The refusal of a public body to allocate a male due to not having a male worker, would this be discrimination or...?

Question

Bob requested, from the public service company dealing with child issues, the presence of a male employee as he felt discriminated and intimidated with the way the female employees were leading meetings and there was never a male with them.

When requesting this, the female employees started to laugh at Bob and an employee said there are no male employees available in the whole region and Bob can meet only with women.

Bob asked why there are no male employees. The female employees said that men look for higher paying jobs claiming that they earn less.

Regarding the employees: Wouldn't this be a discrimination against male employees? Because the company is not willing to offer a higher pay to allow the company to have the correct gender balance and not have a female-centric service?

Regarding Bob receiving the service from the company: Would the refusal of the service to provide a male employee for Bob to meet with have a different scope of discrimination or what?

Answer 1

The first part of the question is trivial to answer - if all men consider the salary on offer to be insufficient, even though it's the same salary that's paid to the (female) employees, then that's the voluntary choice of those men.

Bob in all likelihood cannot insist on the presence of a male employee in the meeting. Some countries might have rules for the gender of doctors; many have rules for police officers doing pat-downs. But those are much more personal interactions than meetings.

Answer 2

The wording of your question is confusing to the point of it appearing that you are not a fluent speaker of English.

Bob is asking that job tasks be assigned to employees according to their sex, which is the definition of discrimination, and yet he somehow thinks that the agency not engaging in discrimination constitutes discrimination against him.

If Bob feels that the people he is interacting with are acting in a manner that is discriminatory and/or intimidating, he should focus his complaint on the conduct, rather the sex on the people engaging in it. He should present a case for the conduct being inappropriate, and ask for remedies directed towards the conduct, rather than women in general. Suggesting that the sex of the people involved is the central issue will harm his credibility and make Bob come across as a misogynist who is claiming oppression because the agency is refusing to accommodate his misogynism, which will make it more difficult for him to get any claim of mistreatment to be taken seriously.

As to the argument that there is discrimination against potential male employees, the lower pay could be considered to have a disparate impact against men, however, budgetary concerns are such a clear bona fide employment qualification that it's difficult to imagine this being found to be a violation of law. Moreover, any man who found the pay insufficient because he had a better offer elsewhere could hardly claim to be in a position inferior to women.