Has anyone seen this on GMTV about women on maternity leave??

[Peaches174]

www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=33559

How outrageous! Who are these men that think women should be the first to be made redundant in a recession?!

"What white men who hate positive discrimination fail to understand is that for years, they proactively discriminated against anyone who was not like them"

yep agree completely, but what irks is when you are a white man who has never had anything to do with racism or sexism but are expected to feel guilty about the actions of others who have nothing what so ever to do with you.

There is some discrimination against men wrt part time working. Although they essentially have the same rights to apply for part time working as woman, it is nowhere near as acceptable for a man to work part time and consequently harder for them to succeed in being allowed to move to part time hours.

Mayorquimby, totally agree with your last point.

Yes, my dh has been absolutely discriminated against re: flexible working.

Which is a pita for me because it means my flexible employer has to be more flexible than it would otherise have to be.

I agree that things won't change unless the law starts thinking in terms of parents, not mothers.

Flexible working is not a right though for either parent.

No, but "reasonable" female requests are likely to be considered and be successful at his work. He has no knowledge of a case where a male request has been successful.

While I understand your last point mayorQuimby, the fact is that, even if you have not actively participated in discrimination, you (if you are male) benefit nonetheless from the institutionalised (sp?) sexism in society. Your are more likely to be employed, are less likely to be made redundant, don't get fired for being pregnant, get paid more, are more likely to be promoted, rarely suffer from sexual discrimination at work etc.

The "It wasn't me gov" attitude is a bit like washing your hands of the situation. Come redundancy situations you don't see many men holding their hands up and syaing "It's unfair to target the female workers, take me instead" now do you?

ROFL mayorq my DH also gets v upset about all the ads on TV which he claims portray all men as thickos and dimwits, baffled by even the simplest of domestic tasks like cleaning a toilet.

Unfortunately I feel his argument is weakened by the fact he is frequently baffeld by the simplest of tasks and to the best of my knowledge has only once cleaned a toilet, using viakal for the task

Agree trixy re discrimination against men when it comes to part-time. The structure of our society is still far very much tipped towards the genders carrying out their traditional roles and anything else being seen as odd, difficult or wrong.

Every job I have gone for, every time, I have been asked if I am married and I have been asked if I have children. That includes three law firms.

I have always laughed and pointed out gently that they aren't supposed to ask me that, and then answered the question anyway. I answered because I felt like I had little choice.

I have only ever not been offered a job I went for once though (that was before I was married and before I had children).

If they weren't going to discriminate, why did they ask me? Were they just making conversation? Were they sussing out whether it was worth the "risk" that I would go on ML, but decided I was worth taking the risk for? I have no idea.

I don't doubt that there are firms which are too short-sighted in their attitudes to flexible working. I work with a man who works part-time and he has a position of responsibility and there are quite a few like him in my organisation.

I also know a female who was turned down for flexible working, starting screaming discrimination until it was pointed out that there were men and women who had been granted it.

Ultimately, the decision has to be based on business need as well as the role and responsibility of the candidate. Therefore it is pointless to compare situations without knowing the background of the candidates. Someone in generic role is more likely to be granted flexible working than someone in a specialist role.

In fact, my group has tightened up on the flexible working criteria because it was affecting the delivery of project milestones because team members were working different hours when they needed to be working together!

"The "It wasn't me gov" attitude is a bit like washing your hands of the situation. Come redundancy situations you don't see many men holding their hands up and syaing "It's unfair to target the female workers, take me instead" now do you?"

and women would jump on the grenade for a man?i think come redundancy everyone will try and save their own skin.

" the fact is that, even if you have not actively participated in discrimination, you (if you are male) benefit nonetheless from the institutionalised (sp?) sexism in society. Your are more likely to be employed, are less likely to be made redundant, don't get fired for being pregnant, get paid more, are more likely to be promoted, rarely suffer from sexual discrimination at work etc.
"

what's your point here though?my last point was that i have nothing to do with past or present sexism. i do not ask for the benefits and am yet to see any. in my department in work there are more females, i get paid exactly the same as my female colleagues, thankfully the redundancy issue hasn't come up but i highly doubt it will be based on sex if it does.
my point was simply that i refuse to feel "white guilt" as they call it in america, where by every middle class white man regardless of his actions is upposed to feel apologetic for the actions of others, most of whom were carrying these acts out before they were even born.

so i'm not washing my hands of the situation, as to do that i would have had to have some involvment in the siuation, which i patently have never had.
if you feel that it's an "it wasn't me guv" type of defence, and that that is somehow invalid, maybe it's because it wasn't me. i do not have a responsibility to shoulder the blame of others faults by virtue of my gender,because after all we're all meant to be individuals to implore me to do something based on gender would be just as bad to desist you from doing something based on yours. surely my only responsibility is to not perpetuate sexism (or not sit by and watch it be perpetuated) and to treat all others fairly.

It's the same at my Dh's work Shona .

We discussed whether he should go part time rather than me as I earn more than him. It would be career suicide for him to even apply for PT working at his place, but there is a special group promoting the careers of women in his workplace.

Not sure I understand some of the arguments being put forward here, but I did get a few nasty comments for having taken maternity leave twice

Funny thing was, it was made by a male colleague who had a year off for depression

Difference was he was on full pay (as company policy was 6 months at full pay, 6 months discretionary) rather than on maternity leave 6 months full pay and then zilch...

You got 6 months of maternity pay? Do you mean full or SMP (which is negligible in my opinion)?

I got 6 months of full pay, and then 6 months of zero pay.

But the irony was that the company policy stated that those on sick leave for more than 6 months, their pay was discretionary. So, my male colleague who complained about my maternity leave, got 12 months on full pay.

The difficult thing I find as an employer is not the mat pay, or absence (which I confess is tricky and time consuming to manage), but the annual leave accumulated during mat leave.

An employee can agree to return 3 days a week, then take one of these days of as annual leave to use up the accrued for months.

I do feel this is unfair.

A few years ago you didn't get paid for the second 6 months under SMP, maybe that was when ilovemydog had her baby...

MaoyrQuimby it's a bit like racism. Now I personally haven't, as far as I know, participated actively in racism. But, as a white person (though admittedly a foreigner) I benefit from a racist system. Britain's empire was built on the fruits of slavery, I benefit from that, not in the least because I am from one of the old colonies.

Perhaps the redundancy situation is not the best example. Have you ever compared your pay with a woman in the same position as you? If you found you were being paid more than her or had better benefits would you complain? I once did that with a male colleague. He was younger, less experienced and less qualified than me. He was better paid. this was in a public Service type industry where such things are supposed to be a bit less unequal. Did he stand up when I complained to HR? Did he bo*ks!! It would mean his pay would have to be reviewed, probably downwards. I was told such things were confidential and should not be discussed. Yet it is this policy of secrecy that allows men to be paid more than women and allows companies to go ahead merrily discriminating without fear of being caught out.

Thomas - can you not just decide when this accrued leave must be taken? Would'nt it not be easier to tag all the accrued leave onto the end of the maternity leave - therefore getting it all out of the way and perhaps keeping things running as they had been during the maternity leave period for a little while longer?

If you don't take your holiday up front though and it rolls over into a different holiday year then according to the rules in lots of companies you lose it anyway.

I think 6 months of full pay is downright generous. I would have loved to stay home for six months and get paid for it. The saving in child care would have paid for my net six months unpaid. I had six weeks with my second baby. Anddidn't have didly squat with the first. Oh and it was a "chuffing huge company". My new employer (a small company) didn't even mention maternity in the contract. So it's obviously stat min for everything, which doesn't matter to me because my baby shop has declared bankruptcy and ceased trading before the recession.

In some scandinavian countries maternity/paternity leave can be shared- eg in denmark you get a year (at good rates of pay, not sure if its full) but the mother and father can decide who takes what time off to look after their child, although there is a practical principal that the mother should take the first few months to physically recover herself.

So men and women of childbearing age are equally 'risky' prospects for employers which neatly removes a lot of the discrimination that occurs in this country, as both sexes are just as likely to take paid parental leave. There are many other benefits too- men are able and willing to take a more active role in their childs life/children develop a good relationship and see good role models in their fathers, neither sex has to be constrained into homemaker/breadwinner roles, and of course less financial stress in the first vital months of their childs life due to good rates of parental leave pay.

The leave system is pretty individually flexible and can be made to really meet the specific needs of the family eg for specific career demands, training etc. Combine that with good provision of high quality childcare and you see why Im planning to emigrate

Yes, the Scandinavian countries have higher taxes - but you get what you pay for. This sort of scheme really provides tangible benefits for mothers, fathers and of course their children and Im sure many currently working parents and taxpayers would be happy to see something similar here