Hiring women over 40

[Estellelove]

I suppose I've never actually heard anyone say this out loud so it's thrown me I'm not sure what to think.. so my relative, who is a lovely man, has a wife and young children and I want to emphasize is a really nice person, has a small business and I was chatting to him recently he said he is looking to hire a bookkeeper/secretary as he is expanding his business. I mentioned the name of someone I know who is looking for a job and he said, oh if it's a woman I won't hire her unless she is over 40. When I asked why he said I can't take the chance of her getting pregnant or having young children who will need her and she will have to constantly take off. I was shocked and said as much, i asked how he would feel if people treated his wife this way but he was completely comfortable with it and said it's reasonable and he has to think of the good of his business rather than the advancement of feminism. He was completely unapologetic about it and I was quite stunned. I mean I can understand the reasoning, but was thrown that he would so readily admit it so easily. I suppose I am just asking for thoughts... I'm trying to process...

I found it so weird, he is a kind and loving person it's just that he puts his business and livelihood above feminism

Not wanting to have a go at you OP, but I find it weird that there are women who can’t appreciate why the above would be the case. It’s blindingly obvious

I’ve said this before but my username Is the percentage gender pay gap at my last organisation. Financial services not oil rigs or engineering etc

On the day that the FTSE 250 published the first gender pay gap reports 24 out of 25 threads on the feminism first page were about trans issues. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns

But don't most economists say the pay gap is caused by more men working full time/doing more overtime, and also being better at negotiating pay rises.

Gender pay gaps are not the result of discrimination - Kate Andrews (Associate Director of the Institute for Economic Affairs)

iea.org.uk/gender-pay-gaps-are-not-the-result-of-discrimination/

@KrispyKremeDream That is an article comparing pilots with cabin crew. I work in financial services. Perhaps we should all stay as secretaries

The gender pay gap percentage is based on hourly rates not FT vs PT

Maybe you’re right and men are paid more than twice what women are as an hourly rate because they’re just better at asking for pay rises

The other factor is that many women don't fully focus on optimisng their career because their husband earns a lot, thus enabling them to have more free time.

My sister had a high profile job in the defence sector. Only women in a team of 40 and highly respected. She now only works two days a week despite kids all being at school. She doesn't need to work more as husband makes well over £100k.

Same with the the thread protagonist who 'works extremely hard so that his wife doesn't have to work - which she is happy with'.

You can't really compare salaries in isolation when men are much more likely to have the incentive of being the sole/main earner and very rarely have a higher earning female cushioning them.

That is an article comparing pilots with cabin crew. I work in financial services. Perhaps we should all stay as secretaries.

It's not just about the airline industry. That was just an example. Did you only skim read it?

It also mentions that a company who have employed a lot of female graduates in entry level roles will look particularly bad due to the wage distribution, when they are actually helping to get women into the sector.

All of this feels incomplete though.

There's a lot of stereotypes assumptions etc.

I said about my sector earlier..v large sector.

Hiring women all over the shop. Of all ages. Focus on 'retaining talented women' for years.

Sector is massive in terms of Dosh. And fairly 'traditional'. I've found out accidentally about huge salary gaps due to sex. And yet. They hire women. Of all ages.

The idea that it's financially silly to hire women who might have children is bizarre.

My last company has had income 1.4 billion USD first 9 months this year and hold 240 billion USD assets.

Are they fools, hiring all the women they do globally? Including young medium older?

Or do they know that good people are worth their weight in gold and they want to keep them?

My last 2 employers have a 40% + pay gap in UK.

It's not exactly all roses. There are NO back office type jobs.

We're cheap. We're loyal. And we are GOOD.

If it's a no brainer not to hire any woman under 40. Babies. And coming soon. None over 40. Menopause.

Then well looks like the Taliban are onto something!

Awesome.

@KrispyKremeDream

He may well not care at all about feminism as such, but it may be that he thinks there are other ways we should protect the interests of women with children, things like mother's allowances, for example. So not thinking that giving everyone equal employment regardless of family circumstances does not mean he doesn't care about making sure people are taken care of.

Indeed there are a lot of women who are 'taken care of' but most feminists prefer to turn a blind eye to this as it's most certainly one of the biggest female privileges.

I'm not sure what you mean by that?

Child-rearing is an important social role More important than a lot of things that get big bucks in the workforce. Someone has to actually do that work. Why should it be mothers if they want, rather than someone paid to do it?

The answer in modern capitalism is that it leaves them economically vulnerable, since no one will take care of them if their marriage breaks down or whatever. However, there is no real reason that being paid in the workforce has to be the only way to make sure people doing important and necessary work for society are economically secure. That's not an advantage, it's just economic justice.

Women over their lifetime are just as productive as men and just as valuable to employers. So he is just plain wrong.

And so are the scaremongering posts about women making their living being pregnant. This is about as rare as men and women taking fraudulent sick leave I imagine ie it’s not a relevant issue!!!

Indeed there are a lot of women who are 'taken care of' but most feminists prefer to turn a blind eye to this as it's most certainly one of the biggest female privileges.

I honestly do not get this?! Taken care of? What century are we in? Raising children is one of the most important jobs in our society, and is paid a pittance (ie almost nothing) as we all know. Taken care of… to lose career and pensions by taking time out to raise children that men just don’t really take up?

I lost a job during my probationary period in my mid thirties for this reason I think. Every monthly one to one meeting with my manager (CEO) has been glowing, you’re doing a great job, you’ll pass probation with flying colours etc.

During my time there I met someone and we got fairly serious. I had to go to a formal work event about six weeks before the end of my probation period (sit down fundraising dinner) and he came with me, met my boss, colleagues etc.

Soon afterwards it was “this isn’t working out, you don’t fit”. No specific reason or incidents given.

A few weeks earlier I had overheard the CEO complaining about a colleague who had come back from one maternity leave and told them she was pregnant with her second child so would be going on maternity leave again with it he will next six months. He was outraged about the financial coat of hiring a maternity cover and at covering maternity pay “yet again” with no guarantee anyone would return.

My role came up because someone didn’t return from maternity leave and I think he put two and two together about my having a serious boyfriend, made five and blew a gasket.

In my late twenties I was in a job in another organisation where I was one of a team of four. All women in late twenties/early thirties. During my time there all three of my colleagues had maternity leave. They had all been with the organisation for less than two years.

Two had two children each back to back with only a month or so back in the office in between. One didn’t return after her second maternity leave. Another had three children, and had two extends periods of sick leave either side (both due to ski-img accidents) and then resigned.

For two years I was the only my person in the team at work. The organisation hired a maternity cover for the first maternity leave of the first person. Then they just didn’t have the budget for it as there were cuts going on at the time across the organisation.

Maternity pay there was full pay for 26 weeks. half pay for 13 hours weeks and statutory pay for 13 weeks, with 7 weeks holiday entitlement and sick pay at same rate as maternity pay. There was also a three month notice period and generally speaking people weren’t asked to work it if leaving after maternity leave or sickness. Everyone in my team was on £30-40k pa, with both an annual cost of living rise (usually 3%) and an annual pay scale increment (usually in the region of £1k) as well as a 13% employer pension contribution.

One colleague worked for just over a year and then was off for over five years on full pay before leaving.

The unofficial hiring policy in the department shifted very markedly mid way during this period. Nearly all the new hires were either older women or men.

I thought this thread would be very different! In some of the sectors I've been looking at it seems women over 40 aren't considered at all!

What roles were these out of interest....

For those saying he is not a nice person, that is why I found it so weird, he is a kind and loving person it's just that he puts his business and livelihood above feminism. (He does also have traditional views about mother's being sahm and he does work extremely hard so that his wife doesn't have to work - which she is happy with).

He really isn't a lovely person at all, he is a sexist fuckwit. Shame on him if he has any daughters.

Sadly, there are still lots of twats like this around, and plenty of people who will continue to make excuses for them.

If he is unable to run a viable business without breaking the law, then maybe he should do something else to earn a living instead. Hopefully the business will fail anyway as a result of his shortsighted management.

@iwishiwasafish

so my relative, who is a lovely man, has a wife and young children and I want to emphasize is a really nice person

No he isn’t.

I guess it’s easier for you to believe he’s not.

@KrispyKremeDream

That is an article comparing pilots with cabin crew. I work in financial services. Perhaps we should all stay as secretaries.

It's not just about the airline industry. That was just an example. Did you only skim read it?

It also mentions that a company who have employed a lot of female graduates in entry level roles will look particularly bad due to the wage distribution, when they are actually helping to get women into the sector.

That article was quite frankly, ridiculous, and completely ignores all the systemic issues.

Theoretically, women receive equal pay for equal work and data suggests that's true (I have my doubts, but that's for another thread).

However, the gender pay gap as it is tracked is a direct result of large numbers of women at the bottom of an organisation and large numbers of men at the top. Companies can hire 50% female graduates all they like, but if they don't work harder to keep those graduates by creating a culture that is appealing to them and that works for them, within a few years, those women have all left and their male colleagues are being promoted.

Like @Fiftythreepercent I worked in financial services. I had to laugh when the firm I worked for disclosed pay for it's top executives. There were only two women on that team. Both earnt a FRACTION of what their male colleagues did because both were in the lower paying executive roles AND were also relatively new to the jobs.

The gender pay gap is extremely real. OP's relative is a classic example - because he won't hire women of a certain age, women who could gain experience and skills and, conceivably, be promoted and then paid more, won't be. So instead, all the women in his organisation (if he has any at all) will be very low level professionals who he doesn't care so much if they come and go because they're easily replaced.

@UsedUpUsername I don’t understand your comment. Easier for me in what way?

Neither “belief” is particularly difficult, it’s just that only one is true. He may be as nice as pie in all other regards, but if he is deliberately discriminating against women then he is not “a nice person”.

I was criticised for saying this on another thread (maybe rightly) but I still think that until men and women want children in equal measure you won't be able to solve this problem.

As it stands I would say overwhelmingly women desire children more than men do (on the whole) all things being equal. Sure men say they would love to have children and start a family but that's only because they know their career won't be impacted, they won't have to birth the child (obviously) etc. If somehow child rearing was completely equal between men and women most men would opt out.

You could argue with the declining birth rates in the west women are coming to the same conclusion though.

I agree @coronaway. With the odd exception I'd say majority of men aren't fussed either way about having kids...they generally go along with it because the woman wants it but most are ambivalent.

he puts his business and livelihood above feminism

Don’t most people (insert personal life preference here) do that?

[quote iwishiwasafish]@UsedUpUsername I don’t understand your comment. Easier for me in what way?

Neither “belief” is particularly difficult, it’s just that only one is true. He may be as nice as pie in all other regards, but if he is deliberately discriminating against women then he is not “a nice person”.[/quote]
He’s putting his family business first, it’s pragmatic and not personal. It doesn’t make him a misogynist.

He is probably as lovely as the OP says, no reason to think she’s wrong about this.

I honestly do not get this?! Taken care of? What century are we in? Raising children is one of the most important jobs in our society, and is paid a pittance (ie almost nothing) as we all know. Taken care of… to lose career and pensions by taking time out to raise children that men just don’t really take up? hmm

I'm not solely talking about raising children. I'm talking about the many women who step back from their career once they have a high earning husband.

However, the gender pay gap as it is tracked is a direct result of large numbers of women at the bottom of an organisation and large numbers of men at the top. Companies can hire 50% female graduates all they like, but if they don't work harder to keep those graduates by creating a culture that is appealing to them and that works for them, within a few years, those women have all left and their male colleagues are being promoted.

But what's the conclusion to be drawn about that? I would say that a lot of it is still down to childcare roles.

I have a university degree, I'm middle aged so if I'd had a career I'd be well along now, but I have for the past number of years worked in organisations in roles that are lower paying, less than a trained trade would get. None of them were really full time roles, and they were not the ones you had at the culmination of a career. They are very much dominated by women in my position and some students working through university.

And the reasons are simple. Most of the women took time off when their kids were younger, once they went to school they still wanted PT work. They needed someone to have a more flexible work role to allow the other spouse to take a more demanding and well paid role,, and often they didn't want the kind of time crunch lifestyle that you often get with two demanding jobs.

What's interesting is that this is a very female dominated industry. There are only two males in my entire organization, one of whom is IT support. So the people at the top are also women, but they are notably different in terms of their family choices. They have smaller families and chose to have two careers.

Now, it may be that women feel pressured to reduce work for family life and all things being equal would rather have the higher pay jobs and free childcare or something like that, but I don't think that we can take that for granted.

@NCBlossom

Women over their lifetime are just as productive as men and just as valuable to employers. So he is just plain wrong.

And so are the scaremongering posts about women making their living being pregnant. This is about as rare as men and women taking fraudulent sick leave I imagine ie it’s not a relevant issue!!!

I think this is a bit like wealthy families being able to take better advantage of sales. If you have some room to hold down the fort for employees to take family breaks, educations breaks, etc, there are a lot of benefits for the company.

But if you are small with a certain amount of expertise required and small profit margins, long term benefits aren't the immediate issue.

What I've seen happen a fair bit is the woman taking a few years out and then never really fully returning to a career job due to the husband's job now having progressed to the stage where they can get by comfortably without her needing to work full time.

Some people believe that the man is the lucky one 'getting to keep his important job', but I disagree. If finances are shared then whoever is working the least is the lucky one IMO. I'd take three days of admin work over a 60 hour week in a stressful managerial position if the financial result was the same either way.