Toronto Company Posts Receptionist Job, “So Female Candidates Preferred”

By Notable Life
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Where’s Marty McFly when you need him?

‘Cause other than having taken a quick trip back to the 1950s in a DeLorean, Vestra Inet, a Toronto-based “full-service web design company,” is going to have a pretty hard time explaining the thinking behind this one.

Earlier this month, Vestra Inet posted a job for a Content Writer & SEO Specialist on LinkedIn. And everything was going just fine. The job skill-set included very reasonable, non-gender specific musts like:

– Writing talent; excellent grammar and spelling expected
– Computer knowledge
– Knowledge of SEO

Etc., etc.

Yup, this was just another normal posting in the boring world of job posts. Nothing exciting to see here at…wait a second, what’s that last line say?

Oh. God.

“Please note that the position requires filling in the responsibilities of a receptionist, so female candidates are preferred.”

Don’t worry, in case you’re having the same reaction we are (and no, this is not a politically correct crisis – it’s simply asinine), The Toronto Star spoke with labour and employment lawyer Howard Levitt, who confirmed that the post went beyond idiocy and right into the realm of illegal:

“It’s not merely politically incorrect in terms of typecasting people into certain gender roles, but the (Ontario) Human Rights Code makes it illegal to advertise based on gender,” he said. “It’s simply out of touch and out of legal reality in 2015, or even for that matter 1995.”

Perhaps that should be Vestra Inet’s new slogan: 20 Years Behind the Times.

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