Sometime back I came across a job posting – a retail sales position with an ITES company.
What caught my attention was the statement – “Male Candidates Only”.
Being a #womeninsales champion, I was intrigued to read this. So investigated…
Turns out, the said company was trying to be considerate towards women by not opening this job role to them. They of course had the corporate sales open to female candidates as well.
The reason being, the corporate role would require them to meet with educated clients and the retail segment had uneducated clients who may not speak well. It’s, therefore, better for a woman to deal with corporate clients and let the men handle the retail clients.
So, there is an explanation. But I wanted to explore more. So I asked my LinkedIn connections to share their views and experiences on this.
The Female Perspective
Most connections agreed that this is a pertinent issue and what plays most in such cases is the unconscious bias towards women. With alike-thinking men sitting at the helm of certain organizations these apparent biases are termed as unintended and sympathetic view.
The questions to here are:
- Who asked for this sympathy?
- Why are you deciding on behalf of women?
Let women make the choices they want to make, at least give them the opportunity to make the choice.
Organizations and leaders of organizations need to make a conscious effort to include and invite women at the table, question pre conceived notions. An HR leader is an influencer and needs to play that active role of showing the right path
There has to be inclusive leadership at the top to lead.
The Male Perspective
As perceived by male colleagues, it is predominantly more a matter of having adequate & upto date “product knowledge”, having excellent “selling skills” (mainly communication skills) and having right “attitude” towards selling – than gender per se.
With the above three attributes (of Knowledge, Skills & Attitude), women are likely to be equally effective (if not more) as their men counterparts.
However, there can be jobs that require a lot of travel time which may not be convenient for women. So companies believe that it would be difficult for female candidates to meet this particular criteria, thus preferring male candidates only.
So there must be a reason for such criteria, though there is a significant preference for male candidates for machine-related, sales, or elementary jobs.
Now, over to you..
What do you think about this? Have you faced this dilemma as a job applicant, or recruiter? How do you go through this?
Share your comments below.
Dear Pritha, Thank you for addressing this burning question. Even I have come across so many job postings in the past where it’s categorically mentioned “MALE CANDIDATES ONLY” or “FEMALE CANDIDATES NEED NOT APPLY”. And this mention I believe is not because of gender but because of the other responsibilities women have to shoulder apart from being a working professional and this responsibility increases when she gets married. Once married, we women become a wife, daughter-in-law, mother, home- carer, care giver, etc. With so many responsibilities to be shouldered and usually with no support system available, after a certain point there comes a time when they have to choose between career and a care giver and usually it’s the latter which takes the precedence. Due to which organisations refrain from hiring women as their thought process is that if they have to invest so much of time and effort to train someone they rather train someone who would stick to the organisation. Even today, girls of so called marriageable age are asked that after marriage in all probabilities they would leave the job or even if they are married and don’t have kids they are usually sidelined and the reason stated is that very soon they’ll apply for maternity leave and will be gone for a couple of months. Case in point is this lovely short film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaU_25zKmYE And this choice will keep happening till the time Men don’t start taking the responsibilities at the home front too. And this would only come when they are taught that they also are equally responsible at the home front.
Regards,
Shubhra Singh