Not hiring a woman on the basis that she may one day get pregnant is wrong to a man why is responsible for hiring junior members of staff in my workplace.
WT actual F!...
His argument is that in a meritocracy, if interviews were conducted with a tick box form and a man and woman ticked all the same boxes all the way down the form, then the last question was "are you planning to have children?", if both answered "yes", he would hire the man. He argued that this was fair because the only differentiating factor is their gender, and therefore the only thing he could make a decision on, so he would base his decision on the fact that a woman would need to take more time off work regardless of whether she chose to take maternity leave or not.
He said that to not take gender into account would be positive discrimination, because he'd be actively ignoring the disadvantages of hiring a woman of child bearing age. What's more, he thinks it's awful that he's not allowed to ask men and women if they are planning to have children in an interview.
So to explain why he can't ask, I used the argument in the picture to illustrate equality vs equity, and explained that by his logic, we give everyone the same sized box to stand on and if they can't see over the wall, that's unfortunate. He mentioned disability and how disabled people are in this situation so it's not unheard of and said he thought this was "just natural".
I said "what about wheelchairs? Is that positive discrimination to give a non independently mobile person a wheelchair so they can get out and about? We are effectively giving them an extra box to stand on that brings them nearer to the advantages of being a mobile person"
He said no, but it's different.
I asked how.
He said he didn't know why and changed the subject to 'what feminism is'.
Apparently, he met a lot of feminists while he was at uni who were man haters and wanted an end to all men. They wanted women to be positively discriminated against. He went on to mansplain what feminism is.. to me.. a feminist.
I explained feminism is a movement that fights for equal rights for women, that's all and he needs to spend more time with feminists.
He said "not all feminists are like you though, you're normal".... why, thank you oh great man voice.
I explained that actually, I'm a very normal feminist and his stereotyping of feminists is probably in need of some revision.
Prick.
Luckily, I'm leaving.