Another day, another CEO being chewed out for clumsy comments. This time it is Tim Armstrong of AOL who ignored his PR person and ad-libbed on an agreed company statement. In speaking about AOL's plan to cut 401(k) benefits for employees, Armstrong lamented the high cost of staff benefits to AOL.
His example of those high costs? Saving the lives of distressed babies born to AOL colleagues at a cost of about a million dollars each.
Ouch.
Needless to say, he was condemned for his callousness across the media. He later made a kind of non-apology apology for his comments and decided to not cut staff benefits at AOL after all.
What's interesting to me here is how Armstrong's comments reflect a common prejudice among business owners and bosses that I have encountered. When thinking about expensive staff benefits, the first thing that he chose to highlight was 'high-risk pregnancy' and 'distressed babies'. Would he have dared to mention the high cost of treating a staff member's multiple sclerosis or kidney transplant? Would he have dared to point out the high cost of remodeling an office to accommodate a staff member in a wheelchair?
This is a growing trend now in business that portrays women and their 'choices' (that they make in a vacuum without their partners, it seems) as high-cost and burdensome. From Fox News anchors lamenting that women take up too much of their 'fair share' of healthcare to businesses panicking about the prospect of a federally mandated paid family leave, employers are encouraged to view women as particularly high-cost and troublesome employees.
This kind of mindset has real-world consequences. Slate journalist, Dana Goldstein, uncovered a story relating to Armstrong's time at Google when a senior salesperson was demoted as a result of complications arising from her 'high-risk pregnancy' (that dreaded burden on corporate America!). Her pregnancy did not actually impact on her job apart from an inability to travel for a few months but it seems as though Armstrong panicked at the mere mention of a staff member's high-risk pregnancy and took drastic measures. She took a case against Google for pregnancy discrimination that was settled in arbitration.
Preconceptions about women, pregnancy, and childcare commitments are what lead to employers shunning women of child-bearing age. When businesses want to complain about the burden of administration or healthcare, it's always women-specific benefits that are wheeled out as an example of burdensome spending.
Of all the benefits that corporations offer to their staff, those relating to the cost of childbearing and child-rearing seem the most resented. And yet while few of us in life will experience serious disability or illness that affects our ability to work, over 80% of Americans are parents.
There is a subtle sexism in play here. While anyone can get cancer or be in a car accident, only women get pregnant and bear children. By highlighting this kind of female-specific cost, as Armstrong did, CEOs seem to believe they can divide and conquer their employees.
Yet the woman in question, as she explains in this article, was not actually an AOL employee. The health benefit came via her husband who was employed as an editor by AOL. So despite all the talk about the burden of female employees, businessmen would do well to remember that whenever they discriminate against a woman who is bearing a child, that child has a father.
Fathers care just as much about the well-being of their children as mothers and a callous attitude from CEOs affects them as much as it affects women. If I were a man, I would not want to work for a company that talks about a 'distressed baby' as a cost to their bottom line. Again, more than 80% of us are parents.
Balancing employee benefits and company profits is a reasonable thing for a corporate CEO to want to do. Trying to pin the blame for excessive costs of those benefits on women and babies is not the way to do it, however.
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