My female boss actively seeking to recruit a man into a new role in the team...

[RowRowRowCrocodileScream]

I work in a professional role in a growing company in an all female small team. There is an additional role being added to the team because of workload and in team discussions my boss has made no bones about the fact she would prefer to recruit a man with the insinuation that it's better not to have a yet another woman of childbearing age in the team, I did challenge her on this but was not able to change her mind. Unsurprisingly a man has been appointed. This has really annoyed me and I wanted to vent. I am trying to see her point of view about wanting more "balance" in the make up of the team but I keep coming back to the view that she should have been looking for the best person for the job without pre-judging who that might be.

I am fortunately leaving soon to join an organisation which takes equality much more seriously. I am, nonetheless, disappointed that this still happens and worse still, facilitated/ orchestrated by a woman! call me naive

I can't believe she was so forthcoming about it :/

I've worked in places where they have tried to recruit women or minorities because we weren't a diverse workforce, which I think is just as bad, because as you said it should be on the merit of best person. I'm not sure how well positive discrimination works as a whole.

What did she say when you pulled her up on it?

Point out that since men and women can take parental leave now she should only be recruiting women over 45 since a man of any age might decide to take 6 months parental leave.

My father was once involved in a hiring decision where they picked the man over a woman of childrearing age. The man left after 6 months for a better offer.

I did have to pick my jaw up off the floor Grays!

She deflected some of the blame onto her male boss but I got the impression she didn't think there was anything wrong with it at all. She also said that everyone in the team was too similar we are all female and late 30s to earlier 40s but are hardly clones so would prefer a man for the new role.

I do remember when I alluded to something vaguely feminist when I first joined she was pretty dismissive so I wasn't entirely surprised.

Her reservation about hiring a man seemed to be that she thought men are loyal and likely to change roles whereas women stay put and then I handed in my notice confounding that theory

Good point about parental leave drinks, although I doubt she would seriously consider that a man might do that.

Do that = take parental leave

If you are an all female team, you have to wonder what processes led to that, also? Unless you are part of a majority female workforce, to have an all female team is just as imbalanced as an all male team.

No advice but that gives me the shits.

All the workplace advice books I've ever read say the opposite - that women are more likely to stick at a job out of a (possibly misguided) sense of loyalty, and this is something culturally encouraged in women, whereas men are more likely to be encouraged to go for other offers, climb the career mountain, put themselves first etc. She may come to regret that hire. And it would sort of serve her right.

Lougle it is not a majority female workforce but the team itself is very small (under 5). I am in no way saying I think the team should be all female, just that the recruitment should be on basis of merit.

Oops, that should have read men are less loyal

Sorry OP but I don't believe you.

I can see the argument for wanting more balance in the team, if you are all the same sex, and all around the same age, but if the team is less than 5, there are limits to what you can do. However, if her reasons are for avoiding women of childbearing age, then she's not aware of the new rules on shared parental leave, and even without that, she's being discriminatory. Not necessarily something you can challenge easily, though. Maybe the new man was the best person for the job - did you get to see the CVs, the qualifications and experience of the applicants, or sit in on the interviews? Unless you did, you can't know for sure, and you can't prove there was any discrimination, whatever you might suspect about her motives. Obviously if some mail or something exists which says, "yeah, we've got to get a bloke, no more ovulating women," then maybe you have got evidence, but surely no manager would be quite that daft...

Maybe you could think longer-term - say your manager has got a point about lack of diversity in the team, and suggest that everyone has training on unconscious bias and so on. Ask HR to consider blind CVs - i.e. identifying information such as names which might give away sex and cultural background is removed before hiring managers review the applications. (You might have HR like mine, who says it's not necessary, because all managers should be aware of bias. Well, yes, they should be, but should be is not are.)

Lougle, there are oodles of all male teams in my line of work. OP may be in a regional office, or in the accounts team etc.

Just, if you don't believe, report.

Whydon't you believe it just? There are plenty of male bosses with this attitude to women of child-bearing age. You see it on the comments on news websites everywhere. Shared parental leave rules, yeah right, we'll see what the take-up is.

Unfortunately with an all-female team the arguments about widening the team's experience range are valid.

One of my male employees is just about to start his second period of parental leave. He'll be away for 4 months.

So far as believing or not believing the OP I suppose it depends on how one interprets "insinuation". Did the boss say this or did OP take 2 and 2 and make 5? Could be either.

I can see two sides to this. One is that hiring shouldn't be done with an eye on people's personal characteristics. But what evidence is there that the boss wants to avoid a "woman of childbearing age", or that the group is suffering by too many people out on leave, or about to quit?

On the other side, surely it's a good thing if every part of every enterprise has a mix of women and men (and in this case, there's a woman in charge). As long as plenty of women have their chance at a job in this firm, I wouldn't be too opposed to an attempt to recruit a man for this job--though if an obviously right woman came along, I hope she'd get the job and the boss would say, "Oh well, maybe next time". But on the other other hand, maybe in a big organisation there's room for an all-female section, as long as everyone respects those women. It would depend on how it works out in practice.

I imagine there are oodles of four person male teams, led by a man, where they haven't even noticed they don't have a woman.

And if you do point it out, they'll probably just say something like, "well, we're an IT department - of course there aren't any women," without ever questioning further or asking why that might be.

Good for you to get out op.

Your TM has left herself (and the company) wide open to a discrimination claim, there. Very unwise.

I lead a team of seven blokes . Both my other female peers lead teams full of blokes. All the rest of the people at my level are blokes (i.e. We are exceptions) Above us are all blokes apart from two women. And those women have only been in place within the last 18 months (signalling change I think). The are several male only teams. Not a single female only team. And the racial profile is even worse. Three black women in the whole department (about 170 staff). Until recently no one questioned this. It is frustrating. Meritocracy, my arse. 'Like me' is more like it.

What sector are you in? I can only speak with experience of law and accountancy and that's not describing any office I've worked in or the firms I deal with regularly. Oh and know of course, that's just my work personal experience but I would genuinely like to know which sector is so male dominated?

So far as the racial mix Scotland is not, by %age of population, ethnically diverse but the mix in those professions is poor,although apparently according to the last Law Society stats isn't, at junior levels anyway, too far off the general population %age (I'm sceptical about that )

IT. Customer facing has more women (although not dominated by). Behind the scenes techies = very male dominated.

Ok thanks. I genuinely think the traditional professions are getting a lot better at gender balance. One might have hoped that a new profession like yours could at least start from the same point it's taken mine decades to achieve.

Are you getting an equal intake at junior level?

No. Most STEM industries face similar. Some of them are even 'traditional'. And computer programming was originally female dominated. It then it got some prestige and lo the men arrived.

This is an interesting article about it: www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/