30,000 sacked every year for having babies

[skorpionuk]

... was the headline I spotted in someone's newspaper at Reading station today, instantly raising my hackles, and causing me to utter "how can we even pretend we have equality when this sort of thing goes on?".

The headline belongs to an article published in today's Observer, and is in reference to a new report by the Fawcett Society called Sexism

Comments

[strangelover]

A few years ago I thought I was making real progress with my career and my earnings, only to find out that within the same company a man who worked below me in the company food chain was actually on £10K p.a. more than me.

I know a part of my problem getting a job here has been because I'm "of that age", according to society I should be rushing to get married and procreate - it's not even asked, it's just assumed. It pisses me right off.

[skorpionuk]

Guh. What an unpleasant discovery... and aside from kicking up a fuss, what can you do? You'd need some good solid proof that it was sexism, and there are probably always arguments against based on people's individual skills and experience.

[dennyd]

I read a very interesting LJ post by one of Helen's feminist friends last year, in which she theorised that the majority of women have to some extent prioritised 'quality of life' (being in charge of emotionally rewarding activites such as homebuilding, for instance) over 'maximum earnings' for some time now, and this partially explains the discrepancy in the wage numbers.

Our culture has a tendency to score achievement by money (etc) - that's not entirely accurate. If we were to score by 'personal fulfillment' (don't ask me to draw up the scale!) then we might see some interestingly different results in the male/female divide.

[arosoff]

Yes and no. Some women have prioritised 'quality of life' but it's a chicken and egg question. They know it's always women who are expected to sacrifice, and are treated accordingly.

[dennyd]

And men know that if they take six months to a year out to look after their newborn baby, they'll find it a lot harder to justify why they did it (to future employers) than the mum would. The cultural expectation works to the disadvantage of men who'd rather have quality time with their kid than have an unbroken career path, just as much as it works against women who'd rather have the unbroken career path and let the dad look after the kid.

I'm not saying we've got equality, I'm just saying there are more factors than 'who earns most', and they're not all tilted in the same direction.

[skorpionuk]

I also agree with your point about men being disadvantaged if they were to prioritise their family, and that needs fixing just as much as any other inequality.

[liz_lowlife]

Things will change when they stop marketing homemaking toys to just girls!
I'm a right old Millie Tant, me and ANY sexual stereotyping just makes my blood boil.

[chained_girl]

I'm right there with you on the irritated as hell thing. The MP thing in particular annoys the hell out of me - before worrying about fair representation of religious and ethnic minorities in the House of Commons, it would be really bloody nice if half this countries populations interests were a little bit better represented. And the argument 'well men can represent womens needs just as well as women could' - well are you proposing to suggest British MP's can represent the Muslim community just as well as a Muslim MP can? I'd LOVE to see how long that argument stood up - frankly, no one would dare, and quite rightly.

Gah. Thoroughly irritating subject. I have 'chosen' to some extent not to be a homemaker. As a result, I'd quite like a career. But as previous discussions in your comments seem to attest, most of us seem locked into admin roles, for want of anything better being perceived to be available. So where does that perception come from, I wonder?

[sea_of_flame]

I'd have to see the stats on that - while I'm not, by any means, claiming that there isn't still inequality in pay, a lot of these stats manage to fall over on close inspection because they don't adjust properly for the fact that women *are* taking time out to look after families

[sea_of_flame]

Sorry - obviously in that last section I meant to say people who had done comparable jobs throughout the period of the study, rather than in reference to a break to have kids, since by implication, there would be people there who hadn't *had* that break because they had no kids! You would of course want to exclude sector-shift amongst the non-parents as well as the parents in order to keep the groups comparable...

[dakeyras]

As I understand things, the inequality is not so much between women and men of a similar age, but between those of a similar level / scale, so on average a man doing the same job at the same level as a woman will earn more for it.