I want a team of working mums - am I being sexist?

[MagicalHamSandwich]

Please feel free to tear me to pieces if I am! I'm really torn on this one:

I'm in charge of running an offshore software maintenance team, whose primary job it is to keep things uneventful and basically do as little as possible in terms of changing things around. There are strategic reasons why this is a good idea but they're not really relevant to my dilemma.

The team will have to be reduced in size in the coming year (they're currently severely overstaffed) and I'm considering keeping on the three mums we've got and having the guys move to other stuff. My reasoning is basically that each of the women works part-time, so I basically get more actual person per full-time position (good for securing know how and to cover unplanned absences). They're also all in a position where they currently put family before the job (not an assumption, I've spoken with them about this). As stated, their primary objective is to keep the wheels turning - not to re-invent the concept - so people whose primary current ambitions are not in fact to get ahead career wise suit me perfectly at this moment. In fact, the (misguided) ambitions of one of the men is my biggest headache with them at present.

It's basically the perfect solution from a business perspective. However, I have a nagging voice at the back of my head telling me that there's something inherently wrong with selecting people on the grounds that they are women with kids (as in sexist against women, not the men on the team). Am I being paranoid or is there really something horribly sexist about this? And if so: what?

I had a team of pt working mums (inherited and hired). Not by design, they just happened to be the best qualified for the job. We didn't know in interviews that they were mums anyway. I was also a pt (job share) working mum. That team worked harder than any other team I've led. They multitasked like demons, squeezed in deadlines, took initiative and generally got on with stuff. I don't know if it was because they were pt or mums or both, or just because they were people who were exceptionally good at their jobs, but they were all bloody brilliant.

You can't decide to hire working mums but certain jobs require attributes that are generally perfected as a mum, such as multitasking, giving advice, thinking outside the box, being diplomatic etc.

You can't decide to hire working mums but certain jobs require attributes that are generally perfected as a mum, such as multitasking, giving advice, thinking outside the box, being diplomatic etc.

Really? Being a female parent has the edge on those life skills over a person who is not a female parent?

FFS. A thread in Feminism Talk where we're saying that mothers have skills that other people don't? Seriously? Piss off. That is NOT any kind of feminism, it's lazy, stereotyped, discriminatory shit and you should be ashamed of yourself for coming out with it.

In the states my bro always preferred employing women for most of the reasons you've stated. They finish the job, not always looking to move onto something better, more reliable, less likely to cause shit. The jobs could be done remotely (tech based) and required good communication.

Sounds like you've reached the same conclusion.

Doobi and Lass, Oh did NOT say that mothers had those life skills over and above anybody else. She said that motherhood gave a chance to perfect those skills. Had she said "a leadership course" gave the chance to perfect certain skills, you wouldn't call her prejudiced.

Myself, I disagree with her assessment of what parenthood teaches you (it's mostly taught me to operate on less sleep, but I accept many professions also teach that!), but the principle that life experiences teach you skills is not unreasonable, nor is it saying those skills can't come from other experiences.

Definitely move on the employee who hasn't followed the brief, not listened, and does unhelpful things - hope you are giving him criticism on this in his performance review!

Doobi and Lass, Oh did NOT say that mothers had those life skills over and above anybody else

I wasn't actually referring to the OP but to the comment callmeoh suggesting being a female parent gives an advantage in certain life skills which I thought was lazy, stereotyped thinking; the sort of lazy, sterotyped thinking that goes into adverts featuring busy mums.

It is less so , although all job interviews should aim to take a candidate as they find them.

The assumption that mothers will have those life skills by virtue of being mothers assumes they were good at the job. That doesn't follow at all. Being told a candidate has 4 children tells you nothing other than the person was pregnant 4 times.

I know several ex army people in the ranks captain and higher and one serving colonel. I suppose they could all be useless but I don't think it is an unreasonable assumption that a rise through army ranks is at least an indicator they met the criteria at each stage.

I've also worked with ex forces and found some who expected orders to be followed without question.

But to answer the question OP - if you were recruiting, you should not decide I advance that working mums were who you needed. But you are deciding who to keep from an existing group and the ones who are most suitable happen to be working mums.

And yet it's OK to say - in essence - that the time spent caring for and raising four children amounts to nothing, no skills, no abilities, because there's no official structure to legitimise it. I thought you were against being dismissive about traditionally feminine things?

But you are assuming the person raising 4 children had those skills. In fact you are assuming it involved "caring" Unless you have seen her in action and the end results you have no idea if she had any of the skills mentioned.

The fact about having 4 children would not appear on a cv. A cv would say the candidate perhaps took a career break after having had children so as to explain a gap in employment history. I can't make any assumption from that statement. It bears no comparison to a cv showing the candidate left the army at a senior rank.

If it were me, I'd want there to be a list of very carefully considered criteria relating to skills, abilities and experience, as well as a clearly defined job role that details exactly what 'good performance' looks like. Which would make it obvious, in your case, that brilliant new initiatives and innovations that deviate from the strict protocols set down are indicative of poor performance, not good performance.

Agree. You want all the paperwork to back you up, do it by the book.

And in answer to the question, no I don't think it's sexist or discriminatory provided you'd consider someone who also had the required attributes without being a female parent. And if you wouldn't assume, based on nothing, that all female parents would feel this way. If a bloke or woman with no kids, with the same experience as your working PT mothers and a similar desire to get shit done and not rock the boat so they could devote maximum energy to their canoeing hobby or care of elderly relative would also float your boat, that's fine. Actually my DH would do a pretty good job in the role you mention, because of his attitudes and parent status! Different industry though.

I can certainly sympathise with the problem if you've got an off-shore team who are meant to be doing support (that is, having the skill to know how to fix code without causing twice as many problems as they solve) and it sounds like you've got at least one guy with 'hero programmer' tendencies. So you need dependable plodders. It sounds like within this team you've got 4 dependable plodders and one loose cannon.

Mr Loose Cannon needs not to feel rewarded for his apparently heroic tendencies but alas in softwareland that's rarely the case. I think the best you can do is cut him loose but make sure his review reflects the fact he hasn't been a good team player/understood the scope of the role.

The other guy is the junior employee who needs to rotate on to other projects for his career development anyway. But I would think carefully about whether all three of the other employees have really not demonstrated any aptitude beyond their current role. I would want to try and help at least one of them push their career forward - they may need more encouragement to feel confident enough to say that they want to take on more responsibility or they'd rather be doing actual software development, etc. (In fact I think all devs should rotate between build and support, to get a better appreciation of what robust and maintainable code actually looks like).

It sounds like the loose cannon is the team leader (worst place for him) and so one of the others would have to step up into that role when he departs? Could the others be offered a choice of an assignment elsewhere or continuing in support? My suspicion is that at least one of three probably does have ambitions to do something different but may be reluctant to say so because the current assignment suits their work-life balance. Equally it sounds as if you might be able to start increasing the challenge level of what the team get to do once the loose cannon is out of the picture, so it isn't necessarily the case that staying in the team won't offer them any opportunities to develop their skills.

Well, I would not be selecting the employees who show the most drive and ambitions and are capable of producing the largest results, quantitatively speaking. Normally those would be considered the people who are doing the best job.

I would argue that drive and ambitions being valued rather than keeping what you have, is also sexist. Or, I don't know, a result of society as is. Capitalism, perhaps.

You want to keep the working mums because they fit your requirements, not becaue they happen to be working mums, that's just a coincidence. Presumably, a working dad who isn't so ambitious would also fit. Or just a not so ambitious single person.

So, no, not sexist.

I agree that they might not all be dependable plodded. They might have had ambition pushed out of them because people have made assumptions that they don't want promotion or more responsibility. If you're always passed over, you do give up. You fit the image people have stuck on you, because it ends up being easier than futilely pushing for more. You need to be sure that this isn't happening in this case and that decisions aren't being made through unconscious bias. I think the latter probably is playing a part and that's why it makes people feel uncomfortable.

Nothing discriminatory as far as the law is concerned.
Men, ambitious people and non-parents are not protected characteristics.

Perfectly reasonable in business terms - you are selecting the people who are most suitable for your business.

The fact that they are part-time working mums is a positive coincidence.

Lass, we were referring to the same post: I said "Oh" by which I meant "callmeoh" (as in, I called her Oh). I did not mean the OP.

My post stands.

OP, DH and I have both worked in consultancies. Is there no one with oversight of project staffing, in particular to help more junior staff get the range of early experience? Because it's not about making people redundant, but about staff deployment, I doubt any project has the detailed list Buffy mentions, surely there is some form of staff development planning though?

DH has actively chosen the kind of project you are mentioning and he would not want to be moved (would hugely impact our two career set up) so can empathise with your workers!

I didn't say that working mums were better at certain transferable skills than other people, I said they generally gained these skills through being a parent. Is this wrong?

I have gained certain skills by being a parent that transfer well into the workplace (negotiating with a 7 year old is not that different to negotiating with a Vice President, similarly fbi hostage negotiators are now advising business leaders on sales skills).

I don't personally think there is enough recognition for transferable skills gained outside the workplace but that's another thread.

Bias against women and mothers especially accounts for just about every other job so no, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Unless you believe white men are naturally best you have to assume that they are getting the foot up everywhere else

Men, ambitious people and non-parents are not protected characteristics.

Um, discrimination legislation applies where you treat one employee or group of employees differently because of their sex. If an employee is giving more favourable treatment to women then men are protected too.