history's of great physicists was that there had simply been far fewer women who were talented physicists in that time span. He would not accept that disbarring women and girls from education or access to work or training in the sciences might have had a bearing on that, and prevented brilliant physics minds in female bodies from being brought to fruition. And this guy was a physics teacher at an all girls school. I could hardly speak to him I was so raged, and it was a real scales falling from my eyes moment.

But it did bring home to me why "check your privilege" is a thing, and made me wondering what I'm carrying around in the way of privilege-based bias that I can't even see.

Compulsory paternity leave is proven to help balance out gender inequality. I do so wish it would come to the Uk in a meaningful form.

Next dinner time you should say to dd that she should look at companies before joining them, If they have no senior women don’t touch them with a barge pole. It clearly shows they don’t value women.
^^ sounds great if said fast, but actually utter rot.
The dd either get into the family business with the status and deferrence of being bosses daughter or dad will utilise his contacts to position them somewhere else. These are prosperous mc girls with a business owning daddy they already have that financial and social advantage when seeking employment. They already have an elevation and advantage. They also have a father who doesn’t value working women.

Gilly- if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. You're going to end up causing yourself more trouble than good

I would actually be in favour if pertanity leave was inshrine in law exactly like martetly leave. Because as it stand partintly leave has no actually protections so a company can fire you simply because you have taken your legal right unlike if they tried the same trick with martinty leave.

Worriedmum - paternity leave is enshrined in law. Like maternity leave. At least in the UK. And then there is Shared parental leave. All are protected rights.

In a micro business, like ours, any employees' long or frequent absence, for maternity leave or (in our situation) assisting a partner with life-limiting health issues, is a serious disruption to getting through the everyday tasks. There simply is no other person to pick up their jobs, except us. No temp can do the job because there's no routine day. If you had ever run a small business, you could not make such a hard and fast rule. Quite apart from the fact that no woman yet has applied for a job at the sharp end of our very physically hard and dirty environment. But our probable next finance-commercial director is female.

Wrong the company can fire a man if he takes shared paternity leave it is not like maternity leave where a company fires a woman when pregent for maternity leave she would automatically win any tirbunal if she can prove it was down too simply her being pregent were as a company canr "fire a man" for taking shared paretnaty leave as it does not current share the same rights as maternity.

Both legal right to take it
Only maternity has the legal protections.

To prevent discrimination due to taken leave.

I’m sure he’s a good guy in many ways but he’s a real dick too...
screws us women over for daring to have the children they happily have with other women.

She has completed her family, and her children are nearly at secondary school. There's enough slack to accommodate time off for emergencies and planned leave for events.

On the front line of our operations, we've not yet seen a female master toolmaker/engineer. We're screaming for them M or F, and all we get is blaggers people telling us they can do it, who don't have the skills or the knowledge or the experience and fail (epically) when put to the test. This is part of the reason employers are sceptical of applicants' claims.

For all your dh knows she is v career oriented and her partner would be a sahd and she's be back at work in 6 weeks.

These are prosperous mc girls with a business owning daddy they already have that financial and social advantage when seeking employment.

My guess is the woman in NYC waiting for her promotion is also a prosperous mc woman and who knows what her dad does. The reality is even she - with all her privilege and advantages - is far less likely to be promoted than a man without any of this advantage. I doubt every woman this dinosaur employed was a hard-scrabble working class ex comp student. But funnily enough none of them managed to become a senior officer of the company.

The OP's daughters will be no different unless attitudes change and the OP should openly tell her daughters this and use her husband's company as an example. It is actually a perfect example - "you see girlds, even men who seem kind and nice and who think that they believe in equality, can have deeply held prejudices that mean they treat women differently to men and value them less in the workplace"

Because I think one of the issues we - and prejudiced men - face is that we can't quite believe that "nice" people could be prejudiced. But they are.

I’m simply saying these girls have the almost guaranteed option of job in family business or dad uses contacts
The NYC candidate isn’t family,won’t get preferential treatment, in fact he’s making it clear he’ll not be equitable in his treatment of this woman because she may have a baby

Now paternity leave can be shared, any man he employs could decide to take 50 weeks off as well. If karma worked well....

Lots of women in DH's firm (top 5 mgt consultancy) are working 3-4 day weeks and role choice can be somewhat constrained - geographically hard for them to travel along way from home. The firm would love to have them back full time and promote to board level but his opinion is that it's their DH's / DP's that don't want to be the SAHD's - even though in many cases they are earning quite a lot less pro rata than their DP's .....so it's not all down to the firms being the bad guys, there are still major societal constraints within the family that are stopping women from reaching their full professional potential.

there are still major societal constraints within the family that are stopping women from reaching their full professional potential Yes,male privilege and societal expectation means a lot of men simply won’t step up,instead the woman has to step down

I’m simply saying these girls have the almost guaranteed option of job in family business or dad uses contacts

Unless he only expects his son to join him in the business. The woman in NYC may well have used contacts to get her start too. That isn't the point. In fact it is a red herring. The point is this kind of innate sexism (demonstrated by several women on this thread too) affects every woman - even the privileged ones. The net effect is worse the further down the scale of privilege you are but it does affect all women at all levels of privilege.

I think the OP should have a frank conversation with her girls about this, explaining how men like their father think and work. I knew this growing up because I grew up in the 70s. My dad was as feminist as they come but I still knew how the world works because people hid it less then.

Women now think it is all over and the playing field is level and they can be anything they want. Bet that is the message the OP's DH is telling his daughters. Well they can, but only if they take a very long, hard, cool look at who they work with and for. Tripping along expecting it all to be fair won't help.

I'm 24 and my boss has basically told me he's not going to invest in me for this reason, despite being adamant I'm not going to have kids. I've already wasted 4 years here. I'm afraid it will get worse as I age.

I’m not disputing male privilege or the ingrained sexism this man exhibits
His daughters likely will be Able to utilise dad connections, maybe he’ll treat them different
that in itself doesn’t lessen how the dad actions upon women he employs
The mum could talk to the daughters,I’d advise she warn against being manoeuvred by men. I’d advise she discuss you have big conversations about values,beliefs early on. Don’t assume shared values or equitable behaviour
I think what’s hard from op POV,is she had her dp down as a good guy no reason to suppose he held Odious views, he’s claerly demonstrated that’s not case

lipstick the issue being discussed is not whether companies will hire women. It’s whether they will hire senior women or promote women to senior positions. Prosperous middle class background smooths the way to get you qualified for senior roles but it doesn’t get you the roles. Exactly as per nyc lady, and the ops daughter if she is working for anyone not her dad and possibly if she is working for her dad , who employs quite a lot of women but not in positions of responsibility because that’s for men. I’m a prosperous mc background and I appreciate my privilege but it definitely won’t shoe horn me up to partner.