Looking for a Perl development position in London

[Raphael Mankin]

On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 15:48 +0000, Philip Potter wrote:
> 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.

It's 9 months of full salary more expensive to hire a woman who gets
pregnant, takes her full maternity leave and then decides not to return
to work. Adding on to this  advertising, time to review CVs, time to
interview and so on, the cost of recruitment can itself run into
thousands.

I know because, in spite of not myself being a woman, I have friends who
have been bitten by this problem.

The situation is exacerbated by women who take on a job with the full
intention of getting pregnant as soon as possible. There do not have to
be many of them for it to be a serious problem for employers.

On a personal note, a relative of mine wanted to get pregnant (and claim
her full maternity leave) but did not manage it until after she resigned
from her job.

> 
> 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.

Tell me about age discrimination ;-( Regardless of what the law says, it
happens.


> 
> Phil
>