Wimmin'

[evansk7]

"No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age," said Godfrey Bloom, a UK Independence Party MEP.

Oooh. Step back in horror that someone would decry women in the workplace so. Especially a member of the Women's Rights Committee.

And yet, he's kinda right. I'm (hopefully) about to be a small businessman, running my own company. And if someone leaves to go off and have a kid, I'm supposed to pay her for not being there. In a small company, that pretty much means I'm supposed to either get by on less staff or miraculously find the money to (temporarily) replace her.

So whaddya do? You can't fire women for getting pregnant - clearly, that'd be unfair. And yet, there's a very real number of businesses that simply couldn't afford to support a mother on long-term maternity leave (my current, large, employer has 2 people who're both off for 10 months based on length of service). There's no way I could afford to pay someone else aswell for 10 months, and if I could do without the employee for 10 months then I probably wouldn't hire them in the first place.

Quite the conundrum.