Corporate diversity

elbyrneo

It seems every corporate environment these days has diversity policies or goals, and actual targets for female representation in the workforce, management or boards.

At the same time, there are EU regulated equality laws where no preference should be made based on gender.

These diversity policies are creating a conscious or at the very least subconscious bias towards women when hiring or promoting.

I find it quite hypocritical when one minute you are being told by HR not to have prejudices based on religion or sexuality or age or gender, and the next you have the very same people advocating the progression of women in the workplace.

Of course they won't say hire or promote a woman over a man, but then why all the constant messaging and targets and talks and committees and all that sh'te. What do they expect to happen?

Wouldn't it be simpler to say the best person for the job.

Beasty

What the equal pay initiatives have highlighted is not so much that women are paid less for the same job (although I accept this will happen in many workplaces), but that women are not as well represented as men in senior positions

To deal with this there is no doubt a positive bias towards women when considering people for senior jobs and promotions. That does not mean men have an unsurmountable hurdle to get over, but more like all other things being equal (or near-equal) women probably have a better chance

It's all aimed at redressing prior imbalances, and women are getting better opportunities than they used to (as a generalisation -there will always be exceptions)

Beasty

Just to add, where I have seen moves towards more representation of women on company Boards and indeed in certain sporting organisations, I definitely get the feeling the underlying organisations are feeling and performing better for it. It actually provides wider perspectives to business decisions, whereas male-dominated organisation can often appear more blinkered (obviously that is also dependent on the organisation itself and indeed what it does)

RDM_83 again

Beasty wrote: »

To deal with this there is no doubt a positive bias towards women when considering people for senior jobs and promotions. That does not mean men have an unsurmountable hurdle to get over, but more like all other things being equal (or near-equal) women probably have a better chance

TLDR: there is a move towards tolerated sex based discrimination in the work place

Beasty

RDM_83 again wrote: »

TLDR: there is a move towards tolerated sex based discrimination in the work place

Well you could look at it another way. The business may well (genuinely) believe it would benefit from having more diversity at all levels in the business and is therefore correcting an existing imbalance (which may have resulted from prior sex-based discrimination)

Jennehy

Christmas ^

Beasty

Jennehy wrote: »

Christmas ^

Already

Doesn't time fly....

Richard Hillman

Company PR/Advertising/Media departments are great at celebrating Diversity for show but you won't see much diversity in their departments.

Hector Bellend

Whatever happened to best, most qualified or most appropriate person for the job.

This why gender quotas and positive discrimination and such get on my nerves