Monday, August 08, 2016
Cotswolds hotel is accused of sexism after they advertised for a porter but said the post was 'not for ladies'
An exclusive Cotswolds hotel has been accused of sexism after advertising for a porter, but said the job was 'not a role for ladies'. Whatley Manor, a five-star retreat near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, put up the controversial advert in the window of a nearby Post Office.
It read: 'We are seeking people with driving licenses to join the team of Front of House Porters.
'The work involves moving luggage, moving cars, tending fires, generally taking deliveries, keeping the reception area tidy.'
In brackets, it then adds: 'Sorry, it's just not a role for ladies.'
Bosses at the award-winning hotel, where rooms cost up to £1,500 a night, said the advert was not supposed to offend.
But it was been met with anger from people living around Malmesbury, including world champion bodybuilder, Charlene Harvey, 36, who slammed the hotel for assuming every woman is 'weak'. 'There are physiological differences between a man and a woman, but a woman can train and be just as strong as a man,' she said. She added: 'I didn't think they were allowed to do things like this anymore. In today's industry it's a bit out of place.'
Gill Salter, HR boss at Whatley Manor, said the advert was not supposed to be placed in the Post Office but in a local school.
The HR boss said: 'We didn't intend to discriminate or upset anybody and it is certainly not the normal advert we use. 'We were trying to make them understand that the role includes heavy lifting.' She added: 'We just had someone struggling in with big boxes so strength was one of the issues.
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10 comments:
Once again the Politically Correct crowd runs amok.
Actually, this is one of those rare cases where the protestors are right.
If we want to live in a society that only looks at job performance and not age, gender, race etc, then we should not exclude people from applying for a job based on anything other than their qualifications for that job.
If the advert had said "must be able to lift 50 kgs,, there would not have been a problem and rightfully so.
If anyone - man or woman - can do the job and wants to work slinging around heavy objects and doing physical labor, why shouldn't they be given the job? At the very least, why shouldn't the be allowed to apply for that job?
Are people like Anon 1:03 and BoP so scared of women that they are afraid that not only could the woman out lift and outwork them, but they would be better employees?
Eh, I don't think the ad was smart - but its choice of wording is interesting.
It doesn't say that the job is not for women or females - it says 'ladies'.
Perhaps the hotel has a somewhat quaint idea of a lady.
If they meant that it wasn't for a 'lady' but a strong and healthy woman could handle it, no foul. If they meant no female of any sort - well, sexual discrimination is illegal...
The person who composed the ad should be fired for stupidity - whether that was a lady, woman, man or gentleman.
When I arrive at a hotel, weary and back aching after a long flight, I would not be comfortable with a woman carrying my luggage for me. I would probably say, "Thank you very much but I can manage". If she persisted in offering then I would probably give her my lightest bag and continue carrying the heavier one myself, even if it were difficult. I would thankfully accept a gentleman offering to carry my luggage though.
ANON 9:46 PM has explained exactly why a 1500 pound per night hotel would prefer gentleman porters. You cater to your clientele or you go out of business.
MDH
MDH,
So if the clientele of a restaurant wanted to eat only with white people, you'd be okay with that? After all, you "cater to your clientele or you go out of business."
If the clientele of a resort only wanted atheists as staff, you'd be okay with telling people of faith they need not apply? After all, you "cater to your clientele or you go out of business."
What is sad about Anon 9:46 is that while he feels uncomfortable with a woman doing a job she wants, he doesn't seem to have that same sense of angst from the cleaning staff (who are mostly woman and do a physical job) or the mostly female staff that does the laundry for the hotel which involves lifting more than people realize. Maybe it is a case of "out of sight and out of mind."
The bottom line is that if a woman - or anyone - wants a job and they are qualified to do it and can do it well, it should be up to the "clientele" to demand that people be kept in their place by some archaic sense of "I know what is best for you."
@7:08 Your an idiot extending examples beyond the range of the argument. Stick to the discussion and don't go off on a tangent. Unless the woman is a doping Russian athlete she probably couldn't handle the job. Most men couldn't handle the job. I agree it was stupid of the advertiser to specify women needn't apply but that could ha been handled but just rejecting their applications without saying why.
The advertiser should have just binned female application and not said don't apply.
One of the troubles of women doing jobs like porter, and the tougher jobs in police, security, psych nursing, labouring, etc, is that they do the lightest parts of the job and the men don't get a break from doing the heavier parts. The man end up working harder. When I was doing agency psych nursing I was always sent to the most trouble HD acute units, and keeping the peace amongst psychotic junkies was difficult and honed my de-escalation skills. I would usually have a female partner whom I had to look after as well as looking after myself and the patients. When things turned violent, as they often did, the female was always useless. Worse than useless; she was often an encumbrance and an instigator of trouble, talking and behaving to patients in a way that gradually escalated the situation through the shift until I had to deal with the eventual physical trouble. As I had to deal with the physical trouble when it happened, I would wish the females would just shut up and let me keep the unit calm beforehand so trouble wouldn't happen later. They don't have to charge in against psychotic junkies high on ice, junkies and forensic psych cases who keep faeces under a fingernail so they can inflict infection by scratching, and people who weaponise their Hepatitis, HIV and other infections by bitting their lips/cheeks then spit infectious blood in your face, and try to bite you with bloodied infectious teeth. Wrestling with such people, getting filthy, trying not to get injured or infected is a difficult job, made many times worse by females who dont have to deal with it, often working it up beforehand trying to prove they're useful, flapping around getting in the way, or doing nothing, even too frozen at the sight of the violence to call for help for their male colleagues. Few outside of such jobs dealing with crazed and criminal people can comprehend the difficulties of the job. Even the women in them seeing it with their eyes can't comprehend the difficulties, because they are not on the receiving end of the worst of it and men protect them from the worst of it. The men are not even permitted to communicate or discuss their frustrations and problems associated with working such jobs alongside women or they get reprimanded and/or fired.
I'm all for women working in dangerous and heavy jobs, like portering, military, heavy labouring,... but not mixed together with men. In such jobs the sexes should be separate groups of all men and all women, each doing the same job separately from each other in different places. Have only female police in an area, or an acute psych unit with only female psych nurses, or a female division within the military that has to fight its own battles, with male groups in such fields too, but they each word separately if different places. That will reveal if women can do such jobs or not. In time it will also reveal the strengths of each gender in the way they can do the job. But mixing men and women together in dangerous physical jobs gives rise to multiple problems and inefficiencies.
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