Today's Irish Times features an article on the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, who has published a new book on women in the workplace. In this she suggests that employers should be allowed to ask women if they are planning on starting a family.
Sandberg, who was one of a handful of women to speak at the World Economic Forum at Davos last week, says we need a more open dialogue about gender in the workplace – and that includes discussing with female employees whether they plan to have children. “Every HR department tells you not to do that . . . but we need to have a much more open conversation. Think of it like a marathon. Everyone’s cheering the men on. The messages for women are different: are you sure you want to run, don’t you have kids at home? We have to talk about this.”
The premise of this is that employers could take a pragmatic view of this, and as with Marissa Mayer who was headhunted to become chief executive of Yahoo, she told the board she was pregnant, but said she had no intention of disappearing for months on maternity leave, and would instead take a couple of weeks. She returned to her post within three weeks of the birth of her son last October. However this is not the norm, and in Ireland the Maternity Protection Act requires an employee to take a minimum of six weeks maternity leave (two weeks prior to the expected date, and four weeks afterwards). The Marissa Mayer approach is the exception rather than the rule, and an employee's aspirations of starting a family should in no way reflect their ability to carry out the role. The unfortunate reality is that if the question was asked only a very small number of employers would consider a person for a role if they felt they would be taking maternity leave in the near future. This openness would not serve the cause intended and may lead to discrimination.
There are a number of employer who openly state they will not hire women of a certain age group due to their taking of maternity leave, and we have legislation in place to deal with this (Section 6 of the Employment Equality Act details the nine grounds of discrimination) and employers holding these views thankfully are becoming outdated.
Sandberg's argument, whilst well-intentioned, is on the basis of an open and transparent dialogue with the would-be employer and the candidate, however not all positions are as Facebook COO or the CEO of Yahoo. This openness may not serve people well in the longer term, it could land employers in trouble, and lead to women being pigeon holed as "likely to be gone for 6 months" and "unlikely to be gone for 6 months".
The Equality Tribunal is littered with cases for people who were discriminated against on the grounds of their Gender or Family Status, there are numerous Unfair Dismissals claims for employees who were let go due to their pregnancy, and an openness as described by Sandberg could lead to a drastic increase in such claims...sometimes honesty isn't always the best policy!
