Equal opportunity campaigner the Fawcett Society's Seeing Double campaign has published the final report of the Routes to Power research study on ethnic minority women leaders. Based on interviews with 23 of the most senior ethnic minority women in Britain, the report reveals that organisations are still struggling to recognise and reward expertise when it is found in ethnic minority women.
Among the findings:
- There are only two ethnic minority women MPs, and there has never been an Asian woman MP
- There are only 168 ethnic minority women local councillors in England - less than 1% of the total
- There is only one senior ethnic minority woman in the judiciary
- Around 3% of the senior civil service are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and only a third of them are women
- Ethnic minority women make up just 2.3% of public appointments
- Of the 961 directors of FTSE 100 companies, only 8 are women of non-European descent
According to the report, a gap between race equality legislation and social attitudes is producing two new forms of organisational discrimination - tokenism, where ethnic minority women are being used as tokens so that organisations can be shown to be embracing diversity, and typecasting, where ethnic minority women are being streamed into specialising in ethnic minority or gender issues. Tokenism and typecasting were seen to be most severe in politics and in the public sector.
Without resorting to positive discrimination, how are employers to improve the situation? What can organisations offer women from ethnic minority backgrounds? And what can be done to convince girls from ethnic minorities to opt for a career in business?
Comments (2)
Posted by Russell Toms | June 9, 2008 2:07 PM
Positive discrimination towards a part of the working population is still discrimination against someone. Organisations must strive for both rigorous and fair recruitment and promotion policies. This means having a chain of processes that advertise in diverse ways, through diverse media that provide access to all sections of the labour market. Adverts must explicitly promote the organisation’s belief in equality of opportunity and that message needs to flow though the interview stage, the appointment and induction process and then throughout a person’s career at job or performance review. This requires a high commitment to staff training so that these values are understood and deployed.
As an assessor for the Mark of Excellence in Smarter Working Practices I see that the best performing organisations in the area of recruitment and retention understand that our labour market is changing and that skills shortages are a real operational pressure. Releasing the potential from all labour sources is an imperative. Not being tied to rigid working practices also allows organisations who work smarter to encourage anyone who needs flexibility to accommodate family, care, or religious routines to stay in the workforce and succeed.
Posted on June 9, 2008 14:07
Posted by Kate Phizackerley | June 19, 2008 3:42 AM
In many organisations, pubs bars and clubs form the backbone of after work socialising. It's easy to overook the importance of such activity in terms of cementing work relationships, visibility and even diseminating news on what promotion and other opportunities are coming up. Unfortunately alcohol-based socialising excludes certain religious and ethnic groups.
If organisations are serious about promoting equal opportunities this is an area to address, perhaps by establishing a more diverse social programme - which will of course generally be welcomed and improve morale.
Posted on June 19, 2008 03:42