There are more women than men working in professions that are low paid – health, social protection and now we realize how important these sectors actually are and I hope that these professions will be much more respected’, estimated the Commissioner for Protection of Equality, Brankica Janković. In her interview for the National News Janković explained that in her job she regularly encountered the complaints of young women who could not find work precisely because they were young and employers’ first thought was that the woman would soon go on her maternity leave.
She also said that a woman looking for a job was not to be asked if she was married, if she was planning to have children. ‘This bears no importance for the job. To me it is nonsensical that you ask a woman aged 25 or 26 if she was planning to have a family and a baby. Many employers learned they must not ask that question’, Janković has pointed out.
Concerning employment, Janković said that there was a huge generation gap, especially in the category of women older than 55, where only 40% of them were employed. ‘It is already a lot more difficult to find work if you are older than 45 because some employers consider you to be an old worker, not the one who is precisely in the prime of life when he/she could do their best, and this is because of the prejudice that you would be less efficient, not ready to learn about new technologies, which is a phenomenon predominantly affecting women, Janković has added.
‘We conducted a couple of cases where discrimination was clearly detected because women older than 45 were transferred to lower paying positions, for example this is the case of nurses because general opinion is that they would not be able to learn to keep records in the new way. It is all a prejudice. Both men and women want to learn’, Janković has emphasized.
