After four months of rejections Kim O’Grady found a job having made sure employers realized he was a man. He believes that although he was qualified for the jobs employers ignored his applications due to his name “Kim”.
O’Grady, a management consultant in Perth, Australia, wrote about his experience on his Tumblr blog, entitling the blog, “How I Discovered Gender Discrimination.” His story was republished by Atlantic Media, Quartz and AOL.
He wrote, “The sad reality is...people have expressed sadness, disappointment, anger, but no man or woman has expressed disbelief.
O’Grady said, “Everywhere it is greeted with knowing assent."
In his original blog he described how he had been looking for a job in the late 1990s and there were “plenty of opportunities around.” Having examined his resume he realized the problem was his gender neutral name, “Kim.”
On Monday, in Ireland, a woman was awarded $60,000 after a man, who had repeatedly failed his accountancy exams, got a job over her. Susan O’Kelly won her discrimination case against WYG Engineering who according to the Equality Tribunal did not hire her because she was a married woman with a young child.
O’Kelly has nine years experience at the company and was a fully qualified accountant. However, she was told she was “technically less competent than the other, part-qualified male candidate.” The male in question has just four years experience and has failed his professional exams repeatedly, according to reports in the Irish Times.
MSN reports that sex discrimination continues to count for 30 percent of charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the United States. In the 2012 fiscal year they accounted for 30,356 charges with just 18 percent of these being brought by men.
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