A court in Austria has ruled that transport ministry official Peter Franzmayr was discriminated against on the basis of his gender when a managerial role he applied for was given to a woman instead.
The case began in 2011, when the Austrian Minister of Transport, Innovation and Technology led by Social Democrat (SPÖ) politician Doris Bures—currently the Second President of the country's Parliament—decided to consolidate two departments and had to pick a new manager.
Three candidates came forward and were all judged to be highly-qualified for the role. Ursula Zechner, who then headed the rail regulator Schienen-Control, was ultimately offered the job over the other two male applicants. Franzmayr, whose application was rated 0.25 percent higher than Zechner's, sued for gender discrimination.
The Federal Administrative Court ruled in his favor on Monday, the Austrian press reported, and instructed the State to pay him compensation worth €317,368 (nearly $390,000)—the difference between his current salary and the one he would have earned in the role plus damages and interest.
The court found a "discernible pattern, according to which [Zechner] was treated more favourably than the other candidates from the beginning," it said in the ruling, quoted in AFP.
Bures defended her decision in a statement to the press. She said the appointment was “carried out according to the procedure prescribed by law,” but admitted that the “mass underrepresentation of women" played a role in the decision-making process. "I hope the current decision doesn't call into the question the principle of encouraging the promotion of women," she added.
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After leaving the ministry, Franzmayr worked as a lawyer for four years before returning to the public sector as municipal director for the town of Wels in 2016. He was appointed to the supervisory board of Asfinag, Austria’s publicly-owned motorway network operator, earlier this month by Transport Minister Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ).
Coincidentally, Zechner also began a job at Asfinag earlier this month as a managing director "responsible for commercial matters,” according to the company's website.
zyygh on March 21st, 2018 at 09:09 UTC »
This is what I don't get. How don't people realize that, if you promote women because they are women, you establish the preconception that women are less competent than men?
The logic is extremely simple:
Your team is supposed to have the most competent people available. You give women a slight advantage over men, because women are not particularly common in this field but you strive to have at least a certain number of women in your team. As a consequence, women are hired with lower standards than men. As a consequence, men have to be more competent than women in order to join your team. As a consequence, the men in your team are more competent than the women in your team. The result: everyone in your team feels like men are more competent than women. Congratulations, you are now part of the problem while you were trying to be part of the solution.I don't understand how you can be a manager in a company and not realize this.
Paranoid_Marvin on March 21st, 2018 at 07:59 UTC »
Why are dollars used in the title and not euros?
DFractalH on March 21st, 2018 at 07:12 UTC »
They broke the first rule of identity politics: never make a falsifiable statement. In this case, they quantified competence. Doing so allowed candidates to compare each others' results whereas they might have wiggled out if they had opted for an additional final interview useful for conjuring up untestable reasons for rejection.