“Now women are also hired for men’s vacancies, otherwise there will be no one to work”

The labor market is changing in favor of the weaker sex

Partial mobilization changes the structure of the labor market. Large, medium and small businesses have lost some of their military-age male employees. What is happening now in this area and whether there will be any preferences for women in terms of employment, “MK” found out from experts.

The leading recruitment company said that the voiced potential for partial mobilization – 300 thousand people – is conditionally a cohort of young people aged 20-24 and to a slightly lesser extent people under 40 – that is, the most highly productive and efficient age categories that are in deficit over the past two years. And the withdrawal of this part of the workforce, of course, is an additional burden on the labor market and a factor in the aggravation of the shortage of personnel. So says an expert in labor law, lawyer hh Tatyana Nechaeva.

The expert recalled that during the preparatory activities (medical commissions, reconciliation of documents, etc.), the employee retains a workplace and average earnings. If the employee receives a summons for military service, then the employment contract is suspended. During the suspension of the employment contract, the employer may enter into fixed-term employment contracts and hire temporary employees.

– In connection with this whole situation, will employers be more willing to hire women? If earlier, for example, many preferred male workers …

– The focus on hiring only employees of a certain gender or age for replacement positions is a significant self-limiting factor for employers, which they are unlikely to take in the face of worsening shortages. It is also important to remember that the general requirements for vacancies have not changed. As before, it is impossible to indicate discriminatory signs in the description and in the requirements for the candidate: “We are recruiting only women, employees with group B, C in terms of health.” This threatens with prosecution and additional attention from labor inspectorates.

However, career consultant and psychologist Svetlana Lenkova, in turn, shared her observations that now women are hired even for those vacancies that were previously considered only for men:

– For example, I know that only men were previously hired for the vacancy of an assembler/picker for warehouses in a group of companies, because sometimes it is necessary to move some kind of box, and now women are also considered, because otherwise there will be no one to work at all. After the pandemic, it became bad with the line staff, the situation has just begun to improve a little, and here it is again. As far as I know, now there are companies that, in the current conditions, in general, consider only women for all their open vacancies.

– Do employers want to insure themselves in this way?

– Yes exactly. After all, time is spent on training and adaptation for each new employee, so it is quite logical that employers do not want this time to be wasted. This is a business, “nothing personal”, as they say. After all, a vacancy is opened for certain tasks, and if the employer only constantly trains and adapts an employee for this vacancy (after all, men can be mobilized for mobilization at any time, and no one knows the prospects in this regard), then the employer will still have unfulfilled tasks under this vacancy, which means that the business will sag.

– And what about stress, because women are more anxious than men? Will they be less efficient?

– I wouldn’t say that. As a psychologist, I can assure you that, on the contrary, women are more resilient in moments of stress, they have higher adaptability in life in general. Yes, indeed, the first reaction of a woman to a stressful situation is more emotional, but then, if necessary, a woman pulls herself together and begins to do the necessary things and fulfill her duties. It makes no sense to talk about a decrease in work efficiency in such a situation, since men now have the same, even more than women, work efficiency may be reduced, because they are in a “suspended” state due to mobilization orders and generally incomprehensible perspective.