What about just removing laws that didn’t try to second guess the decisions of employers, so that they could make their own decisions on who is going to contribute more to their company or organisation? Or do you believe that employers would all be champing at the bit to introduce sexist, homophobic and racist employment policies unless the law compels them not to.

BTW, and sorry to get all special-interest groupy for a moment, both private and public organisations are permitted, and in some areas positively encouraged, to discriminate against individuals who participate in private BDSM activities. I would personally rather you left employment law alone because I am confident that people with even an obviously alternative sexuality are capable of finding employment in a free market, but if you are going to insist on enforcing non-discrimination law, then why not extend it to ALL sexualities rather than just the ones that are currently appreciated as politically correct?

What Nick said.

What is it with the use of the word ‘discrimination’ in this context? If an employer selects one candidate for a job over another, then by definition they are discriminating.

It’s just that there are PC forms of discrimination, and non-PC forms.

Nick, how are organisations discriminating people on the grounds of what they get up to in private? Surely by nature of it being private means that employers wouldn’t know about it. If someone spend an interview talking about whatever sexual practices they got up to I’d certainly hold that against them if I was the interviewer. Nothing whatsoever to do with what they did or who they were with, but for the simple fact that it’s not the place to discuss such things!

Apologies if I’m completely missing the point (it happens often!) but I don’t quite see where what you said fits in.

“Or do you believe that employers would all be champing at the bit to introduce sexist, homophobic and racist employment policies”

Not the large companies with proper policies and brand reputations to think of. But some small companies yes. Industrial tribunals provide countless examples of employers that really are sexist, homophobic and/or racist. To give one example – a pub in wales overtly advertised for bar staff with “no english or gypsies” as a requirement. They were suprised when the local racial equality council took them to court over it. Removing discrimination laws, as you are advocating, would make this behaviour legal.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless this bill gets butchered in half it’s a disaster waiting to happen. To say that employers don’t have the ability to choose one candidate over the other in an equal pool of candidates is a complete fallacy, and opening up the ability to discriminate only allows people to be discriminatory rather than considering non-required or non-essential qualities or observations for the basis of employment.

It is essentially either legislating to change nothing, or the next paper published will show it is a bit more sinister than that. In either case we should be asking what is the point of devoting any time to that side of the legislation?

It also takes a lot of power away from the employee when it comes to salaries.

So yeah, well done on the anti-age discrimination thing…but nay to pretty much all of the rest of it.

But the big issue here is the distortions & lies of the right wing tabloids. For example, throughout the mayoral election, Londoners through were bombarded with dishonest Evening Standard billboards outside every newsagent. And last week, the BCS figures showing dramatic falls in crime were hardly mentioned or were sneered at. What can we do about this?

And do you really a think a handful of racist pub landlords make it worthwhile to construct a hundred million pound government funded industry in anti-racism? Besides, if a pub thinks their customers are better served by Welsh staff, isn’t that their prerogative? I wouldn’t dream of denying Indian Restaurants the choice to employ only indians or even only family members if they so desire.

Jack: just as it used to be dangerous for homosexuals to be “outed” for their social and employment prospects, so it is currently for BDSM participants. Jealous ex-lovers or anyone who has come to know of their interests can cause a tremendous amount of harm by outing them to their employers who may decide to dismiss them. There is no legal redress for this at the moment.

Nick: But surely if that were to happen wouldn’t an employment tribunal award in the dismissed member of staff’s favour? I’m far from an expert in employment law, but surely there is legislation to protect you from being sacked for anything that doesn’t affect your job?

Doesn’t work that way, as there is tremendous level of prejudice surrounding BDSM , including assumptions that participants are all “perverts” and that they are mentally ill. There is no protection from these prejudices on equality grounds as it is specifically excluded from discrimination on the basis of sexuality and is still considered a mental illness by some health organisations. Thus an employment tribunal may hear and accept evidence that someone is unfit to hold a job merely because of their sexual interests. Many participants work in sensitive areas like education and health where prejudicial perspectives are more likely to come to the fore. I would try and track down some examples but I am currently on a work computer. If anyone else can, I would be grateful.

Lynne:

While I fully support the need for a consolidation bill to bring all our existing equality legislation in a single framework and I agree that the press coverage of the announcement in the tabloids was no less abysmal than I come to expect, the fact remains that there are problems with some of the proposals that need to be considered carefully in drafting the bill.

Harriet’s assertion that employers will not be open to litigation if they use gender, race, etc as a basis for choosing between two equally qualified candidates for a position is just not true – you simply cannot rule out that possibility because:

a) recruitment decisions are not just taken on the basis of qualifications alone, and,

b) the requirement that candidates be equally qualified in order justify using gender. race, as the discriminating factor in a recruitment decision places an onus on the employer, if challenged, to evidence that the two candidates were, as a matter of material fact, equally qualified.

I’ve done a fair few recruitment interviews in my time – and I’ve done case prep for several employment tribunals – and I can tell you for starters that situations in which an employer actually finds themselves with two equally good candidates at the end of a recruitment process are pretty rare.

In fact I can only think of one occasion where I sat on panel that faced that situation – as an independent member – and, oddly enough, the choice did come down to one between a white candidate and a South Asian candidate.

What followed, was a very tortured discussion between the other panel members, which I sat back from, in which it was patently obvious that they wanted to appoint the South Asian candidate because it would improve their ethnic profile – this was a voluntary organisation that received funding from local government, BTW – but what they couldn’t see was how they could justify that decision. So I let them wrestle with it for about half and hour and then chipped in and pointed out that as the job did requirement the candidate to work with at least three different local South Asian communities and the South Asian candidate spoke fluent Panjabi and Hindi and could get by pretty well in Urdu – there was their rational justification for appointing the candidate they wanted, they just couldn’t see it even though it was there all along.

Now you argue that that’s the kind of situation that the bill will address but – and here’s rub – before they made the offer, I made it clear that we needed to go though all the paperwork relating to the recruitment and the two candidates with a fine tooth comb to make absolutely sure that we were justified in considering the two to be equal because the slightest slip-up in the paperwork, such a scoring error, could leave the decision open to a challenge that, even if unsuccessful, would still prove costly in terms of legal fees to defend a case.

Nothing in Harriet’s ‘positive action’ proposal removes that risk.

In fact, if anything, it will increase the risk of employers facing discrimination claims at the outset until enough case law has been accumulated to clarify the exact parameters of how ‘equally qualified’ should be correctly interpreted by an employment tribunal.

Why?

Simply because, in seeking to allow decisions to be made on the basis of gender, race, etc., the law will both call attention to that practice – and in some cases that will create a suspicion that an candidate has been passed over for a job/promotion because another candidate has been appointed using the ‘positive action’ provisions, and it also places the onus on the employer to demonstrate, if challenged, that they were justified in considering the candidates to be be ‘equally qualified’ – and that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds because recruitment is, in part, a subjective process.

I’ve been on panels where the most qualified candidate, on paper, has gone on and failed to get the job because they’ve failed to impress at interview or because we found at interview that they lacked certain qualities that simply can’t be translated into qualifications but which were considered essential to the job or for a myriad of other reasons that we considered to be entirely justifiable – if nothing else, verbal communications skills tend to be something that employers look for and judge primarily on how a candidate performs at interview, and it far from uncommon to find that someone who looks the ticket on an application form or CV turns out to be a dead loss when you get them face to face in a situation where they have to sell themselves.

So, with all that in mind, how do we define ‘equally qualified’ and, more to the point, how can anyone give employers a surety that they won’t wind up in front of a tribunal and trying to justify a decision to consider two candidates to be ‘equally qualified’ under cross-examination.

You’ can’t – at best all you do is shift the focus of a claim from whether the decision to appoint a particular candidate might have been discriminatory to that of whether the employer could justifiably consider that candidates should be considered to be ‘equally qualified’.

Admitted, I’m nitpicking here but with good reason because parliament seem too often to forget that what happens outside the walls of the House of Commons is a far more complicated matter than the legislators on the inside seem to think. Its just not that easy and Harriet should have been much more circumspect in announcing this bill because she cannot guarantee that the provisions she’s seeking to set out can be framed in such a way as to remove any risk of employers facing a legal challenge over a ‘positive action’ recruitment decision.

So, yes, the positive action proposal is a long way from the rhetoric of the Daily Express but its, equally, not going to be what Harman tried to suggest in pitching the proposal.

In the long run, it will probably work out reasonably well once the case law has built up sufficiently to establish solid parameters for interpreting these provisions, but that does take time and a few test cases. so its deeply unwise, in the extreme, to make such bald assurances about employers not being sued because of these new provisions when , in reality, the opposite will be the case for at least three to five years after it comes into force, because that roughly how long it generally takes to generate a solid body of case law to support a new statute.

Nick, no examples on Google News (shock!) but found this:

“In the UK, Lawrence Pay, from Roissy, was initially reported to the Police but they weren’t interested in pursuing any criminal charges. What caused him damage was that all the details about his involvement with Roissy, whether legal or illegal having not been determined, were then passed on to his employers, the Probation Service, where he worked with sex offenders. He lost his job, and then lost his claim for compensation in the employment tribunal (although he is said to be taking his case to higher authority in the European Union). Part of the reason for this is that there is even more scope for personal prejudice (or malice) in employment and family law disputes.”

here: http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/dictionary/BDSM_and_the_law/

Thanks very much, that was the example I was thinking of. You also have to bear in mind the “chill” factor: the fact that people CAN be fired on completely unfounded grounds means that many others have to be careful about disclosing their interests socially.

My belief is that people will voluntarily work out their prejudices on this sort of thing so long as you permit a free market and free speech (and you ensure the public sector sticks closely to its own internal anti-discrimination rules). But as soon as you start proscribing certain forms of discrimination in equality legislation, you actually (by accident) green light other forms of discrimination. In other words, people will assume that it is morally acceptable to discriminate against people on some grounds, so long as their isn’t a law against it, and people start to take their cues from state legislation and, when unhappy, become more interested in changing state legislation than actually changing people’s opinions.

“And do you really a think a handful of racist pub landlords make it worthwhile to construct a hundred million pound government funded industry in anti-racism?”

I think you’re exaggerating the cost of the “industry in anti-racism”.

Point is, if discrimination wasn’t occuring quite openly and systematically prior to legislation in the 1970s then it wouldn’t have been necessary to legislate.

I think you’ve quite clearly illustrated that your conception of freedom is that it is better to have racism and (slightly) lower taxes than for the government to legislate against racism and pay to enforce the law. A texbook example of the difference between positive and negative freedom.

So the situation in the cultural and social situation of the 1970s justifies more legislation now? I didn’t realise that legislation could have quantum properties!

You are quite right, however, that this is a textbook example of positive versus negative liberty. I advocate the mechanisms of liberty (free speech and free markets) to bring about more liberty, whereas you advocate more force (of law) to bring about more liberty. I am not saying racism is morally acceptable, only that I have a more morally acceptable way of dealing with it than you do.

To say that employers don’t have the ability to choose one candidate over the other in an equal pool of candidates is a complete fallacy, and opening up the ability to discriminate only allows people to be discriminatory rather than considering non-required or non-essential qualities or observations for the basis of employment.

This doesn’t make sense Lee. They already have the ability to choose one candidate over another, but they can’t justify the decision on the basis of under-represented groups, otherwise they’d get sued.

How does it up the opportunity for further discrimination?

Lynne – great article. I’ve heard further justifications for this bill, in that its focused on service delivery than targets… but I couldn’t quite understand that. The employer I spoke to was very positive about this bill though.

“They already have the ability to choose one candidate over another, but they can’t justify the decision on the basis of under-represented groups, otherwise they’d get sued.”

I agree, the only thing that this will change is that it will make it legal for employers to select the employee that would make their workplace more diverse, be that a man, women, black person, white person or Asian person, provided that both candidates are broadly equal.

Nick, I actually favour the opposite action to that which you propose but for the the same reasoning. I think that there should be more protection not less and that it should prevent discrimination on the basis of the many other things, such as sexual practices, that are not already covered.

“How does it up the opportunity for further discrimination?”

By simply allowing someone to say “I don’t want you because you’re black” essentially. Someone posted a good comment somewhere, a hypothetical which I paraphrase below…

“I’m sorry to say that you have not got the job, despite being of equal standing with another candidate you are black and as such I don’t wish to employ you. My work force is made up of 70% white, 20% black and 10% Asian people and to employ you would further disproportionately included non-whites for the local area.”

As Unity said above, there are plenty of other criteria that can be included to sway just how “equal” two candidates are. Extra non-related skills, non-essential experience, the thoughts and opinions of the workforce in a candidate meet and greet, the personal ambitions/hobbies and how they relate to those already in the workforce.

This legislation offers no advancement on the current situation, employers can already give jobs to one out of two or more equal candidates on the freak occasions that happens, and I still contest that if you have two identical candidates it cannot be against the law for them to employ one of them, hence that while a case may be brought for that very minor and unlikely event I don’t understand how that employer can be successfully sued for taking such a decision. (not being a lawyer I obviously can stand corrected)

Plus there’s the larger issue of “what is equality” for each and every employer, who is going to decide this? It can’t be centrally decided, it has to be led by that company which…by it’s simple definition…is open to applying inequality. It’s a huge mess as far as I’m concerned.

Which is why i agree, consequently, with how rubbish the above tabloid headline is, because the likelihood of anyone being in the position where they need to use someones colour as a reason to employ them or not is absolutely an anomalous event, with or without this bill.

“it will make it legal for employers to select the employee that would make their workplace more diverse”

Who defines what diverse is? If the employer does then they can be as equal in their judgement or not. if it’s the government or local authorities then what right do they have to impose targets on individual businesses for ethnicity and gender ratio’s and, furthermore, how can that be anything other than the government forcing employers to choose certain candidates (i.e., minorities, men for teachers jobs) despite the wishes of the employer?

Re: Nick’s comment about BDSM –
The Spanner case (www.spannertrust.org) and its implications really sums up a lot of what I feel is wrong with this country. the busy-body anti-permissive intrusive attitude and the ‘ban it’ culture that extends not just to protecting peoples rights, but extend to an attempt to modify their behaviour into some ‘acceptable norm’. (Just the kind of thing that’s regularly with up by the Daily Mail and Express)
Don’t you ever get the feeling that the government regard its people as a nuisance and would really that they all just go away?

“Nick, I actually favour the opposite action to that which you propose but for the the same reasoning. I think that there should be more protection not less and that it should prevent discrimination on the basis of the many other things, such as sexual practices, that are not already covered.”

Then you are consistent in your view and your intention, but I still disagree with your mechanism. I would prefer people freely chose not to discriminate rather than that they were merely forced not to (assuming that it is even possible using the blunt instrument of the law).

“Don’t you ever get the feeling that the government regard its people as a nuisance and would really that they all just go away?”

Absolutely, which is why I want it as small in size and scope as possible:)

Following on from Nick’s comment:
government by the people, for the people, would be the largest government possible, and a dictatorship the smallest.
I love following things to their (sometimes) logical conclusion…

It depends what you mean by “the people”. For example pure self-government (anarchy) could be government by the people, for the people because all government would be consensual. That could also be described as the dictatorship of the individual over herself.

If, on the other hand, you mean everyone works for the government, and the government works for everyone, then that is the road to serfdom: http://mises.org/books/TRTS/

By simply allowing someone to say “I don’t want you because you’re black” essentially. Someone posted a good comment somewhere, a hypothetical which I paraphrase below…

If someone was deliberately going to do that, then its likely they would discriminate anyway. Sure it would give someone the excuse the discriminate against a black person, but right now the situation isn’t any different. We still have ingrained prejudice that ensures women aren’t even vaguely represented in most professions at the top. Why would that be?

My point is – the prejudice already exists. The scenario you paint can happen, but its likely to happen anyway. Its a bit like those Americans who say they won’t vote Obama because he’s black. If they happen to be hardcore Republicans from the deep south, then it doesn’t really matter because they wouldn’t vote Democrat anyway.

Reminds me of the house ‘For sale to a white family’ and the ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ signs – force them to take them down and it may make us feel better, but you’re not going to change their attitudes and probably not their actions either.

“If someone was deliberately going to do that, then its likely they would discriminate anyway. ”

That, my friend, is precisely my point and why this legislation with regards to positive action is completely unnecessary.

Lynne,

Charging more because someone is genuinely a higher risk – that would be fine– but simply assuming “old = risky driver” in the absence of evidence to back that up – that is discrimination as plain and simple as if someone was to say, “they’re black – so let’s charge them more”.

But older drivers and younger drivers are, in some regards, higher risk than drivers 24-60. Of course insurance companies will discriminate along group lines, but are you suggesting people should be individually evaluated?

Sunny,

This doesn’t make sense Lee. They already have the ability to choose one candidate over another, but they can’t justify the decision on the basis of under-represented groups, otherwise they’d get sued.

For what purpose would you want to say, “I am employing John Smith because he is black”?

Lee,

Plus there’s the larger issue of “what is equality” for each and every employer, who is going to decide this?

I seem to recall it being proposed that public sector organisations will select suppliers based on whether or not the supplier’s workforce is adequately representative.

Humanite,

…provided that both candidates are broadly equal.

Er… hang on, this is where the employer will get into trouble. The candidates are supposed to be equal, not broadly equal.

“Er… hang on, this is where the employer will get into trouble. The candidates are supposed to be equal, not broadly equal.”

This is another ridiculous point isn’t it? I mean if they are 100% equal…same life experience, same languages, same skills, same work experience…only biological traits separate them, then you can see perhaps where employers need to be careful. But how many interviews a year does this happen? Broadly equal is the only way you can even begin to talk about this in a practical sense, and by doing so you’re accepting that there are elements there aside from gender and race that can be used to determine who is “more equal”

“I seem to recall it being proposed that public sector organisations will select suppliers based on whether or not the supplier’s workforce is adequately representative.”

Yep, did they say something like 70% of all contracts? This was another concern I voiced on my other blog because, as you allude to, it’s the state dictating what equality is, requiring all employers to very carefully defend why they believe their workforce to be representative. How the government can claim to have enough resources or expertise to truly work out who is bullshitting them without applying a centralised measuring stick is absolutely beyond me.

That’s all aside from those companies that perhaps are better at the job but fall short because they simply *can’t* reach the same levels of “equality” as another employer but…hey…that’s this bill through and through.

“We still have ingrained prejudice that ensures women aren’t even vaguely represented in most professions at the top.”

But do you have evidence that is actually down to employer discrimination? Are qualified women being turned away en masse from these professions?

@Nick (re. 29): It is partly due to employer discrimination (I expect differing ambitions probably play a part as well).

But that’s not necessarily an indicator of bigotry. It is just as likely to be an indicator of employers doing what they feel is best for the prosperity of their business (e.g. Times.

ukliberty, you say: For what purpose would you want to say, “I am employing John Smith because he is black”?

It would help if people actually read the article.

Lynne says above:

And why may you want to do that? Well, to take one example – there’s a real shortage of male teachers in primary schools. We all bang on about the need for more male role models for children at this stage. So why shouldn’t the law allow give the school the option if it wants (because yes – that’s all the Bill would do – it wouldn’t force this upon any organisation) to decide that faced with two equally qualified people, it wants to introduce a bit more balance amongst its teachers and employ a man?

Lee:
That, my friend, is precisely my point and why this legislation with regards to positive action is completely unnecessary.

No, for the example Lynne gave above.

Goddamnit. I wish this site had a preview function.

Here is the link:
Times

But do you have evidence that is actually down to employer discrimination? Are qualified women being turned away en masse from these professions?

Of the FTSE top 100, the number of women CEOs is the grand number of 1. Care to tell us why else there would be such blatant under-representation of over half the population?

@Sunny H: Employer discrimination isn’t the only explanation.

It may be the only one that fits the narrative of the equality-obsessed left, but that doesn’t make it the only explanation.

(Like I said in #30, I do think it plays a part, but that doesn’t make it the only explanation)

Well the number of females in the top 100 companies in the UK has doubled since the turn of the century, I’m sure there are more figures out there that show there’s been a marked improvement in equality in this area. Recently it has slowed by the looks of it (using FTSE 100 information) but still the fact that women aren’t represented at the top isn’t exactly mutually exclusive to current attitudes and practices.

If you assume that most female directors are in their 50’s and above (which is reasonable in the UK market), and that Labour really championed equality when they came in to power, then surely we’re still looking at another couple of decades of growth in percentages of females at the top? We can’t just expect everything to be rectified over night can we?

Shit! I mangled that comment as well (#34). What I meant to say in the last line was:

Like I said in #30, I do think it plays a part, but I don’t think it is the be-all and end-all of the explanation

Sunny:

The point is, to paraphrase exactly what you said above Sunny, if a school wants to set out to get a male teacher because it is feeling a shortage in that area…it will get a male teacher. As far as I’m aware employers don’t have to give any reason whatsoever as to why you’re not being brought in to an interview, am I wrong?

Sunny,

Care to tell us why else there would be such blatant under-representation of over half the population?

With respect, you’re the one making the claim – the onus is on you to substantiate it.

There seem to be at least four other possibles:

1. Women aren’t as ‘pushy’ in negotiations as men;

2. Women of ‘boardroom age’ may be having children rather than trying to get into the boardroom;

3. Women tend to choose different careers than men, so if careers differ in whether they end up in the boardroom, the genders will differ too;

4. The path to the boardroom may be risky, and women tend to take fewer risks than men.

There is another point to make: cultures take time to change, and no amount of legislation can make some changes happen Right Now.

@ukliberty: I expect all of those explanations play some part, but like I said before they don’t fit the narrative of the equality-pushers, so they are ignored.

ukliberty, you say: For what purpose would you want to say, “I am employing John Smith because he is black”?

It would help if people actually read the article.

Well, I did. Perhaps I should have stressed the word “say”, or used “record” instead.

Why would you want to record you are employing someone because he is black, rather than just employing him?

“Of the FTSE top 100, the number of women CEOs is the grand number of 1. Care to tell us why else there would be such blatant under-representation of over half the population?”

Personal career choices and priorities? I think it is up to you to demonstrate that under-representation is caused by systematic employer discrimination, unless we are to dispense with the concept of presumed innocence. You can’t convict society of discrimination on the basis that statistics don’t happen to fit your preferred norms.

“So the situation in the cultural and social situation of the 1970s justifies more legislation now? I didn’t realise that legislation could have quantum properties!”

Nick, thats unfair. You were specifically advocating repealing anti-discrimination legislation, so my comment was related to defending the principle of anti-discrimination legislation per se.

“I am not saying racism is morally acceptable, only that I have a more morally acceptable way of dealing with it than you do.”

No, you don’t have any solution to it beyond hoping that it doesn’t appear/reappear if we repeal the anti-discrimination legislation.

With respect, you’re the one making the claim – the onus is on you to substantiate it.

Well, I’m a bit confused here, so maybe I should paraphrase Lynne Featherstone.

Only 1 out of a hundred of the top companies are run by women. Now, there are othe countries where this number is much more equal, in business and in politics. So unless you can tell me which cultural reasons make it less likely women will get to the top, and how we go about eradicating that (unless you think its fine) – you folks are either deliberately shuffling your feet and thinking there isn’t a problem, or know there is a problem but don’t want to openly admit to it.

Which is it?

Regardless of what has caused the cultural shift from the 70s to now (I happen to believe it is more cultural than legal), are you saying that people would start to return to the cultural values of the 70’s if anti-discrimination legislation were repealed today? In other words, are you claiming that the only thing stopping people from returning to the race/gender discrimination of the past is the law as it stands right now?

You can call my method “hoping” if you want (but there is plenty of theory and empirical research to suggest that the free market is capable of breaking down cultural barriers: http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-book420pdf?.pdf ), but leaving that aside, do you have so little faith in the British people that you think they will naturally develop prejudicial behaviour unless specifically forced not to by the state?

Sunny –

Tell us: what is the problem, exactly? Don’t just quote a stat at us.

I happen to think there are plenty of problems with society but I don’t think they are soluble into simple group identities. Perhaps there are ambitious women who languish in middle management because our tax system isn’t structured well for them, or our system of maternity care discriminates against them, or because no one at school ever told them they could really be a CEO so they don’t apply in the same numbers as men.

But, at the same time, you have thousands upon thousands of men who are permanently jobless and were failed equally at some point. They might not turn up in salary/wage stats (because they haven’t got a job) but are they any less “discriminated against” by your own logic? Is the fact that they haven’t got a job evidence of employer discrimination or just that they haven’t been equipped to seek and keep work?

We should be treating people as individuals with needs, desires and choices rather than a series of identities with needs. Because people don’t divide well into group identities.

Sunny, I accept that one out of the top hundred FTSE companies is “run by” (the chief executive is) a woman..

But you are claiming that the lack of women is due to prejudice. Where is the evidence for that? How did you reach that conclusion?

I haven’t claimed anything yet (well, not so strongly as that). I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem. What I’m saying is that I don’t know, and I’d like to see the evidence for your thinking. I don’t understand why you have a problem with that. It seems to be something you believe people must simply accept, or they are fence-sitting prejudice deniers!

Are you a closet Daily Express journalist?

By the way, I have offered you other possibilities, none of which are mutually exclusive, not even with yours.

you folks are either deliberately shuffling your feet and thinking there isn’t a problem, or know there is a problem but don’t want to openly admit to it.

Or we, or at least me, think there might be a problem, and that you may be on to something, but you haven’t substantiated your claim yet.

Just to make it clear, I am not trying to score points – I am genuinely interested in your thoughts.

Sunny, I accept that one out of the top hundred FTSE companies is “run by” (the chief executive is) a woman..

Make that two.

Of the FTSE top 100, the number of women CEOs is the grand number of 1.
Care to tell us why else there would be such blatant under-representation of over half the population?

And if half of the FTSE top 100 had female CEOs, who is to say that that’s any more ‘representative’ of the working population of the UK?

Just because you have population which appear statistically ‘representative’ across one dimension it doesn’t follow that that population is representative of the general population across other dimensions or that this indicates that we live in a equal society.

For example, when it comes to parliament we get all manner of arguments bandied around about there should be X many more female MPs and Y many more Black MPs in order to make parliament more ‘representative’ of British society, all of which is nonsense because even if you could engineer such a situation the nature of the political class as it currently stands is still entirely unrepresentative of wider society when it comes to things like educational background, life experiences and a whole host of other things that can be much more meaningful in ‘representative’ terms than which pairing of sex chromosomes an individual possess or the amount of melanin their body produces naturally.

There are currently around 2.7 million people claiming incapacity benefit in the UK, which about 5% of the voting age adult population, and yet I don’t see anything in the government’s latest welfare reform plans about designating 32 parliamentary seats at the next election only for candidates who’ve been claiming incap and, funnily enough, whenever talk of equality and representation crops up in political circles I don’t see any of the main parties advocating disability-only shortlists or LGBT-only shortlists, although as you can never quite know how many MPs might still be in the closet, maybe the latter example is a bit of a moot point.

In employment, discrimination of the direct and indirect kind remains a factor, but its one factor amongst many and some of these are a structural and to a large extent intractable when it comes to crude efforts to engineer a statistically ‘representative’ outcome because you’re relying on people making personal choices to fit into your conception of statistical equality and many, if not most, will choose to do something else entirely.

Statistical representation and equality are not the same thing.

So unless you can tell me which cultural reasons make it less likely women will get to the top, and how we go about eradicating that

Who says we can ‘eradicate’ anything here?

What we can feasibly do is work to remove non-structural causes of inequality, like direct and indirect discrimination and limit the effects of certain structural factors that are found in the prevailing culture but even if you were successful in such an endeavour beyond your wildest dream there will still be a range of confounding biological factors that you won’t be able to eradicate without fundamentally re-writing the human genome, and not the obvious ones to do with childbirth, etc. either.

As is increasingly becoming apparent there are base psychological differences between men and women that exist due to evolution – to give one example, studies of the development of conceptions of morality and moral values in young children show that for one of most basic moral concepts, fairness, boys tend to place a primary emphasis on fairness as justice, while girls see fairness in terms of caring and compassion. This distinction holds valid across cultures which have, on the face of it, very different notions of what is or isn’t moral, which shows that this is a universal human characteristic and not just a function of Western society and culture.

Where that takes us is towards the idea that maybe we need to rethink some of the parameters of our own cultural notions of equality and get off the treadmill of using crude measurements of mono-dimensional statistical representation with populations and starting thinking about how we value people as human beings.

“There are currently around 2.7 million people claiming incapacity benefit in the UK, which about 5% of the voting age adult population, and yet I don’t see anything in the government’s latest welfare reform plans about designating 32 parliamentary seats at the next election only for candidates who’ve been claiming incap and, funnily enough, whenever talk of equality and representation crops up in political circles I don’t see any of the main parties advocating disability-only shortlists or LGBT-only shortlists, although as you can never quite know how many MPs might still be in the closet, maybe the latter example is a bit of a moot point.”

And any criticisms in recent days I’ve had about what you’re writing about have now been counter-balanced by this excellent point. Well done

“do you have so little faith in the British people that you think they will naturally develop prejudicial behaviour unless specifically forced not to by the state?”

May as well admit it. Yes, I have little faith in some sections of the british people, specifically the section easily led by the tabloid press. In the same way I’d have little faith in some sections of the british people not to become shoplifters were laws against stealing repealed. I’d hardly call laws against stealing oppressive. Anti-discrimination laws have liberated swathes of the population and have been one of the most liberating forces in Britain of the last 40 years.

@ ukliberty

” Sunny, I accept that one out of the top hundred FTSE companies is “run by” (the chief executive is) a woman..

Make that two.”

I thought there is only one (Clara Furse of the LSE) since WH Smith was relegated to the FTSE 250. Not that it makes much difference, 2% of the FTSE 100 having female CEO’s is just as pathetic as 1%.

Getting back to the British press’s attitude to women and equality, have a look at the staff of the British press. I believe the FT was the most open to women, but then a new editor came in who changed that. Why are we shocked at the media scoffing anti-discrimination legislation when they are the biggest offenders.

Sorry ukliberty,

I stand corrected, there are two female FTSE 100 CEO’s (Clara Furse of the LSE and Marjorie Scardino of Pearson, which incedently owns the FT), and one FTSE 100 Chairwoman (Baroness Hogg of 3i).

[10] That squares with my past experience of hiring people (in the public sector).

Way back in the 1980s I saw a job advertised in a women’s group of some kind (publicly funded) for a purely admin back-office post to which they claimed the SDA exemption applied. I thought they were pushing it (not that I was interested in the job) but I can make a case both ways. In the 1990s Lambeth Coucil segregated their Housing Benefit teams by ethnicity (there were enough people on the same job description so that they could do this legally) and reported a significant productivity increase.

I suspect the problem is most acute in the voluntary sector, where the usual reaction of management committee members confronted with an allegation of discrimination by/against staff is to say… I’m outta here!

Humanite, there are at least three then, because I was thinking of Scandino, chief exec of Pearson, and Dorothy Thompson, chief executive of Drax (wasn’t aware of Furse).

ukliberty, yes I didn’t of Dorothy Thompson. Still three in 100 is pretty awful no matter what you think the correct solution is. Over a year old, but this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6232943.stm) article points out that we have less representation in our Parliament than Iraq!

Nick @45: “I happen to think there are plenty of problems with society but I don’t think they are soluble into simple group identities. ”

I don’t disagree with all of this, but what I think it neglects is that there are plenty of problems with society which are *caused* by people using simple group identities.

Which is a fancy way of saying that discrimination exists. People use crude group identities to identify people as being inferior in their eyes. Often it’s race or gender, but by no means exclusively.

And where the problem is based on simple group identities, you’ve then got to take them into account when trying to tackle it.

ukliberty, yes I didn’t of Dorothy Thompson. Still three in 100 is pretty awful no matter what you think the correct solution is.

But I don’t know what the situation is yet.

So how can we arrive at an appropriate solution?

Over a year old, but this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6232943.stm) article points out that we have less representation in our Parliament than Iraq!

But again, why is this (and is it a problem)? This could be due to prejudice within the voting population – I seem to recall recent research saying that voters preferred men, and ‘posh’ voices… then of course there are Unity’s points in comment 58.

“Which is a fancy way of saying that discrimination exists. People use crude group identities to identify people as being inferior in their eyes. Often it’s race or gender, but by no means exclusively.”

But are they? This is what you guys actually need to show. We don’t deny that there is some level of prejudice guiding a handful of employment decisions, but for the most part statistical “abnormalities” (what you think of as problems denoting employer discrimination) are down to personal choice, social context and structures. If that is the real problem, you aren’t going to solve it by demanding that employers find some way of satisfying your statistical requirements.

It would be rather like finding that not enough boys score well on their SAT literacy scores, so demanding that examiners found an equal number of boys with a good score as the girls, or finding some innovating way of scoring them so they came out equal. Meanwhile, the people actually ending up with a poor standard of literacy (whether they are boys or girls) don’t actually get helped. It is not enough to demand the right outcomes, you have got to look at what is actually causing the undesired outcomes rather than just crying discrimination from the off.

Mike:

Way back in the 1980s I saw a job advertised in a women’s group of some kind (publicly funded) for a purely admin back-office post to which they claimed the SDA exemption applied. I thought they were pushing it (not that I was interested in the job) but I can make a case both ways.

That’s still pretty common in the voluntary sector.

Addressing various points:

Nick: We should be treating people as individuals with needs, desires and choices rather than a series of identities with needs. Because people don’t divide well into group identities.

Erm, this French model of pretending that people’s identities have no impact on how they’re treated does not wash with me. And unsurprisingly it always comes from a group that has no real experience of discrimination. People don’t easily divide into group identities, but sometimes people’s identities (whether they choose to be defined by that) does impact them.

There was a Five Live investigation a few years ago when they sent identical CVs to employers, but just switched the name from Muslim/Asian to white/English. When a white/English name appeared on a CV, that group was overwhelmingly called up for an interview.

So yes, discrimination exists. And putting your head in the sand and saying that people don’t fit easily into group identities is somewhat divorced from reality.

Perhaps there are ambitious women who languish in middle management because our tax system isn’t structured well for them, or our system of maternity care discriminates against them,

Right, so there are remedies which can be applied to make it easier for women to progress.

Unity:
There are currently around 2.7 million people claiming incapacity benefit in the UK, which about 5% of the voting age adult population, and yet I don’t see anything in the government’s latest welfare reform plans about designating 32 parliamentary seats at the next election only for candidates who’ve been claiming incap and, funnily enough, whenever talk of equality and representation

Oh god, I’ve never heard such terrible analogies. I’ve not said that EVERY sub-group in the country should be represented at every level.

Is 50% of the population really a minority sub-group incapable of doing anything worrthwhile and/or running companies and/or being as talented as men? Given some of the excuses you guys are coming up with, it looks like I might have stumbled on to an alternative reality.

Perhaps I have. I guess some people don’t want to admit that some white males may just be unconciously sexist to the point that they’d rather work with other males of similar backgrounds. This seems to apply more in tight-knit circles at the upper echelons of professions where personal contacts matter more sometimes than talent.

My reasoning is this. If 50% of the population is restricted to about 1-3% in a professional capacity which is supposed to be open to talent and merit, then there are structural problems to why this is happening. It cannot be because women aren’t as talented. Its down to the way work is structured or the culture of the industry.

This is no simple statistical abnormality – this is a situation where half the population may as well not exist.
Its not necessary that employers are forced to take on women in positions. Only that the law takes away the barrier for women to participate at the top. That is what leftist thinking is about, isn’t it?

Sunny:

That analogy is fine for what it is, a demonstration of the arbitrary nature of framing equality in terms of statistical representation within population demographics.

I guess some people don’t want to admit that some white males may just be unconciously sexist to the point that they’d rather work with other males of similar backgrounds. This seems to apply more in tight-knit circles at the upper echelons of professions where personal contacts matter more sometimes than talent.

Yes, in real world scenarios in-group/out-group psychology is going to be a factor, but you have to careful about moving from that idea to one of ‘unconscious sexism’ because there’s a growing body of evidence that supports the view that base mechanisms for in-group/out-group discrimination are biological – we’re hardwired by evolution to distinguish between people those who are inside our ‘group’ and those on the outside. Cultural factors play a major part in shaping how that distinction manifests itself in terms of actions and social interactions, allowing the system to mediated by the prevailing social and cultural environment but the core system, itself, is innate.

Its not necessary that employers are forced to take on women in positions. Only that the law takes away the barrier for women to participate at the top. That is what leftist thinking is about, isn’t it?

Yes, but the way you frame that argument is tremendously important as well, and its that that you’re maybe not seeing, particularly in terms of how this affects peoples moral perceptions of these arguments.

Look, let’s see if I can demonstrate what I mean with a little experiment, even if its not under ideal conditions.

Let’s take Lynne’s primary school recruitment scenario as a starting point…

What I’m going to do is give everyone two versions of the same scenario…

Scenario A

A primary school conducts interviews to fill a teaching position and at the end of the interview process the Headteacher find themselves faced with a choice between appointing a male candidate and a female candidate, both of whom are equally qualified for the job.

Before making their decision, the Headteacher checks the school’s personnel records, realises that it currently has 15 female teachers and only one male teacher and decides to appoint the male candidate as this will make the workforce of the school a little more representative.

The male candidate is offered the job.

—-

Scenario B

A primary school conducts interviews to fill a teaching position and at the end of the interview process the Headteacher find themselves faced with a choice between appointing a male candidate and a female candidate, both of whom are equally qualified for the job.

The headteacher thinks carefully about the needs of the school and its pupils and concludes that many of the boys attending the school would benefit from, and respond well to, having an additional male role model in the school, and decides to the offer the job to the male candidate.

The male candidate is offered the job.

—

And the question I want people to answer – and please try to go on your immediate reaction to each scenario – is simply that of whether you feel, in each scenario, that the headteacher made a morally correct decision in appointing the male candidate?

I’ll explain where I’m going with this after, hopefully, we’ve had a few answers come in…

[60][61] Well, I think we all agree that deep calls unto vasty deep, and that like attracts like. The reality is that “networking” cuts against the grain of equality of opportunity, and I am not at all clear that there is anything that public policy can do about this, short of imposing a quota system. But these – such as Teresa Gorman’s suggestion that we halve the numer of Parliamentary seats and have them elect two MPs, one male and one female – are generally laughed out of court.

For good reason: no one wants to think that they’ve only got their position “to make up the numbers” – the cousins have been down that road with generally unhappy results.

For equalities legislation to be effective, it is first necessary to have a clear understanding of what the law can or cannot do. Since this is what tends to get lost in the Parliamentary hurly-burly I’d like to bring the discussion back to Lynne Featherstone’s final point. This is precisely the kind of legislation where the Committee stage can be vital – and indeed, the scrutiny function of the Lords.

Not that we’ve offered Lynne any practical suggestions so far…

[62] Not sure where you’re going with that, Unity. Basically you argued earlier [10] that if a panel can’t distinguish between two candidates they really haven’t looked hard enough. And I agree with that.

I would hope that the lack of role models for boys would have been identified at an early stage in the recruitment process and that the advertising would have referred to it and offered a particular welcome to male applicants.

I’d like to offer you a development of the scenario. The headteacher discovers that the turnover of male staff is far higher than that of female ones. And she is also wondering what to do about Agatha (you remember Agatha, twice passed over for deputy head, but stays ‘cos she lives locally and knows everyone in the neighbourhood, including the school governors) who muses in the staffroom “oh, we do have men here, but they never seem able to settle, do they?” and then winks.

We all know an Agatha (or her brother) – yes, they should be “called out” but I don’t think that our legislators can give us much help with them.

For equalities legislation to be effective, it is first necessary to have a clear understanding of what the law can or cannot do.

For which, the best advice I can give Lynne, if she is involved in the committee stages, is to gather a wide range of opinion to inform her thinking. At the very least, on the employment side, that would merit talking to ACAS, the Trade Unions and finding herself a good employment barrister to talk over the nuances of the weight of case law that’s accumulated over the years.

Mike: I’ll explain in a little while, but your development of the scenario is a valid one in practice.

“So yes, discrimination exists. And putting your head in the sand and saying that people don’t fit easily into group identities is somewhat divorced from reality.”

Yet the equality bill goes to no lengths to introduce things such as anonymous applications does it? As I said, employers can discriminate far before this “equal candidate” stage and get away with it, how about we just accept that the best people to get the job should get the job, and that means rethinking why it is employers should have access to anything other than relevant skills and experience to select for interviews.

Sunny,

Is 50% of the population really a minority sub-group incapable of doing anything worrthwhile and/or running companies and/or being as talented as men?

Who argued that? Introducing straw men seems a bit desperate / irrational.

Given some of the excuses you guys are coming up with, it looks like I might have stumbled on to an alternative reality.

But they aren’t “excuses” – they are alternative explanations, none of which are mutually exclusive, nor do they exclude your explanation. Nor do you appear to have considered them.

I don’t think there is any dispute that there is some sexism and racism in the workplace. The dispute is over how much, and what other factors are involved in, for example, only three women being chief executives of FTSE 100 companies.

You seem to be stuck on this idea that such problems described here are entirely the fault of white male employers – by the way, this seems rather prejudiced to me – rather than also being due to the choices / psychological make-up of the individual employee.

If we do not know what the problem is we are unlikely to be able to solve it.

Unity, my immediate reaction to your scenario is that I much prefer the reasons given in B.

Scenario B appeals more to me too, partly because I prefer decent reasons to stats, but also because it implicitly demonstrates a respect for the choice of the headteacher who I believe is more likely to know what is best for the pupils in a particular context than a procedure decided centrally.

ukliberty – There are no alternative explanations other than clutching at straws.

For example, Unity says: because there’s a growing body of evidence that supports the view that base mechanisms for in-group/out-group discrimination are biological – we’re hardwired by evolution to distinguish between people those who are inside our ‘group’ and those on the outside.

Is this an anglo-saxon thing? Because lots of other countries do quite well in representing women much better at the top. Many are African and Scandinavian. So, like I said, is this some anglo-saxon hardwiring?

Sunny,

There are no alternative explanations other than clutching at straws.

Really? You found none of my alternatives at all possible?

Ok, what about the EOC report, Sex and Power 2007? (my emphasis in bold)

Lack of flexibility at the top of professions often drives women towards setting up their own businesses.

The reality is that unless women can combine work and caring roles successfully, they are unlikely to reach the top in great numbers.[and males are calling for more flexibility too]

Oh look, an alternative explanation to all that white male chauvinism. Will you be dismissing the EOC too, Sunny?

Is this an anglo-saxon thing? Because lots of other countries do quite well in representing women much better at the top. Many are African and Scandinavian. So, like I said, is this some anglo-saxon hardwiring?

I’m not familiar with the cultures and laws of those countries. I won’t take your word for it though, and to be honest you are looking a little prejudiced.

ukliberty: Oh look, an alternative explanation to all that white male chauvinism. Will you be dismissing the EOC too, Sunny?

Will you then also take the EOC’s recommendations to heart? My point is exactly that – the work culture (which includes lack of flexibility) – is biased against women. Failing to acknowledge this or address it IS chauvinism.

So the question is, do you use incentives or the law to address the problem? I do think its a problem, incidentally. And how?

I won’t take your word for it though, and to be honest you are looking a little prejudiced.

It was a serious question. How am I prejudiced? Unity said maybe it was hard-wired into us. I pointed out it didn’t seem to be hardwired into other countries. Spain has more than 50% women cabinet ministers. Are they hardwired differently?

“Spain has more than 50% women cabinet ministers. Are they hardwired differently?”

…Or is there more social engineering going on there?

Sunny,

Will you then also take the EOC’s recommendations to heart? My point is exactly that – the work culture (which includes lack of flexibility) – is biased against women. Failing to acknowledge this or address it IS chauvinism.

Well, this seems to the be root of our differences: you see this particular issue as bias against women, as sexism – I see it as bias against people who want to work flexibly.

After all, men who want to work flexibly also experience the same or similar problems to women (that is what the EOC says, anyway).

Your approach seems to be “improve the situation for women”. My approach is “improve the situation for people who want to work flexibly”, if of course we decide flexible working is a something people are entitled to. My approach seems rather more fair than yours.

Spain has more than 50% women cabinet ministers. Are they hardwired differently?

Well, yes I imagine the Spanish are wired differently. It’s a truism, but seems worth saying at this point, that different cultures will produce different people. The Spanish women I’ve met are different from English women – they tend to be more confident and self assured for example – and the Spanish culture differs from ours.

But again there are other possibilities: e.g. Zapatero may believe that it is politically expedient to make half the cabinet female rather than selecting based on merit. Who knows but Zapatero & co?

You seem to have a very absolutist position, that there is one factor behind all this and it is prejudice. My position is that there are lots of factors, including prejudice and we should consider their extent, how they work together, and what we can (and should) do about them.