Originally Posted by webwench

Depends on the woman and the man.

Here's a case in point: I was on 24/7 call for my job for a couple of years. Not a big deal, I get the occasional phone call about something that is broken, and I have a laptop and high-speed connectivity to log in and deal with it. At the time this started my son was a toddler, and I was a divorced mother. I suppose you would look at the situation and say, I'm not likely to be a good employee in that situation.

Not long into that time period, we hire a guy whose role includes being on call sometimes on a rotating basis with me. We hire him, and shortly aftrewards he marries his fiancee and they start spawning. What do you know? He 'couldn't be on call' because it would interfere with his family life. He was often out because his (nonworking) wife was ill, or one of the kids was ill. He was always coming in late or leaving early for doctors' appointments, or contractors coming out to the house. You almost have to wonder what the stay-at-home wife's 'job' was.

Who was the better hire? Who was more reliable? Who was available off hours?

A couple years later, he was laid off, and I'm still there, so I guess that's my reward. If my boss had put me on some 'mommy track' because I'm female, already a parent, and could marry and start spawning again any day now, well, I'd have been on to a better job opportunity quickly, and I and my new employer would have been glad for it. *shrug*

Yes, it's one instance, and not a sociological study. All I'm saying is, you cannot judge a book by the cover, at least not if you want to have the best people work for you. You take people as individuals, and judge them based on their own behavior and qualities, otherwise you're just running a good old boys' network and hiring people who are just like you, because that's what you're comfortable with.