The grumpies will abort maternity legislation says Peter Stokes

Fact is, women of child-bearing age are now burdened with so many legal rights and privileges no employer in their right mind would willingly select them over a similarly qualified non-pregnant man not similarly encumbered.

Sadly, women's rights activists don't appear to have spotted that the very rights they've fought so long and so hard to bestow upon pregnant women have inadvertently imposed near pariah status upon them.
Fact is, small companies are exceedingly reluctant to employ women of child-bearing age. They posses neither the knowledge nor the skill to properly comply with all the procedural complexities related to maternity legislation and can't afford to employ HR staff who do. Which means they're a sitting target for disgruntled women and their fat-fingered lawyers. MHL Support, a leading employment lawyer, says that 90% of Employment Tribunals occur because of procedural errors made by employers.

Of course the real culprits are the relatively small number of women who find it difficult to reintegrate when they return from maternity leave either because they're essentially bone idle, incompetent, have lost the will to work or have some sort of chip on their shoulder which feeds their self-fulfilling belief that they aren't welcome. Or maybe they've spotted a goose with a golden egg. All any of them need do to put the fear of God into their employer is threaten to play the sex discrimination card and wait for a fat out-of-court settlement offer to fall into their laps.

I wonder how many owner-managers have succumbed to that sort of blackmail and at what cost. I also wonder how many people are reluctant to recruit women (any women) for fear of becoming yet another blackmail victim. I know I am.
None of which is going to influence the power-crazed feminist propaganda sector of the lying mad-dog media who would have us believe that all women share their views; that employers are the enemy; that women, though equal to men, must be given preferential treatment; that women are entitled to special treatment because it allows them to give birth to even more out-of-control juvenile snots than ever before who will one day labour mightily to contribute to the pensions of all us old folk. (I wish).

Staunch supporters of such propaganda should know their support is paper-thin. As a Venture Capitalist who has helped launch over seventy small companies, I can promise you that most people (male or female) who self-righteously demand that employers must pay due homage to pregnant women will cease to do so immediately after putting their own house, their own savings, their health and the well-being of their family on the line to make a 24/7 commitment to starting and running their own small business.

The Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform tell us that In 2007 a total of 22.7 million people were employed by 4.7 million private sector enterprises of which 4.5 million employed less than ten staff. I wonder how many of those 4.5 million small companies would have considered offering more women a job if the well-intentioned supporters of women's rights hadn't been so successful in swamping the workplace with feminist rules and regulations.

No problem. As Leader of the Grumpies I will, immediately after having seized power, relieve all companies employing less than ten staff from having to comply with maternity legislation. In addition, I'll be introducing a slightly controversial new Whack a Wanker initiative to deal (painfully) with all the evil little shits, and their fat-fingered lawyers, who make spurious claims for discrimination and/or attempt to hold their employer to ransom.

Peter Stokes - Leader of The Grumpy Old Men Political Party
PS. Have you noticed that society has now, somewhat belatedly, recognized that women should be nurturing the family unit, not slavishly pursuing macho roles decided for them by 'last years' trail-blazing journalists.

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