I was at the Bradford Chamber Women’s Business Lunch yesterday. Sue Douthwaite, Divisional Managing Director for the north at Santander Corporate Banking gave a great talk discussing some of the issues she has encountered in her career in banking.
She reminded us, as women, how far we’ve come in the last 25 years and how just that short time ago young women starting their careers were generally assumed not to be looking for a career at all and had few or no role models.
It’s good to be reminded. As an employer lawyer seeing discrimination cases I tend to see those cases where things haven’t changed rather than the progress and change that has occurred. Just last week I advised a director who, having told her MD she was pregnant, got the response that in that case there was no future for her in the business. It does still happen!
Sue reminded us though that things have changed and continue to do so. Women must be careful not to see discrimination where it does not exist. If you are the only woman in a team and you are made redundant it is not necessarily discrimination, it may just be for good business reasons. Equally employers should be careful not to make assumptions that inadvertantly discriminate against any group of worker. It’s always better to have a conversation than make an assumption.
yorkshire employment law 