This "pro women" thing?

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!

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.

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?

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 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!

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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?

There are a lot of "what if" statements in your above post Razzy which in an ideal world would bring to women the equality that at some point in time must come about.

In the above, the Equalities Act 2010 has done much to ensure that women cannot be prescribed against simply because of gender in almost all areas of life. That is especially true in respect of employment, and in that it is not in the main discrimination that now restricts women's advancement in the workplace but the overall social and gender attitudes of both sexes in our society.

The above is not a problem that employers can solve, and neither should they be expected to.

But employers could stop sacking women who are pregnant. There is also a petition to extend the appeal length from 3 months to 6 months. Which seems only fair. You're pregnant. You're sacked and you only have 3 months to appeal- while you're having a baby as well. chng.it/8HVrWgVnYj
If you want to know more
www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=pregnant+then+screwed&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

I really don't recognise the world you describe, Razzy. I don't know anyone who has or would say those things to their children. It's certainly not the way I raised my children!

On the topic of time off for family, I believe one of the Scandinavian countries allocates parental leave into maternity and paternity leave but it's not transferable. If either partner (usually the father) chooses not to use their leave, they lose it altogether. That's one way in which society could even up the playing field.

Agreed. That sort of attitude does nothing to propmote feminism and is why so many young women are turning against it. Equality for all!

Which attitude, knickas63?

trisher I wonder if your DS is relaxed about coming second because he realises that, as a male, he will still have more opportunities than women.

It's faintly possible, also, that the woman's work was as good, or better, than his but that some people didn't realise this because of faulty perceptions, as you mention above.

I completely agree phoenix. People should win awards on merit, not because someone is playing the diversity game.

I sometimes imagine some head of HR saying " Well, all we need now it to appoint a disabled person from an ethnic minority, who is LGBGT, and all the the boxes are ticked!

That, however, seems to be exactly how appointments work these days.

You can play diversity bingo now.

For example : OH and I just KNEW the new couple moving into Coronation St would be black. We think for a street that size it has the most gay people in it than anywhere else on earth. (Why haven't they opened a gay bar there we wonder?) We have someone in a wheelchair, someone with Downs syndrome and a deaf person (whose acting was so atrocious that it was embarrassing and actually held up the flow of the scene.) We have had cross-dressers and transgender people too. We get the message.

It ticked every diversity box to the detriment of reality. They should change the name of the programme to Diversity Street.

I do hope the person who won the film award got it on merit phoenix and the presenter who thought it should go to a women got ticked off for her personal bias.

(News presenters are now biased. Neutrality seems to be an old fashioned concept for reporters.)

Agree with Phoenix.

FarNorth I think he was relaxed about it because he has had some successes and many experiences of knock backs, knows he is in a very competitive business and that his work was better. And as he put it "Winning one award won't get her that far unless she does something about the quality of her work." He does have a number of female friends working in the same field whose work he really respects, so I don't think he is particularly biased about women's work, just considers quality important.

Fair enough, trisher.

Day6, I didn't see that deaf actor but maybe their acting was an accurate representation of a deaf person. Real life doesn't always flow nicely.

This made me wonder about the deaf characters in Summer of Rockets. You can read about them here www.broadcastnow.co.uk/drama/summer-of-rockets-bbc2/5139525.article
Quite remarkable acting in my opinion.

But trisher is that not just a case of male bias? Most men think they are better than women. Perhaps this woman deserved the award. Obviously all his friends will say he should have got it, that’s what friends do. Many men complain if a woman wins something because they think there is a man who is better.
Ask the general public who are the better pilots, the majority will say men. Even though there is no evidence. Why are men seen as the default CEOs and winners? Why are they not criticised for not spending more time with their kids, yet working women are? Why are male traits seen as the default preferred attributes for many top jobs?

Reading some of the posts above seems that some companies think that they have a good way of ensuring that the gender imbalance remains the same, instead of looking at how they can increase flexibility. ( Males offering more flexibility). Hope they challenged soon!

I don't think so Razzy and the people commenting were not his friends but other people in the same field. This was a professional invitation only event, not the sort of thing you take your friends to. In fact a lot of them might best be described as competitors.