The Citizen reports that the CEO of the SA Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE), Manglin Pillay, will keep his job after apologising for writing a column that was widely condemned as sexist.  

The organisation called an emergency meeting on Wednesday, after which it issued an apology for the article and said that, while Pillay would keep his job, he would face internal discipline.  The column was featured in the July issue of the industry magazine.  In it, Pillay questioned whether there should be investment in attracting women to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, or investment in creating more gender equal societies.  He claimed that women preferred not to occupy high-profile executive posts, and would rather stick to “more important enterprises, like family and raising children”.  SAICE said:  “While the publication of Pillay’s article was unfortunate, we cannot ignore his invaluable contribution to SAICE and to the broader engineering sector over the past eight years.  The board has accepted his apology and his acknowledgement of the public furore this has caused.”  SAICE was slammed for not doing enough to distance itself from Pillay’s words by women engineers’ advocacy group WomENG, which said the response highlighted ‘sexism and misogyny’ in the industry.

• Read this report in full at The Citizen
• Read too, Manglin Pillay’s ‘derogative and patronising’ comments keep him his job, at BusinessLive
• Read SAICE’s press statement at SAICE News

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page