This is the worst.
We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but a new study in the UK has found that one in three bosses wouldn’t hire a woman for a job because they’d be afraid she would get pregnant soon.
Don’t you just hate when your suspicions of gender bias are confirmed?
A third of bosses claimed that they either have or would reject a female job applicant for that reason and a quarter admitted that they they have rejected or would reject a woman for being a single parent.
We’d like to know if they same applies to a single father. Our guess is that the topic would not even be broached.
The study was carried out by Slater and Gordon and showed that a sizeable 40 percent of bosses perceive men as being more committed to their jobs.
Following on from that, 37 percent of bosses said that they would advertise positions as men-only if they were allowed.
The law prohibits gender-discriminatory positions and any form of discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics. These characteristics include a person’s sex, whether or not a person has had a gender reassignment, a person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
Though obviously only so much can be done to work against an ingrained bias against women in the workplace.
Employment solicitor, Remziye Ozcan, says that women should not be asked questions about their plans to have children, their family situation, or their childcare routine, etc.
So, ladies, if you are asked any of these questions during an interview, you are well within your rights to decline to answer and move on. And, based on these results, we suggest that you do.
