‘Menopausal old cows’ need not apply

Press, 1 April 1980, Page 13

‘Menopausal old cows’ need not apply

<! I. don’t want some menopausal old cow,” was the reply one Christchurch male.. employer gave to Doreen Green's query on flexibility about age.

Mrs Green works in a Christchurch employment agency. She matches jobs to people. Mostly she deals with women. The jobs offering, she explained to a National Organisation for Women meeting, are usually office jobs. The Christchurch job market has been very depressed for the last three years. Doreen Green finds placing clerks and typists he? hardest battle. She-advises women typists panning to return to the workforce at least to learn to use an electric typewriter.

When she finds a male client employer’s attitude offensive she keeps her

cool. Jobs for women is her priority. Often she discovers some attributes which applicants do not value. But she has found these can give her the edge. Getting a mother of three teenagers, who had been out of the workforce for 15 years, employed as a receptionist in a large Christchurch company is one of her “greatest successes.” “I found she had been honorary social worker. She thought it .would not count. But I persuaded the employer that she had special training and experience in dealing with peopled She got the job.” Mrs Green has been with the agency for two and - one half years. Of Christchurch’s about 300 employers, she has encountered only . two women.

Most of her agency’s clients are seeking'women

to fill traditional work roles-. The client pays the agency a commission. “Agencies filling management positions see themselves as dealing only with men. Of course, they make more money that way.”

Doreen Green does not have much good news for older women seeking work. Her clients want young women. “If you are in .your late twenties or older, married with children, then you are out. Most agencies just turn down women in their 30s and 40s because they know their clients don’t want them.”

In these “very selective times,” an agency needs something on which to sell the applicant to the client: “Even if it is just your looks and personality. work on it.” Appearances- are apparently extremely important: “In my experience all

male employers want glamorous young women around them. But they know they have to accept if a woman is clean and tidy, well, that will just have to do.” She recalls having to find a woman to operate a complicated machine. Her client took some time to concede that expertise would just have to come before glamour. Mrs Green advises women with children to have thought very carefully about answers to questions on child care: “Because of sickness, there is a big opposition to women with children. Employers believe child care should not be their worry. So be prepared.” Strong resistance to job sharing also exists in Christchurch. Last year Doreen Green had only seven requests, to fill parttime jobs, all for highly skilled secretaries.