Two of the United Kingdom's most successful businesswomen say that that country's labor and family leave laws may be hurting women's chances for employment and promotion.

Nichola Pease testified in a parliamentary hearing on sexism in the financial sector.  Read about it here (Daily Mail, 10/14/09).  Specifically, Pease testified that she doesn't believe anti-woman sexism plays much of a role in hiring and promotion in Britain's financial sector.  What she does find troubling are maternal leave laws that allow women, but not men, to take 12 months paid leave on the birth of a child.  (Men are entitled to two weeks.)  Those, plus stupendous payouts in sex discrimination cases alarm Pease, because she believes that they may nudge employers away from hiring women. 

And she's not the only one.  Ruth Lea, non-executive director of the Arbuthnot Banking Group said,

'I have long warned that this huge extension of women's rights would backfire,' she said.

'Employers have to be more careful about making a woman redundant... so bosses have to ask themselves whether they take them on in the first place.

'What is so difficult for employers is that women can take up to a year off work and are under no obligation to come back. Meanwhile, they have to keep the job open.'

Pease places the failure of women to advance in the financial field squarely on their own shoulders, saying it's a product of their own choices. 

'I think there is already positive discrimination for women. Call it feminism, but there are a lot of calls for women saying "come on board".

'I think a lot of women that could be on board make choices not to go further up an organisation and they made those choices for a variety of very understandable and acceptable reasons.

'It might be that they have decided to concentrate on their family. 

'It may be that they decide they want more flexible working practices and the senior jobs may not be suitable for them.

'It might be that they decide they don't want the responsibility or the extra hours that often go with very, very senior jobs.

Needless to say, Pease's remarks were greeted with outrage by those whom the article refers to in an Orwellian masterstroke as "equal rights campaigners."  Those are the ones who demand that the radical inequality of British parental leave policy be maintained. 

Even stranger is the claim, regarding the low percentage of women in financial sector directors' positions, that

'This is often attributed to to women "opting out", but the question is is why are they facing that choice at all?'

In other words, in ways not explained, women should be able to stay home with the children and be promoted in the workplace.  Again, these are "equal rights campaigners." 

But of course they're anything but.  They're campaigners for special privileges for women.  They stand for nothing less than the proposition that (and here we hear echoes of Judith Warner) women shouldn't have to make choices.  There should be no penalty, at least for them, for taking long periods of time off work. 

Now, if the United Kingdom were foolish enough to act on the notion that a person's advancement in a firm should have nothing to do with time actually worked or contributions actually made, it's inconceivable that men too wouldn't opt out.  But there's always the chance that those laws, plumped for by "equal rights campaigners," would be as discriminatory against men as are parental leave laws.  We'll see.

The article does cite studies that show that women in the 'City' are discriminated against in pay and promotions.  If that's true, it should stop and British anti-discrimination law is a good way to do that.  But making the already extremely unequal family leave laws even more so is hardly advisable.

In the meantime, women like Nichola Pease and Ruth Lea, having actually accomplished a great deal in the financial sector, have their own ideas.  They're the ones Parliament should listen to, because they demand that Britain exchange the incessant special pleading for women for actual equality.  But of course they've gained their success by hard work, pulling long hours and sacrificing time with children. 

The idea that that's the way for women to advance was referred to by one Labor MP as "old-fashioned."

Thanks to Duncan for the heads-up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 9:53 am and is filed under Men, Women and Work.