Firm Fires Women Only

Interesting that this is being reported like its shocking in some way, Italy is notorious for this kind of thing, a shocking discussion would be about Iraly improving equality between men and women.

now that would be something.

 

good call

 

Hey now, BTA, you are the one who brought up how women are treated by corporate America in the US:

Women are still treated as sex objects to some extent, regardless. In Iraq, the US guys were able to get away with an extreme case of abuse. It doesn't say much for us compared to Italy [in some ways].

 

I think KBR is an unusual situation considering how far and bad things went.

My guess is that the people there took advantage of the situation and the fact that they had friends in high places.

One thing that I do think is far less bad but still bad is something a finance prof said in class.

He mentioned that many firms see if a woman gets pregnant in her first few years there or not. If she does then they don't take her seriously and assume she'll turn into a stay at home mom sooner or later.

I don't recall him saying it saying this like he disapproved of the practice.

I believe it is discrimination, plus it is a sign how some employers won't compromise with an employee to make things work out for both (letting mothers go to part time for a few years to let them raise kids and sort of keep up to speed on work even if they don't put in a full week like others.

But back to the topic at hand.... this is why, even in modern times, we should have laws and rules about this kind of thing.

 

Hmm, I remember hearing that in Germany there used to be a policy promoting the idea of the husband having a full-time job, with the wife favored for working part-time. That wasn't stated as official, though, just anecdotes about how a married woman might have a harder time getting a full-time job compared to a man or an unmarried one. That is not necessarily a problem if the society accepts this model and it works... but I'm not so sure this is the case here.

At any rate, I wonder what the reaction to this claim would be. I would not be surprised to see court action taken here.

 

Italy is a lot of fun!

A while back my company tried to work with an Italian datacenter provider (supposedly a top DC in the country) to host a technology solution for us. I got the distinct impression that IT Security in Italy is about as important as dental hygiene is to a methane addict.

"Maybe someone will try to hack your site... maybe they won't. Why worry. Let's have some vino."

I guess this isn't really in the same vein as laying off women, but it can be added to the list of things that make Italy... special.