Women's rights in job search and job interviews

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Women's problems and rights at interviews

January 5th, 2008

For some reason, despite decades of law, government initiatives, and the feminist movement, women still find some interviews and job situations to be well over the line, unacceptable.

Women do not have it easy in the workplace, even now.

Bizarrely, things like children, family commitments, and other personal and private matters still show up on the job, at job interviews, and in the employment history. Even in the US, where parental care obligations are legally mandatory, these issues intrude where they have no right to do so.

You’d think some employers were completely ignorant. Women are actually asked if they propose to have any more children, when returning to the workforce after maternity leave.

The employment, parental, and privacy laws are entirely on the side of the employee. Employers aren’t allowed to ask questions which breach privacy laws, and can on do so when there is a reasonable business interest in doing so.

That doesn’t apply to family planning. It’s nothing to do with the employer if you have one child, no kids, or ten kids. They don’t even have the right to ask the question, let alone make any employment decisions against an employee or job applicant.

Strictly speaking, maternity leave isn’t a gap in employment. It’s a recognized legal status, which has applications across a range of laws including social security, health, medical, and other legal references.

It is, at least in principle, a discriminatory practice, if maternity is used against a job applicant or employee.

Interview problems and the workplace

Unfortunately the level of ignorance shown at interviews is a reflection of workplace attitudes which evidently just don’t know when to leave. It’s impossible to discuss women’s rights at interviews without discussing the background of the problems.

Sad to say, if you find you’re getting antiquated questions at a job interview, you can reasonably assume the workplace is pretty backward, too.

There’s the old fossil of the workplace, sexual harassment, for example.

This is still common in Neanderthal workplaces, and isn’t apparently recognized for what is sometimes is, a criminal offence. In many cases, sexual harassment is actually assault, according to common definitions of assault, which include reasonable apprehension of violence, and can include physical contact.

The only available preventative action is to complain, and from there on it’s a matter of how effective the employer’s complaints mechanism is, or isn’t.

Civil law is an option, theoretically, but an expensive one, and charging someone with an alleged assault isn’t as easy as many employment advisers seem to think. It can be an ordeal of itself, and the court appearances aren’t anyone’s idea of fun.

Another area in which the job interview is a particularly accurate indicator of the state of the workplace is in regard to promotions for women.

Promotion and career opportunities are very sore points with women, and with good reason. The simple fact is that women comprise a stunningly small percentage of top management executives. Compare their very occasional representation in various levels of management, which in percentile terms is almost always a single digit, to the fact that women actually outnumber men in the population, at roughly 52-48%, globally.

For the last two generations, women have also been receiving equivalent education, and there’s identifiable reason why they wouldn’t qualify for the top jobs. Yet, miraculously, not much seems to be happening.

Generally speaking, the lower down the management chain you go, the more women you see. The average level is middle management, and even then, the numbers don’t reflect the population ratio, across the board.

The glass ceiling is real. There’s no legal, ethical, professional, or rational reason for it to exist, but there it is, in all its ridiculous obsolescence.

The various problems add up to one pretty shabby conclusion:

The employment industry hasn’t delivered for women.

Most women would probably agree that there have been some improvements over the last 30 years, and there have been some sincere attempts to achieve some sanity in the workplace.

The facts remain:

Representation of women is appallingly disproportionate in management,
Litigation regarding discrimination and various breaches of employment law haven’t gone away,
Sexual harassment hasn’t gone away, employer responses are still pitiful, and the methods of handling complaints are antiquated and inefficient,
Privacy laws aren’t being meaningfully applied in the workplace,
The concept of maternity leave still doesn’t have proper legal recognition in terms of employment issues

Not terribly impressive, is it?

The employment industry must enforce equal employment policies, to force employers to understand their obligations. This is no longer a new idea, or a new thing in the workplace. The trial period is over.

It’s also anything but a new concept. Women’s rights, as a general social issue, is now into its second century. Doesn’t say much for the intelligence and speed of comprehension of some people, does it? It also doesn’t say anything good about the industry, if such basic principles have their default position in the Too Hard Basket, according to the industry supposed to be training the workforce and advising management and government.

There are no excuses. Rhetoric is meaningless. Privacy, equal employment, and anti discrimination laws aren’t there by coincidence. Things are changing, not quickly enough, true, but it is possible now to at least find employers who are aware of the laws.

If you’re female, and find yourself doing a job interview where you run into the well known wall of ignorance which really has no right to be there in the , think about your options. There are real, competent, employers out there, and you might be doing yourself a big favor looking for them, instead of putting up with the ancient practices of the past.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 5:35 am and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.