From: hwatters@armltd.uucp (Helen Watters)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Re: gender "data-hiding" (vs. discrimination)
Date: 10 Apr 92 14:40:47 GMT
Organization: Advanced RISC Machines Ltd


This post caused my blood to boil. I meet this attitude in the work place,
see it on TV etc., I HAD to reply so don flame proof garb now!

>This may be cold reality, but it's a cold reality that employers
>have to deal with.  Suppose you have a choice of two, equally-competent
>referrals from an employment agency in front of you.  One is a young
>woman who's been married about a year, and is likely to be getting pregnant
>very soon.  Chances are fairly good, if her husband has a full-time
>job and good salary, that she may never return after her maternity leave,
>and will either stay home or seek part-time employment.  The other
>choice is a man of the same age, or an older woman whose children are
>in college.

Not all women who are married have children and not all unmarried women don't.
I have been married 8 years and I haven't yet had kids. I know other
couples who have married and stayed married because it is nice to be
with another person.

I often hear "don't employ a women she will only get pregnant and leave."
But when a women gets pregnant, what options does a women have.  Childcare 
is usually very expensive and difficult to find. Most employers will not 
even consider part time work, besides that a women has to work full time 
to afford childcare. All mothers who I have talked to, tell me women with 
children under five get few if any pay rises, zilch promotions and are 
treated like shit by most employers.  I have met very intelligent women, doing
crumby jobs for pin money, because it is all they could get to fit around the
 children. To me it is a disgrace that intelligent, polite, well 
educated people, who just happen to have kids,ie women, are thrown on 
the scrap heap, because society is geared up for, and only for 9-5 work and 
is incapable of considering the alternatives.  Women are forced out of
jobs when they have kids.  A full time job is tiring, couple that with kids
its exhausting, but add on the petty mindedness of employers and it just
becomes impossible.  

Some of the guys on the net have talked about women being able to opt out,
if the going gets tough, men have to keep going. But if a man is raising kids
on his own, most people thinks he is wonderful.  Ask him how he copes and
if there is anything they can do.  A women well it is her duty. Anyway why
should we help her, she has no right to be in the workplace anyway, she is
depriving her kids by working.  Rises in crime, vandalism, you name it,
are ALL blamed at some time or other on the irresponsibilty of women
who work. Their selfishnes, etc.

Also it stinks, if the women really is the better person for the job
and she does not get it because she might have kids in the future. Case of
guilty until proven innocent. But then a women who does not have kids is 
an oddity. Nudge nudge, a married women with no kids how odd!! 
Besides  that I am engineer. Until the current recession, most engineers 
were mobile. Women have to work 2 years to gain maternity rights 
(ok there are severly reduced rights for those who have worked six months). 
If a women is seriously considering kids, she has to work for two years 
to gain the full maternity entitlement. Your hypothetical human resource 
manager would know that a women who wants kids would be employed for the 
next 2 years, a career orientated male could quit for a "better"
opportunity anytime (in the next year?), so who is the better bet?
But I still hear trotted out we can't employ women, she will have kids 
and leave. I *NEVER* hear we can't employ the best male candidate,  he might
quit for our competitor!


> o  Women are permitted paid Maternity Leave for the shorter
>    of two weeks after the birth of a child (or longer if
>    medically necessary, at the advice of your physician) plus
>    an additional two weeks.  This may be followed by an unpaid
>    leave of up to six months.  There is no limit on the number
>    of such leaves that may be taken during ones employment
>    period.

I wish guys would stop looking on maternity leave as a kind of holiday. 
Babies are HARD work, or so everyone keeps telling me. Having a baby
is a very physical experience.  Some women need time off to rest before
having the baby. The time off is ESSENTIAL for the health of the mother 
and baby, not a fun time.  I am sure a medical person can expand on this.
2 weeks off before the baby is born is inadequate and should be
extended for sake of the mother's and the baby's health. 
But then who cares it is only women who physically suffer, a few extra
babies are born handicapped, so it does not really matter.

What seem to be happening now is that only, the very rich can afford kids,
it is so expensive, or the very poor, because they get to do something
worthwhile(raise a kid) or get extra benefits etc.  Most ordinary average
middle class couples are having either no kids or one.
The rich have kids, but there are not many superrich people, the poor have kids
they are more of them, but the middle class is not procreating.
Noone is supporting the average couple to have kids.

I don't have the reference, but someone said that giving, people a 1000 pound
tax allowance per kid, say for the first 3 kids, would allow most women
to work.  I am posting from the UK, allowance for the mother first, father 
second, bit like the married persons allowance, that goes to husband first
and wife second.  It would not actually cost that much.  Women receiving
benefits can't work now, childcare is too expensive, but the allowance
would make the difference, between them working and not working.
Besides that once working they would be paying taxes and not being paid
benefit.  Mothers who do work, often have to, to pay bills, childcare
costs are one more stress, so making then more prone to illness. The 
allowance would ease some of the stress.

But then I have asked who cares it is only women who suffer? or could some
of the marrige break ups be caused, by the stress of raising kids, in a
society, where everyone looks after number one!!

You can take the flame proof clothes off now and hand them over to me :-)

Helen
Newsgroups: soc.women