There was an article in the UK's Daily Mail this week (link), where Samantha Brick set up a media company that only employed women. It went bankrupt but her aim was "...to achieve my Utopian dream - a female- only company with happy, harmonious workers benefiting from an absence of men. "
One issue that was not picked up was whether setting up this media company with such a recruitment policy actually broke the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) (link). The Act does allow for gender-only discrimination but only in specific circumstances, normally around issues of vulnerable people or where there is an obvious reason.
However, a media company would not fit into that category. As far as can be seen the policy of only recruiting women broke the Act and therefore was operating illegally. Any man who applied for a job with this company and was turned down because of his gender would have won a case in the civil courts.
Because it was a woman-only company, it is not challenged but if it was a male-only company then this point would have been made, such is the double standards.
The question is, how many other companies out there that purposely only recruit women and not men? And are proud of it!
Got to love how they couldn't even find females for certina roels and thus had ot employ some men in the end!
What a ridiculous way to run a business. Failure is always massively more likely when you start recruiting to fill quotas and in a sexist way rather than choosing the best person for the job.
Posted by: John kImble | Thursday, 09 April 2009 at 02:10