Feminism Arising
I still don't consider myself a feminist, but some things just make me mad.
In one of the Yahoo Groups e-mails I receive, the following message was included yesterday:
"LOOKING FOR BOOKEEPER: LOOKING FOR GIRL W/ QUICK BOOKS KNOWLEDGE..."
Several things annoy me about it:
1) Bookkeeper is spelled wrong (though that is the very least thing that bothers me).
2) That a bookkeeper is necessarily assumed to be female.
3) The term "girl." Any employee of a professional company should be given respect and not called "girl." If the advertisement for an employee is such, I can only imagine how that employee would be treated if hired.
My annoyance won out, and I felt the need to respond to the e-mail to attempt to point out the offensiveness inherent in the post. I sent the poster a quick e-mail asking what would happen if a guy would like to apply for the position.
Apparently, sarcasm was completely lost on the recipient. I received a very nice e-mail back stating that I should contact the company to inquire whether they were looking for male employees as well. And was wished good luck. Oy.
posted by Shoshana @ 8:49 AM
4 Comments:
Oy is right...I agree with you.
Hi, Shoshana,
They can be sued. It is illegal to consider race, creed, sex, etc., in almost all hiring decisions. I know. I work at a newspaper's advertising department, and we could be sued as a third party for taking such an ad! We would have rejected it!
I called someone who had posted an ad online for an apt rental and the first question I was asked is if I was married. When I said No, they refused to rent me the apt. I was thinking that maybe I could have sued.
Anon-
I doubt it would suing. I can't imagine that an office who would treat their employees that way has any money.
Sara -
That's despicable - but you certainly wouldn't want to live with those people as your landlords anyway. I've had my share of comments from prospective landlords due to my single status as well. One of these days, instead of sharing dating stories, we'll have to share those.
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