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Wednesday 30 September 2009

Where only the brave dare tread....

My name is the HRD. I am a white, middle class male (I’m not middle aged, but fast approaching). I therefore am part of one of the most discriminated against groups in western society.

Eh?

No really.

It’s pretty simple. Consider this.

1) When it comes to health. Take two cancers. Both have about the same level of occurrence. Both have about the same mortality rate. The only difference? One occurs in women only. One in men. Surely it’s hard then to explain then why government investment in breast cancer far outstrips that of prostate cancer?

2) In affairs of the heart. My wife has an affair. She leaves me. Of course the weight of law is that she will gain custody of the children, the house and a large proportion of my salary for the forthcoming years. Is this because of my behaviour, because I am not as good a carer? Or because I am male.

3) In the workplace. I can’t be promoted or moved into positions of superiority because…well because I am a white middle class male. And that would be discriminatory to promote me. Lets find someone else, someone less…stereotypical.

4) At home, I need to be able to cook and clean, to raise the children, to express my emotions, to be in touch with myself. But come the moment when something really heavy needs lifting, when the electrics go kaput, when there is water coming through the ceiling. Who you gonna call?

My name is the HRD. I am a white middle class male.

Pity me?

7 comments:

JW said...

Were we married at some point?!

I seem to have heard the lament of the modern man before.

Thuy P. said...

let's see..
1)I am a female and a minority, so what that means in the workplace is that you will get promoted even before I will be considered.
2)When it comes to shopping, if I go into an expensive store dressing in sweats, more than likely I'll be followed and watched on every move that I make.
3)I have the look of a teenager so whenever I go to meetings/conference, people find it hard to take me seriously.

So that's novice-hr. Asian. If you don't pity me than I won't pity you =)

Sayya26 said...

lol! nope- u will get no sympathy here. i'm a female, 26 (but i look like 18), short and an obvious Muslim whose husband gets held in US airports because of his name....

pity me?

Anonymous said...

It took me a while to write this comment, as I had to mop up the mess I've made while sobbing to your heart-wrenching story. I'm now in a better place, so permit me?

2) I think you might be right about this one, however I do know of a number of cases where the Dad won out on this one, and got custody of the kids. Just be glad the UK isn't that into alimony.

3) As a female who gets paid less than her male counterparts who have equal or less experience to myself, I'll throw you a pity party on this one. Also, statistically, although the ratio of men/women in middle management is fairly even, in upper management you're looking at offices with an en-suite urinal, not a room for the ladies to change their laddered stockings in.

4) Do you deal with spiders, too?

and finally:

1) of course breast cancer gets more funding. They get more funding because men can get breast cancer, too (you are factually incorrect about the incidence of breast cancer in men. See here.

Anonymous said...

Novice HR, if that attractive woman in the photo is you, then you are not the Right Kind of minority in the US. But based on my limited experience in three Fortune 100 companies and grad school, where admissions standards varied by race, I would have to agree that a female/minority (the right kind) gets promoted before a white man does.

I saw many an incompetent woman/minority promoted beyond her/his capabilities when I was working. The good news is that white men have been promoted beyond their capabilities for years, so it's about time incompetent women got a shot. The sad part is that the competent ones are left behind sometimes and the world thinks, "See? This is what happens when we promote women -- we get morons." Nope. That's just bad management. And yes, there were "diversity targets," ie, quotas, at my company.

My former employer used to spend more to buy from minority suppliers. It was corp policy. Great for the shareholders, huh?

Anon, my favorite corporate Huh? is the shirts. I used to have to wear the stupid company golf shirt when I worked the booth at trade shows. The best they could do for me was a men's small, which was still too big. I had to cut the bottom half off just so I didn't have all that extra fabric stuffed into my pants. I asked the guy who ordered the shirts to please get me a woman's shirt. "Oh, the vendor doesn't make women's sizes," he told me. Right. Because a woman in the workplace -- who would think of that?

HRD said...

@Corporate Daycare - Not unless it was that drunk night in Vegas???

@Novice-HR -That's a deal! I'm all out of pity anyway.....

@Sayya - I hate it when I see that going on at airports or with the police stop and search. Look a muslim....they must have a bomb! Ridiculous. Think Timothy McVeigh...

@Anon - The Senior Management piece? That's because only men are stupid enough to take on the pressure and lose contact with their families. As for the cancer piece....are you saying that because 0.67% of breast cancer patients are men THAT is the reason why there is so much investment in it?????

@class-factotum - "The good news is that white men have been promoted beyond their capabilities for years, so it's about time incompetent women got a shot" Classic!

novice-hr said...

@class-factotum- hahah.. I also love that comment "The good news is that white men have been promoted beyond their capabilities for years, so it's about time incompetent women got a shot"
Also, the profile pic is indeed mine. So we'll see if your experience about the "Right Kind" will apply to me or not.