Hastings Forum

I believe they can, generally speaking but perhaps not in the Armed Services.
Feminism may rear its ugly head regarding pay scales in Institutions such as the BBC and perhaps for good reasons, but women cannot always do the same jobs as men, some can do better but women have traditionally been regarded as support rather than front-line workers.

Seems like the (mainly) female staff working at Asda have won the first round in their battle for equal pay. A Supreme Court judgment stating that Asda store workers can compare their jobs to staff in depots will be a boost for a great number of other retail workers.

Richard wrote:women cannot always do the same jobs as men, some can do better but women have traditionally been regarded as support rather than front-line workers.

I'm not sure I agree with that much. It seems to me that many women could be more than equal to men in the majority of jobs if they had the same opportunity to be exposed to the work and be able to grow into roles in the way that men do.

What holds many women back are a combination of how we / they are indoctrinated that that isn't a suitable role for a woman, that they are at risk from bloke-ish men who would be tempted by them around or that they are bound to want kids someday so it isn't worth going for a career when you need to stay at home to look after the sprog anyway.

Where men do have an advantage is physically for the likes of labouring jobs and some trades where muscle power is needed, but then you don't get the weedy types of blokes going down this route either, so it isn't a male/female thing.

In environments where women don't feel safe beause of the men around them, well shame on us men for behaving in a way that makes this a reality. We (men) need to evolve out of the nuckle dragging cavemen attitude and treat them as humans rather than as objects. This is likely to take generations at the current rate of change.

If we treated them as equals then I do believe they would rise to the challenge and prove themselves to be able to do everything an equally physiqued bloke could do and are certainly more than capable in business in my experience.

Also the whole issue of women being more likely to have kids and stay at home is another cultural stereotype that we need to grow out of - if men would take more part in the child raising even from an early age then there is no need for a woman to be be at home to do this.

Just my 2p on the subject.

Women absolutely should get equal pay across the board, for doing the same job, I have no argument against that.
But should they always be allowed to demand to do the same jobs that men have?
Generally speaking probably yes.
But perhaps not in certain cases.

Richard wrote:..should they always be allowed to demand to do the same jobs that men have?
Generally speaking probably yes.
But perhaps not in certain cases.

I think the answer to that is yes, they should be able to demand "access" to the same jobs, so long as they can demonstrate they have the appropriate levels of skills, ability and aptitude for the job in question.

To pass an interview for such a job they would have an equal opportunity to demonstrate they are a suitable candidate in the same way as any other applicants (male or non-binary...) and be weighed against these criteria with complete independence of their gender.

The interview process is where so much of this falls apart as there are still a majority of men in the recruiting capacity and there is a completely natural bias towards more of what has worked well in the past - ie more men.

For equality to work the recuiters need to be very concious that they must treat all applicants the same - having one female in a team of males may result in issues further down the line but we cannot let the possibilities of discrimination later impact the opportunity for the candidate to do the role.

Not long before covid, I had several management training courses that covered equaility (in all aspects) in the recruitment and ongoing management process. It was very informative and showed so many areas where we bring bias into the recruitment decisions subconciously that the HR team are scrubbing all references to gender and race from CVs before giving them to us for shortlisting candidates and are sitting in on further interviews to run through scoring candidates fairly and equally to find the best bet, puting rest to going on "gut feel" for a hire.

Having said that, my last 2 hires were put out to the open market and I was then given an explicit instruction verbally from the head of HR to hire a woman as the team had too many males to meet their balance objectives for representation. I did point out the hipocracy of the instruction but was told to get on with it.

I guess it is only reasonable that the playing field needs to be tipped in favour of the victims of discrimination for a while to get us back to a more sensible balance.

Sorry, I've rambled on a bit, I hope some of that explains how I've seen it handled in real world recruitment at the moment (my employer is a very progressive one that I have no complaints about).

Hello UncleB,

As long as women receive the same pay for the same job.
That should be set in stone.
Diverting slightly, as a male, I would much prefer a female boss, they have less tendency
to feel threatened by men asking awkward questions.
I think they are more fair-minded.
If (as a male) you challenge a male boss I find they may feel vulnerable.
They may seek to objectify you as an underling.
Some are not aware or interested in the issues in the workplace at all.

I think a good boss should be able, willing and prepared to show an interest in issues
in the workplace, yet many British bosses, still feel 'above it all' and have the attitude of 'I am the boss' full-stop.
Do as you are told, keep your head down and don't ask questions.
Managers may make many costly mistakes but keep their jobs, seemingly wearing bullet-proof vests, whereas the 'coal-face' workers are disciplined if they make small mistakes.
A kind of Neo-fascist bully-boy mentality is sometimes in operation.

Some bosses lie, threaten and harass their employees.
There may also (consequently?) be a bad atmosphere in the work place where employees turn against each other, stabbing co-workers in the back at every opportunity if they are seen to be vulnerable.
There is often a pecking-order regardless of gender.

Thankfully I have just retired and can put it all behind me now.

Hello Richard, I think the behaviours you point out are sadly some of the worse aspects of human nature and need good people to stand up to them at all levels.

Decent training and peer support is essential to this becoming embedded in corporate culture so it is going to take a long time to become the norm (if it ever does) and needs people like us to stand up to bullies as and when we can.

I appreciate not everyone has the will to take the hurt that can go with this or may simply not be bothered so long as their little corner of the corporate world is comfortable - and that is fine. It has cost me a few contracting jobs in the past but I always had the staff contact me afterwords to tell me the bully had been sacked and things were improving. It I look at the financial cost of this then it may not be the most sensible of things to do, but when compared to the impact on the people affected for the months and years it would have continued then it does make it less uncomfortable.

I hope you enjoy your retirement. I'm hoping for early retirement this year or next so have a little while longer to try to do the right thing yet

A thoughtful and sensible reply UncleB,
Many thanks,

Richard

By my opinion, it depends on the job. 90% of the jobs can be done by any gender with equal efficiency, but there are jobs that require physical strength for heavy lifting like warehouse job. Average man will do that kind of job more efficiently than an average woman.