The head of the PR service of a large company and mother of four children, Maria Markina, says that after the birth of her third child and the de facto breakup with her husband, she did not officially get divorced. “A married woman with children is much more competitive on the labor market than a divorced one,” she says.

She learned to be prudent from her interactions with her former employers. Markina recalls an incident that happened to her at a consulting center where she worked as the head of the public relations department. Already 38 weeks pregnant, she once warned her boss that the center was planning to participate in a major exhibition in a month. To which he responded: “What will we do if you suddenly leave to give birth?” “The phrase of a man, a father of two adult children, who believed that women give birth “suddenly”, shocked me,” Markina shares her impressions. “As long as employers treat us like this, discrimination will not go away.”

The wrong half

In April of this year, the Russian National Union of Personnel Officers (NSK) surveyed HR managers from 947 Moscow and regional companies, asking how much the personal characteristics of candidates affect their chances of getting a job. It turned out that on average 68% of employers prefer male applicants.

Representatives of the stronger sex have even more chances if they apply for positions in the field of marketing, senior administrative personnel and programming. 91% of employers admitted that they give preference to male applicants.

The most undesirable employees, as revealed by the NSC survey, are divorced women with two or more children, single mothers and women in the first two years after marriage: employers are afraid that they will go on maternity leave. 84% of the employers surveyed admitted that applicants from any of these categories will be refused employment under a plausible pretext. 9% noted that they will hire such applicants if their experience and level of knowledge are an order of magnitude higher than other candidates. Only 7% claim that they consider applicants regardless of their “personal circumstances”. The study notes that employers explain their position by the fact that most managers are men themselves “and it is psychologically difficult for them to work with women”. In addition, men, in their opinion, are less prone to intrigue in the workplace, are easier to focus on work problems and are less likely to take sick leave.

Age is a hindrance

Family status is not the only factor that complicates women's lives. Four years ago, 52-year-old Elena Ryabchikova, a proofreader for a major Moscow newspaper, tried to get a similar position at another publication. At first, everything went well. At the interview, Ryabchikova listed all her places of work, which, in her words, made a "positive impression" on the HR manager. At the end of the conversation, he asked how old she was. She had to confess. She was denied the job, citing the fact that the vacancy was for people "up to 33 years old."

Dmitry Kofanov, a consultant at the NS Consulting professional development center, notes that it is extremely difficult to prove in court a violation of Article 3 of the Labor Code, which prohibits discrimination in the labor sphere. In his practice, there have been no cases where an employee has won such cases. But once he had to act on the side of an employer who wanted to refuse to hire a pregnant woman as politely as possible, so that there would be no way to accuse the company of discrimination. Kofanov came up with a solution. “We simply asked the applicant for a medical certificate stating that she would not be harmed by working with computers, as required by the job responsibilities of the person applying for the vacancy. Not a single doctor dared to issue such a document,” Kofanov shares his discovery.

At the same time, the HR managers who took part in the study were asked whether they had encountered cases of manipulation of biographical data by female candidates in order to get a job. The most common method is to “lose” a passport and then restore it without “compromising” stamps about the number of children or marital status. The second method is to simply understate one’s age in the application form. In one case, it turned out that a woman who had recently married added children from her husband’s first marriage to her application form so that the future employer would not think that she would soon be going on maternity leave.

Experienced needed

Employers have a different opinion on this matter. According to Mikhail Anufriev, a marketer at the Moscow supermarket chain Muztor, they are more likely to “discriminate” against “non-professionals or young employees who do not want to develop their work potential.” And at the IT company Galaktika, Irina Timoshenko, deputy head of the marketing department, admits that “young, married and childless” candidates are asked at the first stage of interviews whether they plan to have children in the near future. In most cases, she explains, such candidates bring nothing to the employer except extra expenses – payment for maternity leave and securing a job for the period of their forced absence.

However, some women do not hide anything from their biographies on principle. Maria (she asked not to give her last name) has been working as a project manager at 1C for almost nine months. She came to this position after a conflict with her previous employer, to whom she had devoted seven years of her career. She had to leave after Maria returned from maternity leave: when she returned, she discovered that her position was already taken, but they had prepared an “alternative” position for her with a salary 30% lower than her previous one. “I tried to talk to the management about this, but they clearly hinted to me that such things are not discussed here, and I just left,” recalls Maria. At the interview at 1C, she did not hide the fact that she had many children (and this was her fourth child). “Nobody paid any attention to this at all, all the questions were exclusively about my professional skills,” she says, adding that she is now quite happy with her job, where she is paid a third more than at her previous place.

Recruiters also recall cases of employers’ quite loyal attitude towards female applicants. Yulia Ivanova, head of the Moscow office of the recruiting company THI Selection, tells how one large telecommunications company, looking for a client manager, wanted to see “a woman with children, no younger than 35 years old” for this position. “The employer explained the requirement succinctly: “I need a person who is not concerned with career growth and will not leave for another company in the next few years,” says Ivanova. According to her observations, women are also valued for the fact that they “approach their work more responsibly, and build their careers more smoothly and measuredly.” With equal professional data, she says, men have higher salary expectations.

The floor didn't come out