Never mind the fridge ...

[tamaranth]

"No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age." Godfrey Bloom, MEP

1. Am not a Lady. (Am, in fact, a slattern: want to come and look behind my fridge? Caution: Mice).

2. I encountered this attitude in the City in the early 1990s, when one of my colleagues told me he'd argued against my promotion because I was obviously going to go off and have children, and they'd have to train up another person (a male one) to take over.

3. Does that mean that if this is an early menopause, I'll get my rights back?

I could go on. But I'd rather beat my head against this glass ceiling. Anyone got some Windowlene?

Comments

[reddragdiva]

I wonder how this is affectd by full-blown paternity leave rights as in Scandinavian countries I forget the precise details of at this moment.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

You could beat his head against something ...

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

One of the Board Directors who interviewed me (9 years ago, eep) let slip a couple of months later that he hadn't wanted to employ me because he thought I'd leave to have children. Luckily there were another five directors who thought differently, and gave me a chance to prove myself.

The glass ceiling is a fact of life, and if anyone thinks it isn't they're just ignorant. Some people break through it, and they're lucky. That doesn't mean it's not there. Geoffrey Bloom has made himself unpopular by stating his opinion, but he's not exactly alone in his thinking. It's not politically correct, so most people won't admit to it. But most male employers DO think that way.

Luckily, I don't care any more.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I seem to have got his name wrong. How sad :)

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

You also seem to have confused the meaning of "politically correct" with "legal".

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Good thing I no longer care, isn't it?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

About (a) being understood (b) not being prosecuted?

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to be prosecuted for anything, as far as I'm aware. As for being understood, it depends on who's reading.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Prosecuted, no. Persecuted, I can arrange.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Your icon is scaring me!

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

Is it me, or does it look a teeny-weeny bit like The Fonz?

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Only a little bit :)

Aha!

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

Turns out they're cousins (the actors) so that would explain that! And I'm usually useless at spotting family resemblances...

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

He reflects the other main side of my personality, and that side is in the ascendant at the moment.

And, ivory_goddess, he is bloody NOT the Fonz. Taller, for a start, and as far as I'm aware never used to hang around the high school loos at the age of 35...

[techno-fear.livejournal.com]

Yeah - but who is it?
Looks like one of the pilots who dies in "Alive".
Bad skin.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

We'v been here in someone else's LJ.

Richard Belzer, actor and stand-up, used to be in Homicide, and is now in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Acidic, cynical, countercultural, dark humoured, and wears shades most of the time. Bad skin, true, but who amongst us is perfect?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

It's not politically correct, so most people won't admit to it.

It's illegal, so most employers won't admit to it.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

My colleague wouldn't admit to it in a business context: he told me in the pub. In business terms, I was not promoted because of other factors (not unconnected with the inherent sexism and long-hours culture of many City companies at that time, and since). As several women have found out the hard way, it can be extremely difficult to prove sexism in the workplace -- though, cf Nicola Horlicks, it can be done. There is always something else they can use an excuse. And if there isn't, they'll push until they find a limit.

Stuff City career, anyway. Am ever so much happier out of it all.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Our OU Law course tutor recently admitted what several of us in our study group suspected: that she's a UKIP supporter. I wonder what she (a barrister and law lecturer) will think of this?

MC

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

ask her how often she cleans behind her fridge. I think we should be told what the party standard is.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can't move my fridge. Perhaps Mr Bloom would come round and do it for me?

[avirr.livejournal.com]

Isn't it nice when some asshole says what all those dinosaurs are thinking?

I've had and raised two kids during my working life and my employers / clients have noticed that my brain did not mysteriously atrophy. They like my work a lot -- I'm even raising my consulting rates because I have too much demand. *feh* to those male chauvinist pigs.

[camies.livejournal.com]

I am increasingly bewildered by the UKIP. One of their recent pronouncements was something like 'we don't need cycle facilities as nobody rides a bicycle any more'. No? Not me and the hundreds of people who cycle to work? They seem to resemble not so much the BNP as the Monster Raving Loony Party except that the MRLP actually had some reasonable ideas re redistribution of wealth etc IIRC.