This "pro women" thing?

I think it goes right back to childhood and it is slow to change the cycle. Boys and girls are treated differently. Boys are encouraged to be confident, to go out and get dirty. They are encouraged to learn about cars and aeroplanes and anything mechanical. They are not encouraged to be kind and gentle and clean and play with dolls. How often do you hear boys told to “man up” or “you’re crying like a girl”? Girls are encouraged to do support tasks, to behave a certain way and be obedient. They are praised for how they look and what they wear.
Imagine if boys were encouraged to be the caregivers and do household tasks. Imagine if they were told that when they become fathers they would need to give up work for a few months to care for their child. But they are not. They are told they are leaders, that they must go and change the world and provide for their families. They are encouraged to seek promotion above all else and to gain power.

Many of the posters here seem to believe that men are better by default. Why do boys and men believe they are better at driving? Or flying? Or leading?

Perhaps the job specifications and interviewing needs to be set up towards womens attributes rather than mens. Women make excellent leaders, excellent commentators, excellent drivers and pilots. But still we hear “I think some women can be as good as the men” as if the man is the default.
Why do businesses run in a way to suit men? What if boys grew up knowing that they will have to take time out of work to look after kids, or work part time to do the school runs. What if boys grew up seeing women in most of the positions of power?

I was at a meeting last week when a woman CEO spoke about the surveys which have been done about perceptions of women's work and men's. She claimed men were regarded in a much better light for every aspect of their work and that even women rated them better. There was a young woman who spoke as well- she was from an organisation called 'Pregnant then screwed' . The examples she gave of how young women are being sacked when they get pregnant, how this affects them and how they are unable to seek legal recompense because it costs more to do than they would be awarded was shocking. I couldn't help but think that almost 40 years after maternity leave was first won we now seem to be heading backwards.

Far north, i did not add to the above that we have employed two women within the business that have older children. They both have been able to offer maximum flexibility and therefore, have been trained to the highest IOSH certification.

Unfortunately one passed away in January this year, while the Second has just passed to the above standard, and in that, i will be able to retire later this year.

Wonderful

Far North, the first requirement of our business on recruiting staff, is to find persons with the qualifications we require as there is a severe shortage of suitably qualified persons with the IOSH Industrial Safety certification that we require.

During the recruitment interview process, those that apply for positions within the Assignment teams are informed of the long and unsocial hours, and away from home working that those teams need to fulfil their requirements.

However, we always inquire as to how much the applicant would be able to contribute to those working requirements with a view to the needs of their personal lives. We find that most applicants give a frank account of what they would and would not be able to contribute.

Within the above, the assignment teams are organised on a week by week basis. However, as I stated in my previous post those that are the most flexible and thereby efficient are the most commercially beneficial to the company and therefore are the first to be considered for training to enhanced higher qualifications and therefore higher salaries.

In the above, it is, unfortunately, the experience of our business and others that it is male employees that offer the most flexibility even when they have families at home.

That I believe is an employment gender problem that only social attitudes can rectify, and not employers.

Some recent research on hiring in the sciences suggests women and minority groups are discriminated against in hiring decisions, but it's a complicated picture.

And this complicates it even further, showing that gender gaps play out differently at different levels of development and depending on which issue you're looking at. As ever, there isn't a simple answer!

FarNorth thanks that is a good idea. The competition actually involved attendance at an event and the field is one where names are always displayed. It was at the party to celebrate afterwards that my DS was approached by the people who admitted it was positive discrimination that determined the winner.He's actually very relaxed about it and admits women are underrepresented and something has to happen (but of course I think it's not fair!)
Just remembered someone I knew who was very high up in her field was shocked when an American firm took over hers and she was told at . her annual assessment that she needed "to dress a bit sexier"She has left them.

Grandad1943 maybe no one, male or female, should have to work long, unsocial hours. Families need their fathers as well as mothers. Presumable, the men are only able to work in that way because they have a wife/partner at home who takes up the slack. If their home life was divided equally, either partner would be equally available.

It strikes me that the best thing you could do to even up the situation is to issue every female worker with an AI wife!

Another thought on promotion - women are more likely to think that if they reliably do a good job, they will be noticed and promoted but that doesn't usually happen.

trisher the easy way to avoid that is for the entrants' identities to be kept secret from the judges until after they have made their decision.
Did that not happen?

Grandad1943 I guess your company has never made those facts clear to its female employees.
Positive action could be to make clear the requirement for flexibility, and its relation to promotion and higher salary, to all employees in that area of work.
Do you have women workers, without families, who have met the flexibility requirements, btw?

It's really weird that women don't like women. It's like being in a previous (or two previous) century, where the myth of "women compete against each other" was perpetuated (all the catfighting - the men love it!).

I love having more women on the media. I don't like all of them - but then I don't like all of the men either.

We need to distinguish between positive discrimination/affirmative action and positive action as well.
Positive action is taken to encourage women (or other groups under-represented in employment) and to differentiate between "real" qualifications and qualifications based on having a willy (thanks Margs). Positive discrimination is illegal. Positive action is not.

I think it's weird too that the argument about encouraging more women into public life, whether on board or on the media, always ends up with "well, it should be the best person for the job" - as if by encouraging women and ensuring that processes don't unwittingly discriminate against them (or against disabled people or LGBT+ people), we're somehow disadvantaging men, who are somehow the default "best person". All positive action allows is encouragement of application from diverse applicants and an employer needs to have data to support the use of positive action in recruitment.

And as for tearing apart a woman's clothes and make-up - what's that about? Reminds me of a job interview I had a long time ago where the bloke spent the entire time looking at my chest rather than my face. I'm surprised to hear that a woman would act in this way, about another woman, focusing on her body and not on her brain.

As far as that goes Grandad1943 perhaps what needs to change most then is our attitude towards childcare. But that's a difficult one. An awful lot of women are reluctant to leave their children in the care of fathers and an awful lot of men are quite happy about that. I think the same things are responsible fr the lack of women in top jobs.
As far as positve discrimination goes my DS was recently a finalist in a competition in his field. He didn't win (came second). A woman won. What was really weird was that lots of people came up to hm afterwards and said they thought his was best but as women were underrepresented they thought a woman had to win!

Apologies for joining this thread somewhat late, but I believe that the experience of our business regarding pay differentials may add to the thread content.

Last year during one of the regular staff conferences it was raised that on the operations side of the business all four of Assignment Team leaders ( known as assignment controllers) were men, and within the other members of those teams, the men were on higher salaries than that of the women members.

To ensure the company was operating within the Equalities Act, we undertook to carry out an in-depth analysis of the situation. At the conclusion of that analysis it was demonstrated that it was the working flexibility within the members of those teams that had brought about the above gender pay differential.

The Assignment Teams members are often called on to spend nights away from home and along with that also very often work long and unsocial hours. Within the foregoing, it was found that the male members of those teams even when they had families at home were consistently more ready to work away from home and readily engage in the other factors than the female team members who also had families at home.

The above has meant that the increased flexibility of the male members of those teams has increased comercial benefits to the company, and therefore they are more often selected for training to improve their qualifications and through that obtain higher grades, positions and salaries.

I believe that our analysis of the reasons for the pay differentials between male and female employees in our business is in common with similar circumstances in other companies, and that would indicate the problem is one of social and gender attitudes.

I realise that the above is "a can of worms" in regard to gender equality in employment, but that is not a problem that employers can solve. Instead, it is one for our society.

I will now don tin hat and join others behind the sofa.

Could not agree more Phoenix. Some say there should be a quota for women in political parties or on company boards. Just maybe if this was the case we would see the best person for the job but unless one could be assured this would be the case then IMO it is wrong. Another thing that annoys me is the minority groups -indigenous/LGBGTetc/ethnic and so on that demand equality and then want special acknowledgement. Does that not contradict the equality?

In the '90s it was obvious that there was going to be a problem with medical staff. Admission to medical school was (finally) based on exam results and not gender quotas, so that the girls were starting to outnumber the boys, and also the European Working time Directive was going to mean that the days of 90+ hour weeks were coming to an end.

By the nature of human biology, increasing numbers of doctors were going to want to take maternity leave. Then it became law that on return from maternity leave women could ask for part-time work rather than full-time. Naturally, some men began to ask for part-time work too, so that they too could spend more time with their young families rather than chase the megabucks.

Was there any effort to increase the number of medical school places when these changes were on the way? Of course not - the politician's planning cycle lasts no more than 5 years at the most, until the next election, and so committing to something as expensive with no pay-off for at least 10 years is not on their agenda.

So here we are. Hey ho.

I'm split on this one.

I love good female sports presenters -women play soccer and rugby so why shouldn't they commentate? even if they just know about it rather than playing, that's true of a number of male commentators. Clare Balding is great on racing and really researches other sports she's commentated on.

I think there is a problem with the number of female doctors, which is a problem with the NHS itself - eg the job has got even more overwhelming with staff shortages, increased paperwork, generous early retirement (which that mostly male generation of doctors is taking in droves). If you add to that women wanting to take maternity leave or go part time (really only works for GPs) then it becomes a huge organisational problem. I think there should be a review - many doctors including many men go on bank so they can choose when they work and get paid more, which causes another problem.

Razzy no need to apologise at all!

I’d just like to take you up on what you said about women in medicine.
In fact, for the last 25 years there have been more female undergraduates than male in medical schools.
www.bmj.com/bmj/section-pdf/959692?path=/bmj/360/8138/Careers.full.pdf

Of course, the numbers of female consultants to male ones might be a different matter.

I agree - you've made some very interesting points Razzy.

Don't apologise, Razzy. Very well said .

I think there almost needs to be positive discrimination for women to make up for the years and years of positive discrimination for men.

Of course, everyone wants the best person for the job, BUT... most employers will recruit in their own image - I work for an airline which for years has been run by male ex-RAF pilots. It has gone through various mergers, but ultimately all the bosses have been the same. They actively go out to recruit their friends from the Air Force.

Men and women make equally good pilots, but for years women were considered to be not as good. They are told they need to be more confident, more pushy, more assertive. Even though many of them are confident and assertive but show it in a different way to men. They also need to over-state it to even be considered, however it is a fine line.

Airlines have in the main been run by men for years. I find it strange that holiday airlines are run by mainly men, despite the fact that half of their customers are women. Why would you want to employ mainly men?

So now there is a "push" to encourage more women to become airline pilots (not in the airline I work for). The reason is that people look for jobs which represent who they are. When all they see as pilots are middle aged ex-RAF men, they assume that women are not even allowed to be pilots! (Yes, even today!). This is the same in many professions.

I also do talks in schools, and huge numbers of children say that boys become airline pilots, and girls become cabin crew.

I think it is similar in medicine and law.

So I actually agree with a bit of a push in the other direction. We have to aim for 75% women in posts, then we have a change of addressing the huge gender disparity in so many professions.

The Gender Pay Gap makes for interesting reading - men controlled power in companies for many years, and after women started working, they still refused to give them the promotions, even though they were more than capable. Men controlled it by refusing to offer school hours or other flexible working.

Men are not 50% of stay at home parents. Why? I constantly read that the woman stayed at home because the man had the higher salary, so it made sense. But how does that make sense? Why are all the men paid more? Why can't they both work 50% part-time? Why are the majority of part-time jobs poorly paid and worked by women. Why do fathers not step up to their responsibilities? I also am always hearing how the man cannot ask for flexible working or reduced hours because "it will affect my career". Yet it is ok for the women?

Sorry for my rant!!

I have a permanent copy of that terrific Miss Triggs cartoon on my computer Eloethan. It is applicable to so many situations

purplepatch I agree with your post and particularly your last comment. It made me think of the Punch cartoon of several men and one woman sitting round a board table and the Chairman saying:

"That's an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it".

Grannyrebel127 I don't think banality is the preserve of female DJs alone - it often seems to me a requirement of the job, whether for males or females.

Have to agree with Paddyann on this one. Of course the job needs to go to the most suitable candidate regardless of gender but the fact that men possess willies seems to gives them a distinct advantage, sadly.

I've been in one or two jobs were a male colleague has made a right Horlicks of a situation, been bailed out by a woman subordinate and then palmed things off as a masterstroke of HIS initiative.

It's what too many men do best......

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

I am an ardent believer in the best person for the job, male or female. But I have to say on seeing some of the posts on here "Welcome to 1919" Gransnet. Though actually it's not funny.

Reminds me of that research that showed that once a woman took up 30% of the conversation women were dominating.....