This is apparently going to be a lucky year for me....

a reply to: Bluesma

How Fantastic!! I am Happy for You!!!
NOW when You see a Dragon or two flying overhead, Be not Alarmed. I have instructed some Dragons of The Shed 3 Keep to stay vigellant to Watch for Your Safety!!!

a reply to: SyxPak

LOL! Okay! Thanks! I shall blow them a kiss affectionately !

a reply to: Bluesma

LMAO!!! I Do Wish You the Best of Good Luck!!!
(Several Dragons are Soaring OverHead...)

a reply to: Bluesma

This is so inspiring to me! I did work with a Vet for a short time, as his "assistant" but working the job of a Vet Tech (should be called nurse, cause that is what one does). But, having young children is my calling for now. Maybe one day I can continue my dream! I send you good vibes in this new, lucky year!

Awesome! Life is good when you love your job. Congrats! People like you are the ones who deserve good things because you really appreciate them. Cheers to a fantastic 2016.

Okay, I have been attacked on a totally unrelated thread, because of this one.

I will answer here, where it is more appropriate.

I am being accused of breaking laws and stealing jobs from younger women.

One - there's no laws broken here. I used the word "traditionally" , and I chose that word carefully. If I had meant "legally" I would have used that word.

There is no legal boundries on this career choice. There exists vocational courses for people who drop out of high school, in this area, and there are private home study courses one can buy, which have a diploma or certificate at the end, which is not recognized by the state.
The person I will be replacing (I learned after writing this thread) had no experience or training in this area when she was hired, and a good friend of mine who has worked for a vet for 14 years had no experience or training when she was hired.
No laws were broken.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Two - the question of taking a job a younger woman (who needs it more) might otherwise have...

- People who need a job to survive often want and need a full time job, not a part time job, as this is.
That made it undesireable for many who came to apply.

- It also means being free to come out on emergency calls in the field at any hour (this is a rural community- it means cows having birthing problems in the night and such)
which also is not desireable for women who have kids at home they cannot just leave when called.

There is the more valid question of employers in general being more hesitant to hire a female of child bearing age.

The problem is more complex than it seems at first sight, and is apparently one of those things that looks like a problem to outsiders, and yet, strangely, works in this environment.

The laws (yes, real laws, not cultural traditions) give women three years of maternity leave, with full pay and guarantee to get their job back after those three years.

This has been the source of many young women whp strive to get a contract, only to get pregnant immediately, then do so again each three years, getting full pay and not having to work for many many years.

I have known business owners paying three women for the same position, because two of them were on repeated maternity leave. For a small business owner, this can put them out of business completely!

This does not keep young women from getting hired when they are really capable. My daughter, when she finished college and got her degree, was hired by a company. As they were drawing up her contract, she found out she was pregnant.
In a gesture very uncommon here, she went to them and told them this, giving them a chance to back out if they wanted to. They had a meeting and decided to continue on with the contract anyway. She went back to work just three months after giving birth. She had skills that are high in demand here, and this is not a small business, it is a multinational corporation, so that helped.
But she has girlfriends right now purposely waiting to get pregnant until they get a contract (with no intent on exposing that to the employer).

So... in the past, having seen a previous employer's problem with this, not wanting to discriminate, but being financially unable to support another maternity leave, I have brought up the issue with french people often.

I was confused as to why no one else seemed concerned. Did they not care that women could be discriminated against???

With time is became clear to me - there are a large number of women who actually want to spend their early adult years (twenties) taking care of their children at home!
Whether they get paid from a private business,
or from the national social security,
they can do that. Being single or married makes no difference. (part of why a majority of couple in france don't bother to marry, even if they have lots of kids and live their whole lives together - women don't need a man to survive)

The private company or business that gets "taken in" by the scheming females, it is their own fault, so no one cares.

And this whole thing raises the value of older women in the workplace, even when it comes to experience or education - which is something the younger women feel is a GOOD thing - because they will one day be one of those older women, after they have done their home nurturing as they wanted to!


This seems inconcevable to women like me who come from the US, where our whole self value and image comes from our career status! When ones value to the society is determined on that, yeah it could seem like the women are being "taken from".

But after many years, and as I have described on this site a lot, the women here judge themselves more on their status and performance as a mother and household engineer. The homelife is considered more valuable than work life (hence their famous legal minimum for yearly vacations, 35 hour work week, two hour lunch where families eat at home together daily...). The home is where the woman has an enormous amount of power and is not undervalued as in some other western cultures.

So no, I guess the women here are okay with this system, in which they have the option to invest themselves in their child bearing and rearing completely, then have more options in the exterior world when they are ready. That's simply the way they have chosen to do things, and I've stopped being the foriegner always bitching about their system.
There is a moment when you have to decide to either adapt or leave. I chose to adapt.

a reply to: Bluesma
Don't let them rain on your parade. Some people can't stand to see others do well so they try to drag them down.

I assisted with a couple of surgeries and operations now, and it was awesome!!!
I'm being trained right now.

To the person so worried about my ethical status in terms of womens rights and employment .....

I learned that my assumption about why I was contacted for this job was mistaken.
He explained to me that what he wanted first and foremost was someone with high "humane" type qualities- someone that has a good contact with both animals and people, who is sympathetic and patient, and good at offering comfort and understanding.

He has another assistant (a mother of three younguns, who does not work full time) who is AWESOME (on the limit of being more knowledgeable than he) who can train me- so the technical part is less important.

But he said that I have a reputation.... I used to have a store right next to his office, and his clients talked to him about me all the time.
I knew I had many people that came to me as if I was the local bartender or shrink, to talk to, but it never hit me that they were forming an idea of me, and sharing it with others!
At my last job I met a man w who gushed out that him and his wife had spent a day in my store, in my office, as I comforted them after they found out their dog had cancer. I barely remembered this event, it happened so often, but he said it was a big deal for them.

So I wasn't just being called up because everyone else better suited opted out- I was contacted exactly because of my skills. I guess technical knowledge is only half the equation in some circumstances.

a reply to: Bluesma
Good for you! You sound so happy.