Dear Sir;
Please permit this criticism of Canadian corporate hiring policies.
Since the end of the Second World War, Canadian banking corporations and
most business offices have perpetrated what could well be described as an
unmitigated sociological scam, ripoff and travesty. They have arbitrarily
refused to hire male applicants as employees and for a remarkably negative
reason.
This abrupt assertion deserves considerable explanation. Consider the
following information relating, for example, to Canada’s banks and their hiring
policies. In 1939, 65% of the banking staff in Canada was male. With the advent
of war in Europe in Sept ‘39, Canada immediately became involved and quickly
instituted military conscription to satisfy the war effort. Males from all walks
of life - including banking - were subsequently withdrawn from civilian life to
fulfil the military’s rapidly burgeoning requirements. By 1943, almost half the
banking system was closed due to inadequate staffing, so severe were the
military’s demands for soldiers.
Here, then, lies the aforementioned Canadian scam. After the war’s end, to
prevent any possible recurrence of staff losses to the military in the event of
yet another war, the Canadian banks and most other corporations silently
embarked on Draconian anti-male hiring policies for the white collar sector.
Obviously, women could perform white collar work. Just as obviously, they could
never be subject to conscription. Never very competitive and always collusive,
the large banking corporations, trust companies and business offices structured
hiring policies which gave employment solely to females. Males would be hired
for management, of course, or for blue collar work. However, the vast majority
of training intensive, upwardly mobile white collar positions would be reserved
exclusively for women.
If that sounds unlikely, consider the following: as of Dec ‘86, 98% of the
senior executive staff in the Canadian banking industry was male. In contrast,
fully 95% of the staff, support and supervisory cohort was female. This striking
gender division serves as a pattern for many other areas of the white collar
employment sector in Canada, including the near bank financial intermediaries
and most business offices. Bluntly, management decreed that males would not be
hired - women would. And they were, to the lasting detriment of any and all
qualified male applicants. (Of course, this was not intended to impact on senior
executive management. It was intended that management would continue to be
exclusively male - which annoys the women’s groups no end).
These cowardly anti-male hiring policies (which seem in many respects
typically Canadian in their concept and thoughtless execution) lead, in this
writer’s mind, to what could be called the “feminist causal link”. This false
causal link, which has frequently been referred to with glowing praise in the
media, asserts that after WWII, women were dissatisfied with the notion of being
housewife and mother and entered the workplace in great numbers seeking
betterment. The employers, good and competitive corporate citizens all, realized
a good thing when it was presented and employed these supposedly marvellously
competent women, giving them economic “liberation” and thereby changing the face
of society from static and moribund to progressive and dynamic. Sarcastically,
so much good - so many positive things - were accomplished with so little
effort. What is fallacious and contemptible is the posture that everything, just
everything, was true and just and decent and wholly aboveboard. The women were
terrifically capable and bright; the corporations were flexible and approachable
and only too willing to accept female “demands” for improved employment
opportunities.
Sadly, this causal link runs in reverse (as do most feminists). After the
war, the world was, militarily, a very tense place indeed and male employees
were not wanted in the white collar employment sector because of their
vulnerability to further military conscription. If and when women vacated the
home, figuratively speaking, they would almost trip over job opportunities their
husbands and menfolk could not get. Males were blue collar laborers or skilled
tradesmen whereas white collar employment with its attendant comfort, security
and status rapidly rapidly became a female bastion. For women, there was no
competition from men: little or no fear of failure in the workplace because of
male ability and aggression. The average women had little to do other than ask -
i.e. apply. If she didn’t get a specific job in the white collar employment
sector, some other woman would.
Thus was restructured Canadian society. Women were lured into the labor
force by cowardly, noncompetitive corporations protecting their padded
hindquarters against staff losses to future military conscription. Women didn’t
force their way out of “confining” homes, they were encouraged to leave and in
fact were lead to believe that any form of home life was demeaning and
intellectually stifling compared to the lovely life that they could have at
work. Indeed, in many instances, nonverbal encouragement to leave the home must
have been compellingly powerful: to support a young family that an apparently
incompetent husband could only poorly support because for some seemingly
inexplicable reason he could not find and keep a worthwhile job. Unbeknownst to
either spouse, the institutionalized bias was to not hire men. While husbands in
the lower or lower middle economic strata struggled to find and keep gainful
employment, their wives could snap up a modestly paying but secure white collar
job with its attendant status and security with relative ease. In many
instances, those white collar jobs would have been going unclaimed. They
certainly weren’t going to be filled by males; the corporations had decreed
that. For most women either entering or in the labour market in Canada, then, it
was no fuss, no bother, little risk and, grotesquely, no competition from males
in the white collar sector. Women and their demands for “equality” did not force
the restructuring of the labour force but, if they were vain enough and stupid
enough to think they did, the myriad corporations and posturing media were not
going to enlighten the vacuous dears, now were they?
That’s the scam. The travesty is that, in the very possible event of another
war, unwitting Canadian men will troop off to kill and die to preserve this
status quo for these female buffoons and spineless corporations.
Yours Sincerely
Glenn R. Burger
P.S. It seems evident to me that the aforementioned hiring policies should be
exposed for public scrutiny and discussion. If you find the views expressed
interesting, pass the letter around to friends and colleagues. Also, a prima
facie case could be made that many of the large, labour intensive white collar
service oriented corporations in the United States of America have implemented
hiring policies similar to those described above. Indeed, the impetus for
American corporations to exclude males has been considerably stronger than for
their Canadian counterparts: witness the military requirements for the war in
Vietnam.
P.P.S. The fact that the banks and business offices in Canada (and probably
the United States) have refused to hire males as employees is hardly disputable.
There are virtually no male employees in most of these corporations. However,
what is telling in this matter is not just what the employers did and why they
did it but how they achieved it. Bluntly, lying, misrepresentation and chicanery
are as Canadian as beavers and snow - particularly with the so-called upper
classes. Canada is well and truly a paradise for humbugs, especially in Central
Canada where these hiring policies originated. There are numerous ways to turn
male applicants aside, all of them a form of lying: for example, the position
has been filled (it hasn’t); the firm is not hiring (it is); you are
underqualified (not accurate); overqualified (not accurate); not experienced
enough, too experienced and so on, ad infinitum. Should the applicant challenge
(however politely) these self-serving assessments, he will be judged openly as
obnoxious and nonconformist - which is sufficient cause for his application to
be dismissed. If he doesn’t challenge, his application is rejected ostensibly
for any combination of the above reasons and the staff remains exclusively and
comfortably (for the employer) female. To use an oft used smug Canadian cliche,
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. With corporate blessing and
encouragement, any given male applicant is well and truly skinned, often by a
female personnel officer working in an office staffed solely by cold,
condescending and chauvinistic women.
(Yet another Canadian banking employment scam is the “Canadian Banking
Experience” scam referred to in employment ads. You see, Canadian banking
experience is preferred and the ads will say so. Initially, this requirement
seems puzzling until the trick is pointed out. This experience requirement
allows the employers to select out or discriminate against those they don’t want
- no matter how trained, skilled or banking knowledgeable they may happen to be.
Suppose two women, both with overseas banking experience, apply at a Canadian
bank requesting “Canadian Experience”. One woman is from India, the other from
Holland. If the banks wish to reject the Indian woman (because she is perceived
to be a woman “of color” or for what ever reason) they merely invoke the
“Canadian experience” crap and she’s gone. The Dutch woman, however, will find
to her pleasure that the banking knowledge she obtained in The Hague or
whereever is quite relevant, thank you very much, and she’s hired. Even more
importantly, however, is how Canada’s banks use this experience scam to
discriminate against men. Foreign banks train a lot of males and should those
males migrate to Canada, the first place they will seek employment is in a bank.
Of course, without “Canadian Banking Experience” they mysteriously get nowhere
and it all seems such a puzzle. How much different can banking in Japan,
Germany, or elsewhere be from that in Canada? It isn’t. But they are male so
they are not hired. That’s the Canadian way. There’s always more than one way to
“skin that cat”).
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