0A provocative title I know, but I needed to get your attention.
“In 1984, the Sex Discrimination Act came into force, making it against the law discrimination to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender, sexuality, marital status, family responsibilities or because they are pregnant.
The Act has played an important role in changing community attitudes and helping advance gender equality in this country.
Despite this progress, women and girls continue to experience inequality and discrimination in many important parts of their lives, which can limit the choices and opportunities available to them” – Australian Human Rights Commission
Having written my first Pulse article a few months ago I knew I wanted to write again. I had a few topics in mind, but a recent experience of mine has compelled me to research and subsequently write this article about gender inequalities that still exist in the business world today.
Obviously, this is a huge topic covering an assembly of problems, but I felt obligated to share this experience in order to play my role (however small) in helping to educate and encourage women and men to keep talking about this issue for the vital reason of social progress.
My experience
I recently attended an interview, and over the course of the 90-minute meeting, the interviewer (and Director of the company) had spoken multiple times about the importance of integrity within his tight-knit team. This impressed me, as it is a quality that I consider integral to my own being. One of the last questions in the interview was “What are some of your life goals?” so, staying true to the principle that we had both agreed was paramount, I told him some of my life goals; “One day I want to be a business owner, own a Porsche 911 and have children”. He then briefly spoke about his own children, the interview continued and finally came to a close in a very normal and respectable manner. Two days went by and I finally got the call regarding my feedback. I had not been successful.
My feedback was;
“(Interviewer) really liked you, but, you said you wanted a baby … that was one of the main reasons you were unsuccessful”. The recruiter then went on to say that the position was given to a man who had a "very similar professional background” to mine, “so that had nothing to do with it” (presumably trying to make me feel better about my loss).
Now, it wasn’t specifically articulated to me that the Director didn’t want to hire me because he was worried I would have a baby soon, but I wonder if my male peer had said “One day I want to be a business owner, own a Porsche 911 and be a Dad”, whether he would’ve been removed from the selection process as well?
Somehow, I suspect not.
I was left feeling uncomfortable to say the least. Truthfully, I was left feeling utterly stupid for saying it.
The experience implored me to research the topic in more detail, and what I found shocked me.
The facts
“ A third of managers would rather employ a man in his 20s or 30s over a woman of the same age for fear of maternity leave”
A UK based survey of 500 managers by law firm Slater & Gordon showed that more than 40% admitted they are generally wary of hiring a woman of childbearing age. Clearly, a ridiculous philosophy as these hiring managers would be making unfounded assumptions based on factors that are largely outside of the candidate’s control, not to mention that they are legally not supposed to factor childbearing plans into account in any hiring decisions.
I also read about the so-called ‘Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus’. Claire Cain Miller says;
“One of the worst career moves a woman can make is to have children. Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work or to be paid as much as their male colleagues with the same qualifications.
For men, meanwhile, having a child is good for their careers. They are more likely to be hired than childless men, and tend to be paid more after they have children”
Shouldn’t everybody get the same opportunity to make something of themselves? Isn’t giving everybody a fair shot one of the cornerstones of western society? We all know the answers to these questions… “Of course!”, but obviously we are still a stage where we need to be reminded.
Gender equality is a fundamental human right, and as articulated in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals the advancement of it is “critical to all areas of a healthy society”.
This isn’t just a problem for women
I do not know how people are going to receive this article but I definitely did not want it to come across as a ‘man-hating’ post, because men also have an abundance of gender stereotypes that need to be eradicated. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) states that;
“Consistently over the past 10 years, the number of suicide deaths was approximately 3 times higher in males than females.
In 2015, 75.6% of people who died by suicide were male”
This also needs to be addressed as a gender equality issue – an avoidable difference in length of life that affects men more because of the way society expects them to behave.
I personally know a man who at one stage in his life was a multi-millionaire, but who, after his company collapsed and he became bankrupt, went through a mound of mental health issues because he could no longer provide for his family. If a man looses his ‘primary breadwinner status’, or simply chooses not to adhere to it in the first place, it can be seen as emasculating. That stereotype, along with ‘men don’t cry’ or ‘men can’t show any signs of vulnerability’, have been proven to cause massive psychological stress.
It is essential that both men and women are aware of the benefits that gender equality brings to them as individuals and as members of communities and societies.
The sad (current) reality
In Australia, most people eventually have children. That is a reality that employers should understand – as is the fact that now, fathers, too, change nappies and pack lunches and mothers go to work.
The purpose of me writing this article was to keep the conversation of gender equality going. Kate Jenkins, Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner says;
"One of the key barriers to gender equality is the way we accept a degree of "everyday sexism" as harmless”.
"Often, women don't speak up about this everyday sexism because they feel it's not malicious and the incidents are too small to make a fuss”.
I didn’t want to minimize what happened to me, vent to my friends and then shrug it off as another ‘life experience’, because these types of occurrences need to be shared in order for us all to be cognizant that this is still going on. If we want to improve gender equality;
"we need to talk about the deeply embedded systemic and attitudinal barriers that prevent it. We need to use words such as "sexism" and terms such as "misogynist" and "feminist", not as labels for people but as descriptors of the barriers ... which are often unconscious and unintentional. This is not a conversation about villains and victims; it is about cultural and attitudinal change” - Kate Jenkins
Maybe, as a female in the traditional ‘child-bearing’ years of my life, I should’ve known not to mention children in an interview, and the sad reality is that; in this present day, I shouldn’t h
