Gender Based Hiring Quotas in Australia 68

[Hurricanes]

So... I work for a large-ish consultancy in Australia. Recently they have introduced quotas. 50% of new hires must be female. Also, as there is a lack of female representation in senior positions, preference must be given to a female rather than a male when promotion time comes around.

I think this is all a bit backwards and trying too hard. With something like 15-20% of university graduates being female, a 50% minimum hiring rate is asking for trouble IMO.

What are peoples thoughts on this?

 

[JNieman]

In our state, it recently became required for businesses to allow family leave, e.g. for expectant mothers and fathers. It was also clear at some companies that I worked, that using such leave pretty much put you on the "mommy/daddy track", and you could expect lower pay raises, male or female, the same way that using all your sick leave, or consistently refusing to work unpaid overtime, etc. would do.

Those uppity ingrates. Refusing to labor after-hours for FREE. The gall! "mommy/daddy track" my ass. Avoiding exploitation is not a drawback. You're just promoting a culture that preys on the weaker willed.

 

[KENAT]

Who is promoting it JNieman?

Not Btrue from what I read.

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[JNieman]

The hypothetical manager enacting such policies - apologies for the ambiguity. I was admittedly less than specific.

 

[JAE]

I think the "unpaid overtime" was perhaps referring to a salaried employee vs. an hourly employee.
There is a huge difference there and if you are salaried and expect to be paid for necessary overtime you probably aren't on much of a promotable track to begin with.

Salaried individuals are paid X amount of money to get job Y done - no matter what it takes time-wise. That is the definition of "salaried".
Hourly employees are paid for their pure labor vs. time and if overtime is required they are due the overtime pay.

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[HamburgerHelper]

That isn't really true about salaried workers. Outside consultants get paid to get a job done. No one monitors their coming or going or their hours. Not true for salaried workers.

 

[KENAT]

Most salaried employees actually given a defined nominal number of hours they are meant to work. Being a bit flexible on this is generally accepted.

However, X amount of money to get Y job done is pushing it.

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[Maui]

Hurricanes, if you are a male employee then get out NOW while you still can. Mike Halloran is right - your company is doomed. The longer you stay, the more you will come to realize this.

Affirmative action, as it is currently practiced here in the United States, is essentially politically sanctioned discrimination. It is based on the premise that you can adjust for the problems of past discrimination practices by actively discriminating against everyone else who doesn't belong to the identified minority and/or gender groups of interest. Based on your opening post, you have not been impacted by this before. You soon will be. My initial experience with this type of discrimination occurred when I applied for my very first job as I was graduating from college. That served as my introduction to the working world.

Maui

 

[JAE]

On the salary / overtime issue - what I said above I still stand by.

Historically, a salaried individual was indeed paid X to get Y job done. That is not pushing it at all. That was probably the status in the US from the 1800's to today - at least through the 1990's.
Possibly back to the B.C. era.

It may be that some companies differ in that they might pay salaried individuals for some overtime but that wasn't the case generally.

Here's some quotes/definitions/history:
[blue]A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. From the point of view of running a business, salary can also be viewed as the cost of acquiring and retaining human resources for running operations, and is then termed personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll accounts.

Salary is a fixed amount of money or compensation paid to an employee by an employer in return for work performed. Salary is commonly paid in fixed intervals, for example, monthly payments of one-twelfth of the annual salary.

In the United States, the distinction between periodic salaries (which are normally paid regardless of hours worked) and hourly wages (meeting a minimum wage test and providing for overtime) was first codified by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. At that time, five categories were identified as being "exempt" from minimum wage and overtime protections, and therefore salariable. In 1991, some computer workers were added as a sixth category but effective August 23, 2004 the categories were revised and reduced back down to five (executive, administrative, professional, computer, and outside sales employees).[/blue]

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[FoxRox]

I feel I need to clarify my last post a bit. I was being facetious and I see now that it was not a time to be facetious.

My intent was to support women by pointing out how silly it is to suggest they need quota policies to get a job. I believe it is insulting to women. I realize this is anecdotal, but everyone else is doing it so here goes. My wife feels the same way. She is a medical physicist. For those unfamiliar, that means she runs quality control for radiation oncology equipment such as linear accelerators and imaging equipment such as MRI and CT scanners. She holds a BS in physics and a MS in radiation physics. She is compensated equally to men in her field with similar experience and credentials. To her knowledge, she has never been granted preferential treatment because of her gender, and she would feel ashamed if she had.

Another clarification: I don't literally "sit back and claim everything is fine the way it is." I acknowledge a problem, but the problem is with individuals and culture. These problems cannot be solved overnight by laws or policies. Some individuals may never change, but they will eventually retire. Culture can and most certainly is changing for the better when it comes to gender equality. Just take a look from one generation to the next. The increased prevalence and acceptance of women as professionals is obvious. Another anecdote for this one. A friend of mine is a lawyer in D.C. at a major law firm. She is in her late twenties, just passed the BAR last year. She feels well accepted and respected by her peers. She has already been moved to a more upward mobile position in the firm. She would not call it a promotion, more of a horizontal shift. But clearly it is a sign they see bright things in her future. Once again, there are no policies helping her along, at least not official ones. A professional woman who is now in her forties or fifties would have faced a much different environment when she was starting out. I know that. My mother lived that.

I do believe that affirmative action is demeaning to those it seeks to help. I was not being facetious about that. It suggests inferiority, which is a horrible thing to put on a person. I know that is not the intent, but the suggestion is there none the less. To be "helped" into a job by a quota would be embarrassing, and an honest person would never live it down in their own mind. Those who would knowingly and openly accept preference based on gender or race are entitled. Entitlement begets resentment. Resentment is counterproductive to the the cultural change in progress. I think these policies actually hinder or even reverse the progress we've made as a culture. Discrimination should be universally prohibited and condemned. Period.

 

[MartinLe]

IMO, the fact that someone thinks a quota is neccessary does not reflect their opinion on woman as fragile and in need of protection, but their (the quota setters) belief that hiring managers are not willing or able do overcome their biases without some prodding.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of quotas either but I see the problem they try to solve. I'm a fan of models that allow more control over the working time (parental leave, part time work, flexitime, overtime is paid or taken off) because that helps a lot with child rearing and managing a household or having a life. But the career one makes in such a model is different.
This helps people who want a life besides work and can't push all the stress to their domestic partners. Surely only a subset of women in the field, OTOH also a subset of men.

 

[controlnovice]

a woman who has worked her bahooty off to get even a modicum of respect from old fart white men engineers

Same could be said of a man who has worked his bahooty off to get even a modicum of respect from old fart white men engineers....

______________________________________________________________________________
This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[JNieman]

#NotAllMen

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I don't know what to say about quotas but the in my opinion the greatest and most valid integrator is high goals and difficult obstacles. Women came in and played a big role during the war effort in WW2. Truman racially integrated the military during the Korean War. Clinton outlawed banning of people in the military by their sexual orientation with "don't ask don't tell" in 1993 and full inclusion happened in 2011 unber Obama. To me at least, the quickest and most validating form of inclusion is to raise the bar or tackle really hard problems that need to be overcome. Pressure creates changes.

 

[cranky108]

Maybe this is insightful. If you want the respect from this old white engineer, you have to earn it. I don't care about your <fill in the blank> that's your anchor and you should get over it.

Things are changing and some what for the better, as having people who are different bring a different perspective. And just maybe that is why there is the need for quotas.

 

[WARose]

[blue](controlnovice)[/blue]
Same could be said of a man who has worked his bahooty off to get even a modicum of respect from old fart white men engineers....

Quite true. I'm white (and male).....and when I came into this business, the old guard [white & male] wouldn't give me the time of day. (It took years.)

 

[JohnRBaker]

Back during a period when I was managing a group of engineers and technical employees our company had a program to increase the diversity of the professional staff, and with respect to this, they activity recruited what they felt were above average minority candidates (this included gender considerations) from highly rated universities. I had one of these so-called 'fast-track' employees in my group.

Now I played no role in hiring her as she had already been with the company for several years when I took over the group in which she was part of. Now she was an outstanding, dedicated and hard driving employee and once you got to know her you learned that despite what other people might say about her (mostly males) she was NOT a 'libber' using her sex to get ahead, she was actually very qualified for the job that she was doing. Now even though my company, which I will not name but was a large American corporation known for producing very complex and high-value products, I was never pressured into treating her any different than anyone else in my group, which BTW did include other female employees, just not ones who had been hired under this program, except in one way. I had to do 'annual' reviews for all of my people at least once a year and to make this as easy as possible we used the employee's birthday for the timing of these reviews. Now don't confuse this with the annual task of determining pay raises or bonuses as this was always done at the end of the fiscal year for all employees, no this was just to review their contribution to the organization and fitness for the tasks for which they were responsible for. And while the results of these reviews obviously played a role in determining compensation and future promotions, they were not directly linked. Anyway, in the case of this one female employee, I had to do her 'annual' review every six months. This was it as far as my role in her career with us and I had no problem with it since I understood why it was being done and that it was an appropriate process which did not really discriminate against other employees yet still accomplished what the company was trying to do, identify and encourage individuals in a way to improve diversity at all levels of the company.

Unfortunately it did not end well. A couple of years later I was offered a side-ways move to a senior staff position to the VP of development (by this point I had realized that while I liked my position and my people seemed to like me, management was NOT my strong suit and I really wanted to get back into a more hands-on technical role and the opportunity that opened-up for me was exactly what I was looking for) and this female employee, who had been acting, when needed, as my 'second-in-command' anyway, was offered my position when I left, which she accepted. Now this job was managing a technical support staff to the sales organization of our company and was therefore a 'field' location. That is, we were not part of 'corporate'. Less than six months after taking-over my job she GOT her big opportunity to move into a job that she really wanted, being part of a large procurement program focusing on a customer where her background would be a big asset (her degree was in aerospace engineering and this new program was to try and secure a large contract with NAVAIR, the Navy's aerospace command) and it was at 'corporate' where her role would be much more noticed so I'm sure that helped with both her decision and the people who wanted her on this project. In the end, she wishes she had stayed put, not because she failed to do the job or that we lost the contract but rather the corporate environment was not a good one for her. Now she was a young, good looking single women and when she started to deal with hard-core corporate types she was confronted, really for the first time in her career, with both sexism AND sexual 'abuse' in the workplace. She was devastated and quit the company a couple of years later.

Now we've kept in touch over the years and she has told me on more than one occasion that she wishes she had never left that job that she had taken-over from me, both because of what happened to her and the fact that that 'field' office became one of the largest in the company so she could have had all the chances of advancement by staying put, but you don't know those things at the time.

Anyway, I thought this story would be of interest to at least some of you here.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[BigInch]

The grass on the other side of the fence is not always as green as it can sometimes appear, but still nobody can, or should, try to tell you that at the time. It usually doesn't do any good anyway. When those rare challenges come along, you've just to go try it for yourself. Surely as I'm sitting here right now writing this, if she never went down that path, she would be writing about how much she regretted not taking that route. I am not sure what this has to do with quotas in Australia either. We should probably stop now.

Reaction to change doesn't stop it

 

[Fugeguy]

The thing that always worries me is institutional discrimination.

Individuals are always going to say dumb things and make disparaging remarks.

Once the stated policy of an organization becomes we are only going to hire a minority female with a disability or fill in the blank- how does that differ from the days of "whites only" signs?

The most egregious form of racism is when it is made into policy whether at a governmental or corporate level. Even when targeting whitey.

 

[JNieman]

Hiring strategies would only rightfully be even-handed and without bias if the hiring being done would perform even-handedly and without bias.

History shows us this isn't the case.

Hence modified hiring strategies.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Exxon pays women engineers more than men to get their pick while diversifying their workforce.