‘Positive Discrimination’
Jun '0827th
9
On Thursday, Harriet Harman the Equalities Minister in the UK put forward plans to allow organisations to discriminate in favour of candidates who are female or of ethnic minority.
You can watch her speech here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7475470.stm
As a woman, I would not want to be given a job with the knowledge that the reason I got it had to do with my gender rather than my professional capabilities, and I would not want my colleagues to also be thinking that. In fact, it would put me off working anywhere with a high ratio of men to women. I want to work somewhere because my work is appreciated, not so they can tick a box or improve their statistics.
Things may not be perfect as they are, but the knowledge of the inequalities are, to me, an incentive to work harder which is why I find the bill demoralising.
I view any discrimination, including this so called ‘positive discrimination’ as wrong. It’s still discrimination even if it is with the best intentions. I believe this bill would do more harm than good, especially for small businesses, and I imagine a lot of people would use it to justify being rejected for a job.
Wouldn’t it be better to offer more flexible working hours and give people the option to work at home to attract more women into these ‘male-saturated’ jobs? After all, many firms are put off by employing women if they have children (or potentional children) to look after. This would also make it easier for people with disabilities to work with the organisation.
What do you think? Can ‘positive discrimination’ really be justified?
9 Comments on “‘Positive Discrimination’”
June 27th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Yes (and no).
In South Africa, Apartheid meant that black kids got a crappy education. Now that they are actually _allowed_ to have decent jobs, they are not qualified to do them, so they don’t get the jobs, stay poor, their kids get a crap education, so they aren’t qualified to do the jobs etc etc. Positive Discrimination is meant to break this vicious circle.
Whether that applies to women in this country is an entirely different matter, given that girls have been (apparently) outperforming boys in schools for some time. So on a qualification basis they should be getting the jobs (qualifications are supposed to come first when choosing).
If anything, according to the statistics it is _working class_ boys that need the assistance to break out of the vicious circle.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I completely agree with you, as a guy I’d be rather unhappy to be passed over for a job just because someone was a lady or they were some kind of ethnic minority.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Thanks Baz,
I guess the problem is helping break one vicious cycle, and starting a whole new one, which is what worries me about it all.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:05 am
I think it’s sad that people can’t see others as people like themselves. Regardless if they’re male, female, black, white or anything inbetween. I feel the same way, I wouldn’t want to get a job just because I was a woman. I’d constantly be wondering if I was hired (especially in a mainly male environment) to be oggled at, or if I was hired at least somewhat because of my skills. It’s not something that you should have to worry about when you’re working. Even if a woman gets the job, she’s usually paid less for the same work as a man. Why is that? What do you think goes through an employers mind that makes sense to him (or even her, although I somehow doubt it) to lower the salaries of female employees? Because somebody has to think about it, it’s not something that just happens.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Noone said reparations for generations of injustice was easy :-)
Also note that this legislation is about “equal ability” – so if you had two equally capable candidates, one a man living alone in a big house in the suburbs and the other a woman with three kids on a crack-and-knife filled sink estate, you can legally say “I’ll give it to the woman because she needs it more” (before you would have to have made up a reason to choose between them). It’s not “I’m not allowed to pick the (male) genius because I HAVE to choose the (female) idiot”.
June 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Note – I’m also not saying I agree – just that you only ever hear the “political correctness gone made” side of the argument.
June 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
“mad” not “made”
June 28th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from and that there is no clear right or wrong. It’s a tricky one. I get the point you make about the man in the suburbs and the woman in the sink estate, but can’t organisations do that anyway? How else do they decide between equally capable candidates?
Maybe I just don’t like the wording used. I’ve been brought up to know that discrimination is wrong, so when Harriet Harman says it’s ok in some circumstances, it makes me uneasy.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
“I view any discrimination, including this so called ‘positive discrimination’ as wrong. It’s still discrimination”
Spot on. People are people. I still don’t understand how the answer to any form of discrimination is some form of reverse discrimination. It’s not about levelling any playing field, it’s about NOT discriminating.
Molly once bemoaned the lack of women in the web industry, and a hell of a lot of people have this assumption that if everything were fair and there was no sexism then the landscape would be 50/50. That’s wrong. The simple fact is that certain jobs are more appealing to guys than girls, and vice-versa.
The way to judge if something is unbiased isn’t to look at the statistics of who’s where and how many there are – it’s to look at the process of how people get there. By doctoring the results to fit an assumption you’re just doctoring results to fit an assumption. Nothing else.
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