Women
working in the technology sector find gender can be an
obstacle to their development. A
survey in the US found women felt they had to fit into a
masculine workplace where gender was a barrier to advancement
and people assumed they were not as technically proficient as
male colleagues.
For
the first time ever in the UK a Chief Executive of a major
public company will take maternity leave. Belinda
Earl started as boss of Debenhams a year ago. Yvette
Cooper, a Health Minister will become the first government
minister to take maternity leave soon.
There
is growing cross-party consensus in the UK to support the
introduction of legal amendments to allow positive
discrimination in politics.
Only
3% of executives at the highest level are women, while the
average intake in a City firm (London, UK) is divided equally
between the sexes.
According to the Equal
Opportunities Commission, women working full-time in
banking and finance earn 55% of male colleagues' earnings.
An
investment banker has just accepted £70,000 for unfair
dismissal. She had been asked to wear short skirts and give
massages. She was made redundant while on maternity
leave.
"The
problem with these places is that they don't take their human
resources departments seriously. They see them as a service
rather than a critical part of the company."
The
Zapatista movement in Mexico may secure rights for many, but
women may not be included reports The
New Statesman . John Carlin writes that the
Zapatistas may:
"entrench
a tradition where fathers sell their daughters to prospective
husbands; where rape is unexceptional and rarely punished;
where, as a glance around any Indian community in Chiapas will
reveal, all the men wear shoes, while almost all of the women
- who do almost all of the work - go barefoot."
Report
by John Carlin for the New
Statesman - click
here for full article
Men
have been asked to stay in and look after the children in a
voluntary curfew in Bogota. The idea was
developed by the mayor, Antanas Mockus, to leave the city free
for a 'Night Of The Women' and to encourage men to take a look
at their own behaviour.
Men
are still dominating the IT industry in the UK, with
far more of them than women in nearly every type of job. But
there is one notable exception - women
outnumber men in the lowest paid positions. Forty
per cent of all women employed in high-tech jobs earn less
than £25,000, compared with less than a quarter of men (23
per cent).
The
Gender Divide in the European Union
- selection of
statistics supplied by the European Women's Lobby - click
here
Three
decades after equal pay legislation came into force in
Britain, women still receive significantly less pay than men,
the Equal Opportunities Commission has said. The
commission wants the gap to be halved within five years and
completely eradicated within eight.
Women
are making more use than men of government online services in
the UK according to research.
The report finds that women, who are increasingly the main
controllers of household spending, are making greater use of
online information across all websites, not just public sector
sites.
Report
by KableNet.com - click
here for full article
Large
technology companies are realising that women could help fill
the skills gaps in the industry.
"It seems ironic that we have got a skills shortage and
yet there are so few women in IT," said Louise Proddow,
marketing director of Sun Microsystems in the UK. Women
account for only 24 per cent of employees in the UK IT sector
and 20 per cent of IT professionals in the US.
Political
parties in France are urgently wooing women candidates. A
new law requires parties to field an equal number of men and
women candidates for most elections. The law will
operate in this year's local elections which are scheduled for
March.
Women
will be able to vote and stand for office in parliamentary
elections in Bahrain from 2004. The groundbreaking move,
the first of its kind in the Gulf region, is part of a new
constitutional settlement to turn the state into a
constitutional monarchy.
Germany
write new rules to achieve equality and family-friendly work
policies in civil service.
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