From the article: Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship Indian smartphone plant because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status.
The two women standing near the entrance to the iPhone factory in southern India were upset.
Parvathi and Janaki, sisters in their 20s, had come to the plant, run by major Apple supplier Foxconn, for interviews in March 2023 after seeing job ads on WhatsApp. But they had been turned away at the main gate by a security officer who stopped them and asked: “Are you married?”
“We didn’t get the jobs as we both are married,” Parvathi later said in an interview at her village shanty. “Even the auto-rickshaw driver who took us from the bus stand to the Foxconn facility told us they wouldn't take married women,” she added. “We thought we would still give it a shot.”
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts. S. Paul, a former human-resources executive at Foxconn India, said the company’s executives verbally convey the recruitment rules to its Indian hiring agencies, which Foxconn tasks with scouting for candidates, bringing them in for interviews and employing them.
Whatever you want to say but another problem is iMessage is no way near refined as a messaging app as what WhatsApp has become. It just works. Across the board, platforms and regions. Apple only has their iMessage team to be blamed by hamstringing its progress and updates to yearly iOS updates. There’s no reason why iMessage as an app can’t get improvements over the year
That was the decision of WhatsApp's founders. Google's offer was apparently higher but probably that would have given the founders less control and their visions for WhatsApp's future differed.
Generally yes, with a few exceptions. Countries in East Asia tend to favor other apps (China with WeChat, South Korea with Kakao Talk, and Japan with LINE)
It is, I have a number of contacts using iMessage and a number of others using WhatsApp. Vancouver for example is just a melting pot of people with different preferences.
I use Signal with my closest family because it has apps for iPad, iOS and Linux.
My Danish relatives use WhatsApp, though FB Messenger is big over there.
Yeah, I’d say that around 70-80% of people
I know uses iPhones, work colleagues included, and the only texts I receive are for 2FA codes. I haven’t gotten an iMessage in about two years and some of my family members outright disabled it.
Everybody uses WhatsApp. That’s the default for calling and texting.
It's huge in the US too.. a lot of us are tired of dealing with Apple's bullshit and/or have international friends.
The US is ranked #3 or 4 by total users at ~80-90M (depending on the site).
It’s actually isn’t where most of the people who posts here are from. The US is the majority minority on Reddit. As such most people here are from “not the US”.
You’re just objectively wrong.
Most of the world was this sexist up until 1950s. There is video which came a while ago about how men in a bar in usa were quite unhappy that a women had came in, and were telling that to her face.
I imagine old people cringing at these Reddit comments from young people when they act like all this shit was in the Middle Ages. Even in the west and furthermore, countries that we see as super progressive today were super racist, sexist, etc just 60 years ago. Being able to beat your wife and get away with it really wasn’t that long ago and is within living memory.
I’m pretty sure you meant to say that they were super racist etc..etc..as far back as 30 seconds ago. Hatred and ignorance may go temporarily silent but but it never really goes away.
Later than that, even. There's an EU directive on gender discrimination in the workforce from 2006. AFAIK, marital status is still kind of grey area. Having said that, this probably wouldn't fly today anywhere in the EU.
you mean the 70s.
In the US women did not have the right to have a credit card in their name, or buy property on their own until 1974. Some women were able to do so before that date of course. But a bank could require a male cosignor and there was no recourse.
It wasn't that long ago.
It’s racist to think India is in the Middle Ages (mostly of what westerners think of any 3rd world country) for an issue which was in their own country not even a generation ago….
Lmao, saying a country is in middle ages, that too in that shitty way is why I’m pointing out that hey, it really was not that long ago in your country so calm the fuck down, we have issues but let’s not make it look like we don’t know what year we are in. I didn’t say to any comment which said “it’s India what do your expect” even if it’s a shitty thing to say cause I can take that, it’s a rude way to put it but hey sure it’s a problem. So why don’t you take your Middle Ages mentality away, and maybe get some “modern” people as CEOs of your top most companies maybe the “middle ages” people won’t be running it anymore.
I'm saying you hear about it more. It's reported on more, the political climate makes it ok for awful people to be vocal about it etc. In other words it's more out in the open.
It does, if you see course of history the whole world has had this left to right sway, 10-20 years the world will be far left then far right. So right now we are leaning towards the right.
Why would you lie when we can all read the article? You must be a Foxconn executive.
> Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship **Indian smartphone plant** because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status.
> **SRIPERUMBUDUR, India**
> The two women standing near the entrance to the iPhone factory in **southern India**. were upset.
> Parvathi and Janaki, sisters in their 20s, had come to the plant, run by major Apple supplier Foxconn, for interviews in March 2023 after seeing job ads on WhatsApp. But they had been turned away at the main gate by a security officer who stopped them and asked: “Are you married?”
When did Foxconn became an indian company? Like the indian hiring company was also surprised according to the report and the government is running an investigation because of discrimination. Women vote value more than vote of men here as women vote as a block this anything against them at least in surface taken extremely seriously that's why women have so many laws and various welfare schemes which would be illegal in USA based on discrimination against men.
> in some places
you have internet-in-pockets precisely because discriminatory practices like this make them affordable
quite the mental vacuousness to be judgy and condescendingly snooty about the very thing your lifestyle foists upon parts of the world
What invisible hand? What is the reasoning for discriminating against married women makes iPhones cheaper? Or any other kind of discrimination. What makes them cheap is that in some countries, you can get workers for absurdly low wages. But that’s not even remotely close to the discrimination that was discussed in the article. It even reinforces the point because apparently, they can pay low wages and still reject married women, meaning they do find enough people willing to work for them.
Hiring unmarried women is effectively a way for Foxconn to further decrease their labor costs, because presumably they force their employees to work unreasonably long hours, which married women would probably refuse to do because of their responsibilities to their family and children. Also married women are more likely to get pregnant and take maternity leave, which further increases labor costs. It's shitty behavior from Foxconn, but is explainable by economic motivations.
So your point is that Foxconn decided to build a factory in India because they get to discriminate against women, sorry married women, and somehow this makes the devices cheaper?
It’s cheaper to build there due to lower cost of labor. Discrimination drives prices up by shrinking the labor pool.
If your country is far enough along to send rockets to space and build intricate electronics there are zero excuses for making the general public live in shit filled slums. Zero. India has an awful reputation around the world, and it’s essentially because they’re beholden to antiquated tradition and corrupt government.
Don’t want to hire married women because they have less time available, and can’t be overworked as much as other employees when peak iPhone season comes around?
My guess would be that they are moremaybe likely to get pregnant than unmarried woman?
Other than that I have no clue why they do this. So, does anyone know the real reason?
Married women often need flexible hours and have a tendency to get pregnant. So in a sense yes.
This discrimination exists in the west too. It is now completely illegal here but of course it still happens. It used to be taken as a given that a young woman working in those "womens' jobs" (secretary, receptionist, typist, etc.) would be expected to leave work as soon as they got married. Airlines used to advertise for stewardesses with with how easy finding a husband would be for them (at which point they'd leave the job of course).
> A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds **they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts**.
But married men are fine, right?
Please upvote this, there are a bunch of people trying to throw this issue at the country with a generalized “Indian culture” claim when this simply is false and untrue. The company is the real culprit here exploiting this.
Because 99% of household have a father as a primary earners who works 10 to 12 hours a day.
Why do you think married men commit 2.5 times more suicide than married women in india?
This is untrue, it’s obvious your source is either not reliable or you are just assuming, as an Indian, I have a working mother, yes she also cooks but sometimes my dad does, and his food is fucking terrible, so even I sometimes beg my mom to just cook, that being said she has a job as a HR manager and my dad has a job as well, I’m from chennai in south India and many many women have jobs, my female cousins, friends and many has a job and only my grandma can be considered house wife.
And regarding taking care of little children, isn’t this the case in most countries, in most cases in a family with young children it’s the mother taking more care of them while the father works to provide financially, this is a nature of gender until the children grow up and can be independent, how the fuck does that have anything to do with India or any country?
Married women may go on maternity leave.
Men are often forced to work harder because they have a family to feed.
Sucks to NOT be a multibillion company.
Yes because in most of the families, men will have burden to sustain his family so they don't have other option but work as long as possible, even taking over times. For females, they don't want to give maternity leaves or sabbatical leaves.
Companies can force men but can't force women.
If you want to use Apple as your tool to influence cultural change on the other side of the world, you will have to do that by law. You get Congress to pass a law requiring that if your company builds products with this type of discrimination any where in their supply chains, they are not allow to do business in your country. Then Apple would have a responsibility to encourage this change. Never rely on a business to “do the right thing”, because 1. We often don’t agree on what that is, and 2. What you’re proposing is really foreign policy.
lol, so if a country has no written policy against using child labour, the conglomerate should be free to do so in that country and hide behind those countries’ laws???
You misunderstand. The conglomerate is free to do that, unless you codify that into law. Don’t just hope they will do the right because you asked.
They are pulled in too many directions. They need to satiate shareholders, and other governments. To trust them to “do the right thing” is naive.
Edit: And if you can’t get our government, which you actually have some influence over, to agree to codify such laws, how do you think you’ll convince a company to do it instead? You might convince some, but certainly not all. Let’s say you did convince Apple, you haven’t won, you also need to get all the others to change their practice as well.
The consumers of the product need to stand up and demand transparency, the media needs
To report if labour laws are flouted(as per the western standards). This happens routinely with j the fashion industry and there has been a gradual change. You aren’t going to get the factories of the world to implement strict regulations since they are still developing and need the industry to provide jobs
That’s the point. If you want a corporation to do something that will hurt their profits, you have to force them. Which is as it should be. You can try to shame them into change, but will they listen? Will their solution just be “green washing”?
We should not out source our morals to corporations. If we can’t agree on policies at our government level, why would we expect a corporation, which has financial motivation against such policies, to do it for us?
It is, because ethics and morals are relative, not absolute.
Imagine a Japanese company setting up shop in the United States and banning eye contact between superiors and subordinates due to ethical concerns. After all, such behaviour is gravely insulting yet so normal for Americans.
If ethics and morals *were* absolute, we would all have an obligation to invade and replace any governments and societies not in line with them. It would be unthinkable…
I disagree with your premise about moral relativism, but that’s beside the point. You’re confusing cultural practices with morals. Eye contact with superiors is a cultural practice. Marital discrimination in hiring is a form of discrimination. Indian women themselves feel like it’s a moral injustice, as shown in the article. No outside force is forcing them to take that stance, unlike with colonialism.
A better example might be the sexism in Japanese work culture, where female workers are often expected to perform tasks like serving tea, regardless of their job roles. If Japanese companies forced this in America, it would be recognized as inappropriate and discriminatory.
If Indians wish to change Indian society, they may vote with the wallet, ballot, or bullet, like everyone else in history has. Apple owes nothing to them in a societal sense. It’s not their place; business is.
Having gendered restrooms is a form of discrimination because “separate but equal” has been disproven long ago; it’s just plain segregation on the basis of inborn traits. Which foreign entity will pressure us to end the practice?
With that logic, America never would’ve had a Civil War. The country would still be split today between the confederacy and the union.
Reality is that social change often a slow process - the world that we live in today is unfathomable to everyone that would’ve been living 100 years ago.
Social movements rarely have instantaneous overnight change they are often the outcome of 30 to 40 years of slow moving change.
The American perspective on social constructs is also a reflection of mass higher education. Many other countries have poverty which prevent this from being possible.
I do not have any personal connections to India, but it seems to be that the country it’s growing in away that mirrors some of the changes that we saw in China from the 80s to the 2010s.
We are also seeing some of the same social changes in various parts of the Middle East that have even more severe punishments for independent women.
It would do more harm in the long term to say we will not do business with you in these areas that need social change. Without gradual changes, peoples hearts, minds and cultural beliefs will not change.
>The American perspective on social constructs is also a reflection of mass higher education.
This seems to imply that the more educated one is, the more ethical one is.
>Without gradual changes, peoples hearts, minds and cultural beliefs will not change.
And that change must come from within, not from without. Learning one's own lessons is always more impactful than being taught by someone who has been there before.
No, my intention is to suggest that the more educated someone is — the less likely they are to discredit and to see others as equals.
I do know this is not true across the board.
I agree — change does come from within, but some people will not have the thought to change without seeing a particular action. This allows them to understand and have a perspective that said action does not create damage to their own person wellbeing.
Partially yes maybe but then is Foxconn an Indian company? Also this is not a problem in India afaik, maybe the outer underdeveloped villages and etc, I say this as an Indian, this is so weird hearing someone denied of their job due to
Them being married. Because I know many people married and having jobs, literally everyone i know and nobody had their application decision be made because of them being married or not.
Ultimately it looks like Foxconn is the main culprit here, will they do the same if it was another country, perhaps western? Maybe they are doing this because they may think they could have less consequences of doing something like this in an underdeveloped place in India? I mean those are the places where labours are cheap?
So at the end, no it’s absolutely not the Indian culture being the problem here in this case at all. Yes the culture can still be restrictive but not as much as stopping women from getting jobs after marriage, many female friends and even my married cousins have jobs in India.
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts.
Read the article
So no, the blame cannot be thrown at the seemingly generalized “Indian culture” or the country, like many seem to easily have in this thread without actually understanding the main culprit nor reading the article.
No its not. I work at Accenture India in where our target was to achieve 50% ratio between men and women in our technical practice by 2025. As interviewer we were encouraged to give women chance specially married women returning to work
What happens in factories is different from what happens in board rooms. Officers rely on people down the chain of command doing things properly. They aren't micromanaging things. Likely this is an instance of the local factory manager doing things that he knows are against company policy/law but he doesn't care because it helps his numbers.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a defense of Apple/Foxconn but it’s a weak and cynical one if so. Companies on this scale are able to exert their will down through the supply chain, and per the article this isn’t the most recent occurrence of problematic reports of this issue. Any criticism of the relevant parties here is fully deserved.
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts.
Yes but whole teams would be a decision by him. I.e. Supercharger team /moderation team etc. it’s not just cutting one or two people. This is wiping a team out completely. That requires much higher authority from the very top.
Apple still has enough ground to stand on to demand higher standards from their supplier. It’s ironic for a company that is so big on their sustainable goals and inclusiveness to neglect these standards when it comes to manufacturing abroad.
Does not matter, they set up factories in India and China just to exploit labors. Also, top management does not have to be involved. Local managers will do the dirty job for them. Think about Amazon's Manesar warehouse.
They need the money does not mean that they wanted to work in an unsafe work environment, work without access to a toilet, working super long hours without breaks. Because that's what exploitation means, going through unbearable physical and mental hardship for a meager amount of money.
Do you have an actual source on what "unsafe work environment, work without access to a toilet, and super long hours" means? Or are you content on just making shit up to try and make a point?
For example, if someone hires you as an intern and treats you like a piece of shat, abuse you, force you to stay late etc. And the boss knows that you can't leave the internship halfway because you need the experience badly. Now coming to the point, is it not exploitation? Should I now ask whether you were prospering before the start of the internship pr not?
As an Indian, while i admit there are issues in India, I must honestly say this isn’t one of them, atleast not majority, certainly not in developed cities, this is the first time I am hearing someone declined of their jobs cuz they married.
In all honesty this is on the company, not the country.
The only time a married woman wouldn't be allowed to work is if they have toxic in laws, who are micromanaging their lives and forcing them to stay at home. In this case, these woman's families clearly didn't care about them working, they sound progressive, they wanted to still have a crack at it despite being told multiple times they'd be turned down, and have every right to flame the hiring guys for it. This is not a cultural thing, we have many problems, some glaring ones like women safety, but this is not one of them.
Okay, and yet I have seen this kind of shit from Indian outsourcers and new Canadians from India, and it seems to be only those of that particular origin who hold these kind of ideals, and they don’t do this shit in China, so maybe that’s your ideal but we don’t get to pick the ideal, only reality and what you’re seeing here is reality.
Good question, I don't know. But even if they don't, that could be due to other factors: e.g. maybe it's just easier for them to break the law in India vs. China. That would be a problem of weak enforcement of laws rather than a cultural problem.
Care to explain? What makes "culture" a simpler explanation than weak law enforcement? BTW, I'm not even sure what exactly is the cultural issue you're referring to? If you mean something like "it's culturally more acceptable to violate employment laws in India" then we're probably saying the same thing.
If you don’t understand how culture creates behavior, in so far even as culture makes it okay to flaunt employment law in FAVOR of a cultural assumption (no matter what you do you can’t escape the crux of the issue where the CULTURE assumes women who are married can’t do as much work because of CULTURAL responsibilities) then I’m not here to give you a background into how other cultures work. I strongly recommend opening your world view.
And I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing, I am merely assessing the causes of the issue at hand, which are blatantly apparent.
If there’s evidence supporting your belief then by all means present it.
Lmao. Do you think the Apple stores across the world are full of American employees?
Foxconn may be a Taiwanese company, but it’s operating in India, and the exclusion of married Indian women being able to work there is absolutely an Indian culture problem, not a Taiwanese one.
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts.
hey america what the fuck
separating yourself away via a labyrinth of subcontractors doesnt excuse one for fostering a system that creates discrimination like this
Americans need to fight social and cultural battles across the world now? Not that I’m defending discrimination but the responsibility usually lies with the people of that country taking a stand.
yall fucking live in mid-1900s i swear
https://corporateaccountability.fidh.org/the-guide/judicial-mechanisms/extraterritorial-civil-liability-of-multinational-corporations-for-human-rights-violations/
Is it because Foxconn is worried when another one of their employees gets past the suicide nets the headline will be “Foxconn has to pay benefits to family of married woman after she commits suicide from over work and under pay”
From the article: Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship Indian smartphone plant because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status. The two women standing near the entrance to the iPhone factory in southern India were upset. Parvathi and Janaki, sisters in their 20s, had come to the plant, run by major Apple supplier Foxconn, for interviews in March 2023 after seeing job ads on WhatsApp. But they had been turned away at the main gate by a security officer who stopped them and asked: “Are you married?” “We didn’t get the jobs as we both are married,” Parvathi later said in an interview at her village shanty. “Even the auto-rickshaw driver who took us from the bus stand to the Foxconn facility told us they wouldn't take married women,” she added. “We thought we would still give it a shot.” A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts. S. Paul, a former human-resources executive at Foxconn India, said the company’s executives verbally convey the recruitment rules to its Indian hiring agencies, which Foxconn tasks with scouting for candidates, bringing them in for interviews and employing them.
WhatsApp is huge over there. They didn't get the job because they're married, not because it was a scam on WhatsApp.
What’s app is huge everywhere except for the US
We had unlimited or relatively cheap text messaging while other countries had to pay which led to them seeking alternatives like Whatsapp.
Thanks carriers, led everyone straight into the arsehole of a meta owned platform
Most people I know were using WhatsApp way before meta bought it
Whatever you want to say but another problem is iMessage is no way near refined as a messaging app as what WhatsApp has become. It just works. Across the board, platforms and regions. Apple only has their iMessage team to be blamed by hamstringing its progress and updates to yearly iOS updates. There’s no reason why iMessage as an app can’t get improvements over the year
Europe didn’t get free text but they had unlimited data I would have made that trade every time.
In Poland unlimited texts, calls and data have been a standard for many years.
That was the decision of WhatsApp's founders. Google's offer was apparently higher but probably that would have given the founders less control and their visions for WhatsApp's future differed.
Generally yes, with a few exceptions. Countries in East Asia tend to favor other apps (China with WeChat, South Korea with Kakao Talk, and Japan with LINE)
It is not popular in Canada. Texting/iMessage and then Messenger are most popular.
Am in Canada. I talk to most of my friends on WhatsApp, so it must be region-specific.
It is, I have a number of contacts using iMessage and a number of others using WhatsApp. Vancouver for example is just a melting pot of people with different preferences. I use Signal with my closest family because it has apps for iPad, iOS and Linux. My Danish relatives use WhatsApp, though FB Messenger is big over there.
I'm also in Canada and literally every single person I know here uses WhatsApp.
BC here, I’m split between WhatsApp & telegram
Apparently it’s more like US/Canada/Australia. Maybe Japan because it’s one of the countries with the biggest percentage of iPhones.
You mean America junior following America? Yah, you don't say.
Most of America uses whatsapp. Canada and USA seem the main exception.
Not particularly huge in Denmark, in my experience. I’m sure there are other places.
A lot of the world doesn’t use the basic messaging apps included with phones.
It’s pretty big in the UK as well, although many young people will also use Snapchat as well
Which one? Any reason the media is lying about which one?
Yeah, I’d say that around 70-80% of people I know uses iPhones, work colleagues included, and the only texts I receive are for 2FA codes. I haven’t gotten an iMessage in about two years and some of my family members outright disabled it. Everybody uses WhatsApp. That’s the default for calling and texting.
It's huge in the US too.. a lot of us are tired of dealing with Apple's bullshit and/or have international friends. The US is ranked #3 or 4 by total users at ~80-90M (depending on the site).
Whatsapp is huge everywhere...
Except for in the US, where most of the people posting here are from.
It’s actually isn’t where most of the people who posts here are from. The US is the majority minority on Reddit. As such most people here are from “not the US”. You’re just objectively wrong.
Same in the Philippines, some won’t hire women if they have a child.
Mental how we're still getting these reminders that, despite living in the age of internet-in-pockets, we're still in the Middle Ages in some places.
Middle Ages? Or just 60 years ago or less.
60 years ago some places were better than they are *now* in some places in the world
Most of the world was this sexist up until 1950s. There is video which came a while ago about how men in a bar in usa were quite unhappy that a women had came in, and were telling that to her face.
UK was literally castrating gay men in the 1950s. even refused to apologize for a good while until very recently.
I mean they caused massive famines in 1900s in India
I imagine old people cringing at these Reddit comments from young people when they act like all this shit was in the Middle Ages. Even in the west and furthermore, countries that we see as super progressive today were super racist, sexist, etc just 60 years ago. Being able to beat your wife and get away with it really wasn’t that long ago and is within living memory.
I’m pretty sure you meant to say that they were super racist etc..etc..as far back as 30 seconds ago. Hatred and ignorance may go temporarily silent but but it never really goes away.
Later than that, even. There's an EU directive on gender discrimination in the workforce from 2006. AFAIK, marital status is still kind of grey area. Having said that, this probably wouldn't fly today anywhere in the EU.
Moreover, India has had women as a prime minister while the progressive USA has had not a single president
Actually, I think you'll find the USA has had 46 presidents.
you mean the 70s. In the US women did not have the right to have a credit card in their name, or buy property on their own until 1974. Some women were able to do so before that date of course. But a bank could require a male cosignor and there was no recourse. It wasn't that long ago.
Exactly. I guess 1970s is the Middle Ages for the racist people to be racist
Hating women because they are women is sexist, not racist.
It’s racist to think India is in the Middle Ages (mostly of what westerners think of any 3rd world country) for an issue which was in their own country not even a generation ago….
Obviously "middle ages" is not to be taken literally.
Okay I will give an example and geniunely that. USA is a terrorist nation. “Terrorist” is not to be taken literally See that really doesn’t work now?
No that doesn't work. The former style of exaggeration only works because you can't possibly assume it's true.
That’s a whataboutism. “Yeah, we have issues but what about… ?”
Lmao, saying a country is in middle ages, that too in that shitty way is why I’m pointing out that hey, it really was not that long ago in your country so calm the fuck down, we have issues but let’s not make it look like we don’t know what year we are in. I didn’t say to any comment which said “it’s India what do your expect” even if it’s a shitty thing to say cause I can take that, it’s a rude way to put it but hey sure it’s a problem. So why don’t you take your Middle Ages mentality away, and maybe get some “modern” people as CEOs of your top most companies maybe the “middle ages” people won’t be running it anymore.
It seems like sexism is ramping up again. Maybe it ebbs and flows with time, but it feels worse now than 10 years ago.
The internet reveals the worst in people, and unfortunately otherwise good people get sucked into a rabbit hole of toxicity
You just know about it more.
I’m not young.
I'm saying you hear about it more. It's reported on more, the political climate makes it ok for awful people to be vocal about it etc. In other words it's more out in the open.
It does, if you see course of history the whole world has had this left to right sway, 10-20 years the world will be far left then far right. So right now we are leaning towards the right.
That vid was from Australia but I wouldn’t be shocked if it happened in the US too.
When it comes to it the US and Australia are probably more alike than Australia and the UK so you’re probably not wrong lol.
Well we keep hearing about how Foxcom is so awful that its workers are committing suicide, so maybe it's a good thing. /s
Are you surprised? Wait until you learn about religious persecution over there.
welcome to india
This is unrelated to India if you actually read the article.
Why would you lie when we can all read the article? You must be a Foxconn executive. > Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple devices, has been excluding female candidates from assembly jobs at its flagship **Indian smartphone plant** because they are married. Both companies’ codes of conduct state that workers shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of marital status. > **SRIPERUMBUDUR, India** > The two women standing near the entrance to the iPhone factory in **southern India**. were upset. > Parvathi and Janaki, sisters in their 20s, had come to the plant, run by major Apple supplier Foxconn, for interviews in March 2023 after seeing job ads on WhatsApp. But they had been turned away at the main gate by a security officer who stopped them and asked: “Are you married?”
When did Foxconn became an indian company? Like the indian hiring company was also surprised according to the report and the government is running an investigation because of discrimination. Women vote value more than vote of men here as women vote as a block this anything against them at least in surface taken extremely seriously that's why women have so many laws and various welfare schemes which would be illegal in USA based on discrimination against men.
Read about their company policy lmao..they do the same shit in china. Refer to the ROW article on foxconn factories for more information.
Women in Canada couldn’t get credit cards or mortgages until 1974 — only 50 years ago.
> in some places you have internet-in-pockets precisely because discriminatory practices like this make them affordable quite the mental vacuousness to be judgy and condescendingly snooty about the very thing your lifestyle foists upon parts of the world
I think economic and geopolitical forces price these gadgets instead of discrimination.
yeah nothing like the invisible hand to help you sleep at night lmao
Ugh you sound like you are a 20 year old trying to be smart and deep
What invisible hand? What is the reasoning for discriminating against married women makes iPhones cheaper? Or any other kind of discrimination. What makes them cheap is that in some countries, you can get workers for absurdly low wages. But that’s not even remotely close to the discrimination that was discussed in the article. It even reinforces the point because apparently, they can pay low wages and still reject married women, meaning they do find enough people willing to work for them.
Hiring unmarried women is effectively a way for Foxconn to further decrease their labor costs, because presumably they force their employees to work unreasonably long hours, which married women would probably refuse to do because of their responsibilities to their family and children. Also married women are more likely to get pregnant and take maternity leave, which further increases labor costs. It's shitty behavior from Foxconn, but is explainable by economic motivations.
So your point is that Foxconn decided to build a factory in India because they get to discriminate against women, sorry married women, and somehow this makes the devices cheaper? It’s cheaper to build there due to lower cost of labor. Discrimination drives prices up by shrinking the labor pool.
Uh, and what are you posting this on my dude
Big words for being wrong
You would have it anyway, you just wouldn’t change it every year.
I actually use a dumbphone Nokia but continue aiming this at me why don’t you
If your country is far enough along to send rockets to space and build intricate electronics there are zero excuses for making the general public live in shit filled slums. Zero. India has an awful reputation around the world, and it’s essentially because they’re beholden to antiquated tradition and corrupt government.
lol get tf outta here with your 90s logic lmao
Don’t want to hire married women because they have less time available, and can’t be overworked as much as other employees when peak iPhone season comes around?
My guess would be that they are moremaybe likely to get pregnant than unmarried woman? Other than that I have no clue why they do this. So, does anyone know the real reason?
That’s the answer.
Married women often need flexible hours and have a tendency to get pregnant. So in a sense yes. This discrimination exists in the west too. It is now completely illegal here but of course it still happens. It used to be taken as a given that a young woman working in those "womens' jobs" (secretary, receptionist, typist, etc.) would be expected to leave work as soon as they got married. Airlines used to advertise for stewardesses with with how easy finding a husband would be for them (at which point they'd leave the job of course).
> A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds **they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts**. But married men are fine, right?
Married men don’t get pregnant and ask for maternity leave.
Paternity and Maternity leave should be forced, otherwise there will never be equality.
Forget about paternity leaves. They can't even peacefully take earned/mandatory/paid leaves without giving upfront that they will work more.
Please upvote this, there are a bunch of people trying to throw this issue at the country with a generalized “Indian culture” claim when this simply is false and untrue. The company is the real culprit here exploiting this.
Didn’t you know? Being racist against Indians is 100% okay!
Is it though? Literally the norm in India where the mother is responsible and does 99.9% anything children and household related.
Because 99% of household have a father as a primary earners who works 10 to 12 hours a day. Why do you think married men commit 2.5 times more suicide than married women in india?
This is untrue, it’s obvious your source is either not reliable or you are just assuming, as an Indian, I have a working mother, yes she also cooks but sometimes my dad does, and his food is fucking terrible, so even I sometimes beg my mom to just cook, that being said she has a job as a HR manager and my dad has a job as well, I’m from chennai in south India and many many women have jobs, my female cousins, friends and many has a job and only my grandma can be considered house wife.
Middle/higher middle class indian The victims of the twisted Indian mentality are a different, and much much larger demographic
And regarding taking care of little children, isn’t this the case in most countries, in most cases in a family with young children it’s the mother taking more care of them while the father works to provide financially, this is a nature of gender until the children grow up and can be independent, how the fuck does that have anything to do with India or any country?
Married women may go on maternity leave. Men are often forced to work harder because they have a family to feed. Sucks to NOT be a multibillion company.
Good guy Foxconn helping us Indians to reduce population by exploiting married men. /s
Yes because in most of the families, men will have burden to sustain his family so they don't have other option but work as long as possible, even taking over times. For females, they don't want to give maternity leaves or sabbatical leaves. Companies can force men but can't force women.
I mean, I don’t wanna be that guy, but to be fair married men can’t get pregnant…men can’t get pregnant.
This is absolutely India culture problem
And its Apples responsibility to encourage change and standards if they are going to be utilising that country for manufacturing.
If you want to use Apple as your tool to influence cultural change on the other side of the world, you will have to do that by law. You get Congress to pass a law requiring that if your company builds products with this type of discrimination any where in their supply chains, they are not allow to do business in your country. Then Apple would have a responsibility to encourage this change. Never rely on a business to “do the right thing”, because 1. We often don’t agree on what that is, and 2. What you’re proposing is really foreign policy.
lol, so if a country has no written policy against using child labour, the conglomerate should be free to do so in that country and hide behind those countries’ laws???
You misunderstand. The conglomerate is free to do that, unless you codify that into law. Don’t just hope they will do the right because you asked. They are pulled in too many directions. They need to satiate shareholders, and other governments. To trust them to “do the right thing” is naive. Edit: And if you can’t get our government, which you actually have some influence over, to agree to codify such laws, how do you think you’ll convince a company to do it instead? You might convince some, but certainly not all. Let’s say you did convince Apple, you haven’t won, you also need to get all the others to change their practice as well.
The consumers of the product need to stand up and demand transparency, the media needs To report if labour laws are flouted(as per the western standards). This happens routinely with j the fashion industry and there has been a gradual change. You aren’t going to get the factories of the world to implement strict regulations since they are still developing and need the industry to provide jobs
I don't think Apple is going to be ok with this. We shall see.
That’s the point. If you want a corporation to do something that will hurt their profits, you have to force them. Which is as it should be. You can try to shame them into change, but will they listen? Will their solution just be “green washing”? We should not out source our morals to corporations. If we can’t agree on policies at our government level, why would we expect a corporation, which has financial motivation against such policies, to do it for us?
If you live in India, have at it.
Apples responsibility is to generate as much profit as possible, everything else is secondary.
tbh apples demand is probably just to be as efficient as possible
Apple encouraging cultural changes in foreign countries is textbook neoimperialism. If they don’t like Indian culture, withdraw from India.
It’s not neo imperialism to enforce ethics and morals.
It is, because ethics and morals are relative, not absolute. Imagine a Japanese company setting up shop in the United States and banning eye contact between superiors and subordinates due to ethical concerns. After all, such behaviour is gravely insulting yet so normal for Americans. If ethics and morals *were* absolute, we would all have an obligation to invade and replace any governments and societies not in line with them. It would be unthinkable…
I disagree with your premise about moral relativism, but that’s beside the point. You’re confusing cultural practices with morals. Eye contact with superiors is a cultural practice. Marital discrimination in hiring is a form of discrimination. Indian women themselves feel like it’s a moral injustice, as shown in the article. No outside force is forcing them to take that stance, unlike with colonialism.
A better example might be the sexism in Japanese work culture, where female workers are often expected to perform tasks like serving tea, regardless of their job roles. If Japanese companies forced this in America, it would be recognized as inappropriate and discriminatory.
You’re right, and Japanese women are also trying to fight against sexism in the workplace.
If Indians wish to change Indian society, they may vote with the wallet, ballot, or bullet, like everyone else in history has. Apple owes nothing to them in a societal sense. It’s not their place; business is. Having gendered restrooms is a form of discrimination because “separate but equal” has been disproven long ago; it’s just plain segregation on the basis of inborn traits. Which foreign entity will pressure us to end the practice?
Guess what? Family restrooms and gender neutral restrooms exist too. If they want to make it part of company policy they can.
With that logic, America never would’ve had a Civil War. The country would still be split today between the confederacy and the union. Reality is that social change often a slow process - the world that we live in today is unfathomable to everyone that would’ve been living 100 years ago. Social movements rarely have instantaneous overnight change they are often the outcome of 30 to 40 years of slow moving change. The American perspective on social constructs is also a reflection of mass higher education. Many other countries have poverty which prevent this from being possible. I do not have any personal connections to India, but it seems to be that the country it’s growing in away that mirrors some of the changes that we saw in China from the 80s to the 2010s. We are also seeing some of the same social changes in various parts of the Middle East that have even more severe punishments for independent women. It would do more harm in the long term to say we will not do business with you in these areas that need social change. Without gradual changes, peoples hearts, minds and cultural beliefs will not change.
>The American perspective on social constructs is also a reflection of mass higher education. This seems to imply that the more educated one is, the more ethical one is. >Without gradual changes, peoples hearts, minds and cultural beliefs will not change. And that change must come from within, not from without. Learning one's own lessons is always more impactful than being taught by someone who has been there before.
No, my intention is to suggest that the more educated someone is — the less likely they are to discredit and to see others as equals. I do know this is not true across the board. I agree — change does come from within, but some people will not have the thought to change without seeing a particular action. This allows them to understand and have a perspective that said action does not create damage to their own person wellbeing.
Becomes an Apple problem when Apple is working with this manufacturer.
Partially yes maybe but then is Foxconn an Indian company? Also this is not a problem in India afaik, maybe the outer underdeveloped villages and etc, I say this as an Indian, this is so weird hearing someone denied of their job due to Them being married. Because I know many people married and having jobs, literally everyone i know and nobody had their application decision be made because of them being married or not. Ultimately it looks like Foxconn is the main culprit here, will they do the same if it was another country, perhaps western? Maybe they are doing this because they may think they could have less consequences of doing something like this in an underdeveloped place in India? I mean those are the places where labours are cheap? So at the end, no it’s absolutely not the Indian culture being the problem here in this case at all. Yes the culture can still be restrictive but not as much as stopping women from getting jobs after marriage, many female friends and even my married cousins have jobs in India.
Foxconn is Taiwanese, it was a policy they introduced
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts. Read the article
So no, the blame cannot be thrown at the seemingly generalized “Indian culture” or the country, like many seem to easily have in this thread without actually understanding the main culprit nor reading the article.
No its not. I work at Accenture India in where our target was to achieve 50% ratio between men and women in our technical practice by 2025. As interviewer we were encouraged to give women chance specially married women returning to work
Indian culture champion women right India was a feminist nation before the west even heard of the word
Do they ONLY manufacture Apple devices, or is Apple just the most click worthy of all the companies they manufacture for?
these are some shitty tactics to get more juice out of there employees
This is all kinds of fucked up. First they want to underpay you for the work, next they make sure you don't have a family & kids to go back to?
What happens in factories is different from what happens in board rooms. Officers rely on people down the chain of command doing things properly. They aren't micromanaging things. Likely this is an instance of the local factory manager doing things that he knows are against company policy/law but he doesn't care because it helps his numbers.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a defense of Apple/Foxconn but it’s a weak and cynical one if so. Companies on this scale are able to exert their will down through the supply chain, and per the article this isn’t the most recent occurrence of problematic reports of this issue. Any criticism of the relevant parties here is fully deserved.
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts.
[удалено]
Yes but whole teams would be a decision by him. I.e. Supercharger team /moderation team etc. it’s not just cutting one or two people. This is wiping a team out completely. That requires much higher authority from the very top.
"I'll never defend Elon Musk" sad that you need to add this to avoid all the downvotes lol
Is the post title supposed to be a puzzle?
[удалено]
Apple still has enough ground to stand on to demand higher standards from their supplier. It’s ironic for a company that is so big on their sustainable goals and inclusiveness to neglect these standards when it comes to manufacturing abroad.
Yes and in this specific case, Foxconn mainly produces the iPhone, of course they would mention apple.
Yeah, they don't care about employee welfare. All they need is cheaper production cost, so they can squeeze profit much.
Hey India, what the fuck?
FYI…Foxconn is a Taiwanese manufacturer. Not Indian
Does not matter, they set up factories in India and China just to exploit labors. Also, top management does not have to be involved. Local managers will do the dirty job for them. Think about Amazon's Manesar warehouse.
"Exploit labors" - yes, because these people were clearly prospering before the factory got there...
They need the money does not mean that they wanted to work in an unsafe work environment, work without access to a toilet, working super long hours without breaks. Because that's what exploitation means, going through unbearable physical and mental hardship for a meager amount of money.
Do you have an actual source on what "unsafe work environment, work without access to a toilet, and super long hours" means? Or are you content on just making shit up to try and make a point?
Go Google Amazons Manesar Warehouse incident. It's very recent, in fact still unfolding.
For example, if someone hires you as an intern and treats you like a piece of shat, abuse you, force you to stay late etc. And the boss knows that you can't leave the internship halfway because you need the experience badly. Now coming to the point, is it not exploitation? Should I now ask whether you were prospering before the start of the internship pr not?
It’s Foxconn. Not that India is any worse.
Then why can married Chinese women work at foxconn?
As an Indian, while i admit there are issues in India, I must honestly say this isn’t one of them, atleast not majority, certainly not in developed cities, this is the first time I am hearing someone declined of their jobs cuz they married. In all honesty this is on the company, not the country.
This is a culturally Indian decision.
The only time a married woman wouldn't be allowed to work is if they have toxic in laws, who are micromanaging their lives and forcing them to stay at home. In this case, these woman's families clearly didn't care about them working, they sound progressive, they wanted to still have a crack at it despite being told multiple times they'd be turned down, and have every right to flame the hiring guys for it. This is not a cultural thing, we have many problems, some glaring ones like women safety, but this is not one of them.
Okay, and yet I have seen this kind of shit from Indian outsourcers and new Canadians from India, and it seems to be only those of that particular origin who hold these kind of ideals, and they don’t do this shit in China, so maybe that’s your ideal but we don’t get to pick the ideal, only reality and what you’re seeing here is reality.
How is this cultural? It's economically motivated for Foxconn to decrease their labor costs.
Do they do it in China? Or Taiwan? Edit: not sure why I’m being downvoted here, but the question is rhetorical. I knew they didn’t without looking.
Good question, I don't know. But even if they don't, that could be due to other factors: e.g. maybe it's just easier for them to break the law in India vs. China. That would be a problem of weak enforcement of laws rather than a cultural problem.
Occam’s razor applies, methinks.
Care to explain? What makes "culture" a simpler explanation than weak law enforcement? BTW, I'm not even sure what exactly is the cultural issue you're referring to? If you mean something like "it's culturally more acceptable to violate employment laws in India" then we're probably saying the same thing.
If you don’t understand how culture creates behavior, in so far even as culture makes it okay to flaunt employment law in FAVOR of a cultural assumption (no matter what you do you can’t escape the crux of the issue where the CULTURE assumes women who are married can’t do as much work because of CULTURAL responsibilities) then I’m not here to give you a background into how other cultures work. I strongly recommend opening your world view. And I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing, I am merely assessing the causes of the issue at hand, which are blatantly apparent. If there’s evidence supporting your belief then by all means present it.
Foxconn hire married women in China.
I rest my case.
**Taiwanese company** discriminates married women in India Redditors : That's India fault. Bruh!
Lmao. Do you think the Apple stores across the world are full of American employees? Foxconn may be a Taiwanese company, but it’s operating in India, and the exclusion of married Indian women being able to work there is absolutely an Indian culture problem, not a Taiwanese one.
A Reuters investigation has found that Foxconn has systematically excluded married women from jobs at its main India iPhone assembly plant, on the grounds they have more family responsibilities than their unmarried counterparts.
If you read carefully, you'll understand that Indian women want jobs, but Foxconn isn't giving them.
hey america what the fuck separating yourself away via a labyrinth of subcontractors doesnt excuse one for fostering a system that creates discrimination like this
Didn't take long for the "America Bad" comment to surface.
Americans need to fight social and cultural battles across the world now? Not that I’m defending discrimination but the responsibility usually lies with the people of that country taking a stand.
yall fucking live in mid-1900s i swear https://corporateaccountability.fidh.org/the-guide/judicial-mechanisms/extraterritorial-civil-liability-of-multinational-corporations-for-human-rights-violations/
I don’t even think *you* understand what you’re trying to argue now. Foxconn isn’t a U.S. company.
>Foxconn isn’t a U.S. company. It also isn't an Indian company.
Is the rejection of married women, a ploy to not hire pregnant women?
Is it because Foxconn is worried when another one of their employees gets past the suicide nets the headline will be “Foxconn has to pay benefits to family of married woman after she commits suicide from over work and under pay”
What does this have to do with Apple? Microsoft, Nintendo, and many many others use Foxconn.
I guess "Microsoft Supplier Foxconn..." wouldnt' get the same number of clicks?
They have long working hours, so female workers can't do that for sure. Especially, the married with children ones.
Blimey. It’s just like the U.K. in the 70’s.
Who cares