Women in the Workplace

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Tubey

Allardyce Out
Nigel Farage today has said that women who hold a client portfolio who take time off for maternity etc. are worth far less than someone who stays as they lose their attachment to that portfolio (or basically something along those lines, paraphrased admittedly).

Now, the predictable outrage to that has started. I'm someone who believes that obviously women have massive value in the workplace and offer just as much as men and in some cases more.

However... is what he said wrong? If you're a small to medium size business and you're looking to maximise your output to expenditure, surely common sense tells you that you'd move away from a person who may be away for the best part of a year at any given time. To give a terrible football analogy, it's like deliberately signing an injury prone player!

Is it so outrageous then to at least acknowledge that months away from work, regardless of gender, is detrimental, and there's a simple biological reason why women are more of a liability to an employer in this respect than men are?

As I say, I feel weird having this view as I'm very much equal rights minded, and I'm certainly no fan of UKIP, but it seems people are afraid of acknowledging the obvious on this issue.

Thoughts?
 

He's a lunatic but in this case, he's spot on. A woman taking 12 months out paid maternity leave offers less to a company than a man who takes two weeks.
 
bluejock said:
He's a lunatic but in this case, he's spot on. A woman taking 12 months out paid maternity leave offers less to a company than a man who takes two weeks.
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But a man can take that time off now, I know a lad who took the 12 months off as his wife earns mega bucks to look after the nipper.

Anyway, we are missing the most valuable point here lads. What are her norks like??
 
Moomin said:
But a man can take that time off now, I know a lad who took the 12 months off as his wife earns mega bucks to look after the nipper.

Anyway, we are missing the most valuable point here lads. What are her norks like??
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Outrageous that potentially the only female in the office is allowed to take all thsi time off. Who will make the coffee ffs??
 

Moomin said:
But a man can take that time off now, I know a lad who took the 12 months off as his wife earns mega bucks to look after the nipper.

Anyway, we are missing the most valuable point here lads. What are her norks like??
Click to expand...

Playing computer games all day whilst lobbing the odd rusk into the baby's play pen. I want in!
 
bluejock said:
He's a lunatic but in this case, he's spot on. A woman taking 12 months out paid maternity leave offers less to a company than a man who takes two weeks.
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... or a woman who will never have kids. You can lump that rapidly growing group of women in with the men if you want to have this discussion and have it seem a bit less sexist. There are lots of professional women who never want to have children and therefore have completely equal utility to men for the sake of this argument.

On the one hand I think it's sexist to frame this as a gender issue (although I realize it is obviously an issue which impacts women slightly more than men). There are women who never want kids; there are women who have a baby on the weekend and are back in work on Monday.

Let me flip the issue around. It's a fairly absurd notion that we have to work non-stop from 22 or younger to 65+ (barring periods of unemployment which for most people, despite what the Daily Mail might say, aren't really a fun vacation time) without any breaks aside from a pittance (at least in N. America) of vacation time. The amount of people who burn out and get sick to death of their job and are less productive as a result likely contribute more lost work hours than mat leave. We all need a break every now and again and having a kid or getting sick (one and the same thing as far as I'm concerned) shouldn't be the only way to get some serious time off.

If I ran the world: everyone gets two periods of extended leave after a certain period of time at a company (maybe five years or so). Man or woman or side-by-side ... pregnant or not. If you want to have more than two kids it won't be on mat leave ... see if your company wants you back after taking off another 3-6 months. If you got hired one month ago and now need mat leave ... tough ... you should make better life decisions. If you don't want to have kids but just want to spend 3 months backpacking around Africa, lying on your sofa playing FIFA, or just staring at the massive pile of money you have because you never had kids ... have at it.
 
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njligernj said:
... or a woman who will never have kids. You can lump that rapidly growing group of women in with the men if you want to have this discussion and have it seem a bit less sexist. There are lots of professional women who never want to have children and therefore have completely equal utility to men for the sake of this argument.

On the one hand I think it's sexist to frame this as a gender issue (although I realize it is obviously an issue which impacts women slightly more than men). There are women who never want kids; there are women who have a baby on the weekend and are back in work on Monday.

Let me flip the issue around. It's a fairly absurd notion that we have to work non-stop from
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Are you okay mate?
 


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