I have certainly seen places in the past that never advertised and just got staff via the network of existing staff recommending both new staff and it being a good job. Makes for a happy workplace as well. It does tend to skew the demographics, sometimes in unexpected ways.
I knew a waitress who, if she found a good employer, would encourage her sisters to apply. They were all young and pretty and they looked out for each other. It seemed to work.
I obviously don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet that at least 95% of the applicants for these positions are younger women.
mmm
On a related topic–
Try 99%.
My small business currently employs young, white, female workers exclusively.
I had one young black applicant years ago who I hired on the spot. Her husband’s job transferred him though, and the couple moved away from this area.
The OP says that one server is in her 40s and two more look like they’re in their 30s. There may be confirmation bias here.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commssion uses the four-fifths rule.
The agencies have adopted a rule of thumb under which they will generally consider a selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths (4/5ths) or eighty percent (80%) of the selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate as a substantially different rate of selection. See Section 4D. This “4/5ths” or “80%” rule of thumb is not intended as a legal definition, but is a practical means of keeping the attention of the enforcement agencies on serious discrepancies in rates of hiring, promotion and other selection decisions.
To make a determination about any adverse impact when hiring, we’d need to collect some demographic data on the applicants.
We have a local burger chain here in Arkansas that has a suspiciously high percentage of attractive young women in their employ ranging in age from their late teens through their early twenties. They’re not dressed in skimpy attire, they don’t flirt with the customers, and I don’t even think they make a lot in tips, but at each of their locations you’ll find a disproportionate number of attractive young women among the waitstaff. But then most of the men in that same position are also around the same age. The men working the grill are a bit older though.
My wife managed a general restaurant once upon a time. The majority of the servers were women. The kitchen staff, slightly more guys than gals. It’s basically how they applied. There were a few guys serving, and she basically hired anyone who looked competent and reliable to serve. It’s a job that attracted more women than men, while the gas station down the road had mostly guys working. (And she complained that with tips, the servers took home more than her as manager, despite she had to jump in and help or sort out things fairly often).
They could also have a rather weak in this case BFOQ defense. I remember Hooters (I think) won this type of case based on it.
In my youth, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was a treat for my young misogynistic mind to go to Hooters and have a very attractive waitress sit on your lap as you are eating terrible wings. If they hired men to be waiters that would cut off their whole reason for existence.
Perhaps, again a weak argument, could be made that this diner’s customers prefer young female servers. The old men like to flirt and the old women like to see young girls working hard. No business has to promote progressive social goals and if in this community it is helpful to the bottom line, I can see an argument for a BFOQ.
I recently went to a gas station where the attendant was a young woman. And it struck me that that might have been the first time I’ve seen a woman working at this kind of gas station. (Self service, a single employee in the adjacent stall to accept cash, explain that pump 4 is broken, and sell candy and window washer fluid.)
That’s an interesting point that I hadn’t considered when wondering similar things.
For example, every dentist I have visited (with the exception of dentists in the Navy) has had an all-female staff. An exception based on number of employees would explain how such a disparity could continue to exist.
(I have no idea what a female dentist’s staff is like though. I am a bit curious if they also have all-female teams–could it be a self-selection thing where vastly more women than men choose hygienist / receptionist / scheduler roles?)
My dentist is a woman. She has only three employees as best as i can tell, a receptionist and an assistant and a part time hygienist. They are all women, but that seems unremarkable.
Sadly still a significant factor. Another thing you find in many professions is that women will have a preference for roles that allow for significant variability in working hours. This allows them to remain in the workforce and raise a young family. Medical and its ancillary professions are a huge win here.
I’ve been to and continue to go to many different restaurants, sports bars, etc, and the majority of servers are female. I think it’s the nature of the industry and not any effort at discrimination. The virtual lack of publicized complaints and/or lawsuits seems to add credence to this.
There’s a wonderful pastry shop in my town that’s been around for decades, run by a husband-and-wife team. When they went through an acrimonious divorce and the shop went to the woman, the staff changed: the man had been in charge of hiring, and exclusively hired young White women. Now that the woman is in charge of hiring, the shop employs both men and women.
Nobody ever sued, AFAICT, because it wasn’t a great job in the first place, and there were plenty of similar jobs around, and it’d be hard to prove the case in court. I suspect similar deterrents to lawsuits apply in lots of similar cases.
No exception is necessary. When a career field like dental hygienist is 93% women, you’re not going to find a 50-50 split of men and women among the staff at a dentist’s office. This is like wondering how construction companies can get away with having a staff of all male brick layers. They aren’t necessarily discriminating. It could be due to the pool of available employees. Not every profession is represented equally.
Hooters was sued in the late 90s by three male applicants who were denied jobs as servers. They argued BFOQ, but ultimately the case was settled with a cash payout to the plaintiffs and Hooters agreeing to open up additional positions such as bartenders and hosts to gender-neutral hiring.
On the other hand, Southwest Airlines was sued by the EEOC in the early 80s over their policy of hiring only female flight attendants and ticket agents. Their advertising at the time relied heavily on pictures of stewardesses in hot pants and go go boots. They argued BFOQ, but the district court found that being a woman was not a necessary qualification to perform the duties in those roles.
Yes this. My experience as a 6 ft 3, coffee-colored male going for jobs like waiter, barman, receptionist etc, is of frequently being told things like “Oh…we meant to take down that ‘staff wanted’ sign…we’re all good now” and later hearing from female friends that they were in fact still hiring for many roles.
At the end of the day, it was just casual work, and I didn’t care enough to complain. If I had failed to find work anywhere, then maybe I would have considered complaining, but I would generally find work elsewhere pretty quick, and my rationalization was something like “I guess I discovered that boss is a jerk without even needing to get to the interview stage”.
I’m not saying I did the right thing, the point is just that that’s probably the (null) result of discrimination in most cases.
A valid point, though I have seen women in all kinds of construction jobs, even laying bricks, but I have never seen a man working at a dentist’s office. Not once. I wouldn’t expect 50%, but at least one? (With, of course, the exception for the Navy.)
I have a feeling there just aren’t that many guys in the field. That’s strange because nursing, a field that was so female-oriented that “male nurse” was the term used for men until recently, isn’t skewed nearly as much. From my very limited view into nursing, it seems that there are a higher percentage of guys in that field than the various dental roles. My theory is simple: many dentists want to hire women, while nurses often work in larger organizations that wouldn’t be so drastically affected by personal preference.
I’ve never seen a man working in a dentist’s office, either and only one working in a doctor’s office who wasn’t either a doctor, a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant. Never as a hygienist, assistant , receptionist or anyone else patients might have contact with - I suppose there have been some men behind the scenes dealing with billing/insurance or even HR or IT in some of the large groups with multiple offices. I suspect it has less to do with doctors and dentists wanting to hire women and more to do with who applies for those sorts of jobs. I worked for government agencies for 30 years, and there were certain jobs that were almost exclusively women. Sounds like people wanted to hire women - but I just looked up a civil service list for the title that used to be “typist”. Out of the top one hundred names, only ten were men.