Looking for a Perl development position in London

[Philip Potter]

On 4 February 2010 14:48, Raphael Mankin <raph at mankin.org.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 13:31 +0000, Bob MacCallum wrote:
>> Under the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act it's unlawful for an employer to
>> discriminate against you because you are married.  This means that they
>> cannot ask you about this during interviews, etc.
>
> That may well be so but the fact remains that many employers will
> quietly discard the applications of women of child-bearing  age. They
> are just too expensive to employ. What with advertising and recruitment
> costs, maternity leave and all the rest, small firms e.g. solicitors and
> GP surgeries and so on will quietly overlook such applicants.

I'd like to see if the "more expensive" claim here could be backed up
by data. How much more expensive are they? How do you know? In
particular, given that you don't know if/when said candidate may fall
pregnant, the expected cost is far less bad than the worst case cost.

Furthermore, it's also unlawful to discriminate based on age, so you
don't have to put D.o.B. on an CV either. However, it's *much* harder
to hide age and sex than race or marital status. Assume they went to
university at age 18 and you've got a good estimate of their current
age.

Phil