Monday, February 6, 2012
Marital status on a CV?
I just saw a CV for someone we're interviewing for a faculty position where the person included their marital status and number of children. I know that this is absolutely not required, and is in fact illegal to ask about. Has anyone else seen this? It strikes me as very unusual.
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7 comments:
Are they from the US? I think it's much more common in other countries to put that information on a CV.
I actually have seen this once; a person applying for a teaching position at my college included both her wedding date and the birth of her child in her CV. I found it a little odd, and it didn't seem to impress anyone on the search committee...
I think it would also depend on whether it was a man or a woman's CV. Married men with children tend to be seen as more responsible, and so could be seen in a positive light. Whereas a woman married with children generally is seen to be less responsible at her job so I would be shocked if the CV was from a woman.
This particular person is from a country other than the US, and male. He listed the years his children were born.
Is it legal in many other countries to ask questions about marital status or children?
That seems really weird to me and kind of off-putting. Maybe it is cultural. From what I've read, it's true that men with children are viewed as more stable whereas women with children are not, unfortunately.
It's common in the East African country I work in to state marital status, age, and religion on one's CV. I could see doing this in the US if you're trying to explain a gap in your publication record I guess?
Very common in Europe until recently. Very recently (like within the past ~2 years) Europe has started trying to make the norm not to include this information. Also relatively recently (in the past 15 years), they've been working on making discrimination based on the standard demographics that are illegal in the US also illegal in the EU.
Of course, the solution seems to be that instead they include a picture with the cv standard.
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