Female window cleaners

danlojo

jamesy wrote: »

Ok so i call it

SHEILAS WINDOW CLEANING


Do you think i will get many men applying?

That to me would mean that 'Sheila' owns the company

I wouldn't mind men or women cleaning my windows so long as they were done correctly!

Owain_Moneysaver

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

BUT do you then send out the ladies if a man requests it? Every time? Or do you 'vet' such requests? You have to keep your staff safe from sexual harassment.

These people are happy sending out men to work for male and female clients, but you've got to be just as careful sending out a woman to work for a woman these days.

Savvy_Sue

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

These people

that should come with a health warning! was loading too slow on my computer though. :rotfl:

heretolearn_2

You've got two questions.

Can a woman clean windows? Whyever not, even before the new equipment how hard is it to carry a bucket of water around? Or get up a ladder? Working out in the cold? I don't know what sort of women you know, must be a pretty delicate bunch, but yes, women are capable of this. Perhaps it's just that the women doing these sorts of things are not out in the public eye so much but are working on farms, in forestry, gardening, etc etc...

Is it legal to run a women only firm. Not really, bit of a minefield, there are probably ways round it if you are determined.

But my worry is why would there be any demand for this? The women firms of decorators/builders etc have a demand because there are people who feel safer with them coming into their home - maybe pensioners, women who have a reason to feel uncomfortable with strange men, and so on. A window cleaner isn't coming into your home, I can't see any reason why someone would prefer to have a woman. Other than some pervie blokes who think it's a window cleaning version of those tacky 'carcleaning in bikinis' events. You might find a lot of requests expecting lots of soapy water, wet t-shirts, pressing up against the windows....

With the cleaning services, yes I'm sure most of their staff are women, but they don't have to be and there's no promise of that. I've used one of these and wouldn't care if a man turned up, and I know that when we recruited our office cleaner we had quite a few men apply. The name MerryMaids is describing the job role to me - a maid as in the person who worked in a house doing the cleaning 100 years ago - not maid as in maiden. I don't think that giving it what you see as a feminine name will necessarily say the same thing to other people as you expect. Even if you called it 'womens windows' I might think you were targeting women as your customers, rather than just employing women.

Marteebies

Hey... I dont see why this wouldnt be accepted! Though I would suggest doing some more research before you launch this idea! On paper it sounds good, but who exactly are you planning to target with this idea. Many window cleaning companies are quite big now and have a good reputation so I am not sure that trust would be an issue! Can I suggest you conduct some market research? As a startup you might want to use a free online tool for this, or you could enter your service idea into the Marketest business competition, then it would be free and well done. http://www.marketest.co.uk/business-start-ups-competition

Dont forget to ressearch competitors in the area, make sure their is an actual NEED for this service! Good luck with your start-up!

Al1x

As others have said why not employ the girl first? there is no reason why a girl can't work outside all day and do the job just as good as a man.

fluffpot

I am a female electrician.

It seems to me that you could set up with pretty low overheads and low risk (insurance is a must though) and take on this girl on a trial basis - not employing her, but on a sub contract. Indeed, let's face it, you're going to be paid in cash, so there is a way to keep it very simple to start with.... (I didn't say that, did I)

You could start by only committing to one/two days a week and then see how business builds. Your first few days might be spent delivering leaflets I would guess anyway. If you don't advertise for staff then you can't fall foul of any discrimination laws. Mind you, can't see that Buff Builders would be able to employ a female builder would they???

Go for it - I'm glad I did (even with much larger start up costs of training, tools, insurance, van, NICEIC annual fees etc) and I've never been busier and part of this is I'm sure, because I'm female.

In response to the poster who suggested you might get requests to work in wet T shirts, I think this is unlikely. I've never had any problems in this area!

GilbertGradgrind

There is a problem in that anybody can clean a window. So, gender is unlikely to be a "genuine occupational qualification".

If you were to employ women only then you might need to be able to justify that "genuine occupational qualification". Say, you had a contract for cleaning female halls of residences at a University: that might justify the "qualification" of being female on various grounds including a commitment to "safeguarding" and added services around creating and promoting a positive environment for women in an all women environment. You might also need to offer the same product for male only halls of residence with male window cleaners.

You might also be able to use the Equality Act 2010 to argue that you are undertaking

"a proportionate means of achieving the aim of addressing disadvantage or under-representation

in the workforce." If you do this then you are not going to get far without some evidence that women are underrepresented in the window cleaning trade. If you can secure a contract where safeguarding is of importance (say a School or University) and that is not your sole source of revenue then it might well be possible to get a commercial lawyer to argue that you have excepted vacancies for a protected characteristic.

Personally, I think an all womens' window cleaning crew is a terrible idea aimed at making a quick buck out of perceived discrimination. Taking more women on as an employer would be a better approach.

Savvy_Sue

GilbertGradgrind wrote: »

If you were to employ women only then you might need to be able to justify that "genuine occupational qualification". Say, you had a contract for cleaning female halls of residences at a University: that might justify the "qualification" of being female on various grounds including a commitment to "safeguarding" and added services around creating and promoting a positive environment for women in an all women environment. You might also need to offer the same product for male only halls of residence with male window cleaners.

there's a vanishingly small number of segregated halls of residence from my experience: a few (very few) segregated sections, but usually mixed these days.

GilbertGradgrind wrote: »

Personally, I think an all womens' window cleaning crew is a terrible idea aimed at making a quick buck out of perceived discrimination. Taking more women on as an employer would be a better approach.

and personally I agree with you ...