positive discrimination and quotas - right or wrong? And how do you justify it?

But that isn't postive discrimination for 'fairness'. That postive discrimination for 'revenge'.

How else to explain White upper-and-middle class men have benefited from an invisible quota for years. How else can it be seen as anything other than some revenge-based scheme to get back at, well White upper-and-middle class men?

If quotas are to be introduced it has to be driven not by revenge, but by the simple requirement that the best candidate gets the job. If that's a 'fireperson' then unfortunately in my eyes that means someone who can hold their breath for longest and carry a person backwards down a ladder, in smoke, from a second storey ladder. Hate to say it but that precludes a lot of less weighty females. I couldn't care a rat's ass if the fireman'man' was white, black, straight or gay; when you need saving its meaningless. But if there are females who satisfy the physical requirements, then they should have every opportunity of fulfilling the role.

The target should be to ensure that the best candidate gets the job, not that employment be based upon sexist or racist criteria.

If its to be done, 'tis best done for the right reasons, and 'revenge' against one particular sex or ethnic group or age group is not a good reason.

I'm in favour of quotas. White upper-and-middle class men have benefited from an invisible quota for years. We've asked nicely for them to share the pie and they won't, so it's quota time!

The 'quota = less qualified candidate' thing is, I think, a bit of red herring. There's nothing in a quota that means a less qualified woman would be employed. The whole point of a quota is that women, gay men, people of colour are losing out to white men even when their qualifications are identical.

I do think that after a while quotas would become unnecesary. Seeing something is a powerful tool. So if girls saw women in positions of power as a matter of routine, then they would see that they, too, could grow up and occupy a similar position.

Bring on the quotas!

But if you didn't know if a candidate was fe/male, black, gay, transgender, disabled or any group until interview stage and if you actively targeted your recruitment methods to attract under represented groups (ie put an advert in local Asian paper, ran a programme where staff go into schools and talk about working in the organisation/industry) then in theory you increase the chances of shortlisted applicants being more representative of society without the need for quotas.

Then the next task is to remove some of the cognitive assumptions by conducting blind assessments where possible and independently auditing. Yes it would take longer than quotas but it would leave a less bitter taste and arguably be more effective in the longer term.

It's a fascinating insight actually.

pinkgirlythoughts your post assumes that your white, heterosexual brother is the best person for the job. It assumes that any black, gay or female candidates will be inferior.

ALSO what the senior fireman told him shows the exact problem as well. He took him aside and said I WANT to give you the job (subtext because you are white, male and heterosexual, just like me) but the bloody company have told me that I might have to give it to one of these bloody (equally good) blacks / gays / women (delete as appropriate).

And this is why people who want quotas want them. To stop all the white heterosexual men giving all the jobs to other white heterosexual men. Unless it's a something like a cleaning job, in which case a black woman can do it.

Grrrr.

pinkgirlythoughts that's exactly the thinking that is the problem in the first place. Why do you think a white heterosexual man is going to be the best person for the job?

And I find it strange (and frankly unbelievable) that the fire service is now prioritising people with disabilities and people suffering ill health to work as fire fighters.

Without reading the entire thread, I just wanted to add an experience my cousin had regarding 'positive discrimination.'

He's always wanted to become a fireman. He's young, fit (just been accepted into the army), and healthy, and a couple of years ago he was invited to attend one of those interview days they do. Although he thought he had done fairly well on all of the tasks, a senior fireman took him to one side at the end of the day and said that if it was up to him, he'd probably accept him, but that unfortunately they had quotas to meet, and since my cousin is male, white, straight and not disabled, he didn't fit any of the criteria, so would be at the bottom of the pile :(

As much as I think that positive discrimination can be a good thing, if I was trapped in a house fire, I'd rather someone who was the best person for the job came to rescue me, than someone who'd been accepted mostly because they fit a particular quota the fire service had to fill.

Devlin that is a great idea for initial screening but I don't think it would work for the final hire. It doesn't reveal anything about how, for want of a better word, personable someone is. The vast majority of jobs involve communicating with others, teamwork, talking to clients and all the rest of it. Someone who ticks all the boxes for technical knowledge might be utterly hopeless in the actual job.

For government level jobs, why not implement rigorous testing standards?

Place all available applicants into a room to file a test, then only choose as many of the best scorers as what is needed to fill the positions available?

The test would be administered by a private corporation, each tested person is given a number, and their sex and age is redacted when reporting to the hiring government authority.

That's one way to ensure that only the best qualified get an entry level position. The numbers are called out for those who meet or exceed the standards for the position available.

For advancement through the ranks, perform the same action. All those who wish to obtain a higher level job report to a testing facility. The same process is repeated, except that additional scoring is added based on the performance reports that have been on file in the previous position.

Remove sex and age from the equation entirely. The respective hiring authority only has the viable "human" score upon which to make a decision.

As far as private corporations go....well..they are in it for the money. This is one of the reasons more companies go out of country to fill positions. If the corporations here could have a reasonable guarantee that the rules of the game do not change every few years, then they might make a similar investiture for hiring practices. This takes them off the hook of political correctness and saves them money on the long run because they know they are getting quality people to fulfill the positions, instead of meeting ANY kind of government mandated quota that costs them.

It would certainly get students to be more competitive for an ACTUAL education, instead of just being parrots in schools, because they know that it won't be their sex, their suit, or their color that gets them a job. It will be nothing but their intrinsic ability as determined by the testing.

Incientally I'm not decided on any of this, but that comment did make me smile, I've seen it happen so many times!

"I'm sure that's right, but I would hate to feel I'd been selected/promoted because of my gender. It's a recipe for insecurity, resentment and general bad feeling."

It happens with blokes all the time though, or it has in places I've worked, men who are pretty crap being promoted because their face fits, they look good in a suit etc

And yes it causes resentment. But I think I'd rather have the job / promotion and risk being resented than leave it as is with rubbish men being promoted ahead of capable women!

I'd prefer, where there are concerns, to see sex-blind CV/interview phase and auditing of the advertising of positions.

But I think some areas require a different approach. Where entrenched sexism is endemic and there has been a long history of paying lip service to equality (or ignoring it) I'm somewhat in favour of quotas if only to make change fast and to put pressure on industries to take some responsibility.

I could see quotas possibly being useful in areas like senior positions, the City, acting, nursery education (if we're going to worry about the menz) and Boards of public companies. Because in these situations, sex-blind hiring will never fix the issues - there are structural reasons why women don't get the good jobs to the same extent as men.

If there is reasonable concern there will not be enough well qualified women the quotas could be graduated over time so the industry has time to start encouraging and building up the talent pool, and potentially there could be quotas put down the line on educational institutions too.

I'm not certain quotas would work, and if they are minimal (>40% say) then I don't think they will have the impact necessary to make themselves redundant (which should be the aim). There may be other better approaches, and I'd be happy to see other things that are robust put in place instead if someone has an idea. I just can't be doing with the idea that it's OK to do nothing because men don't want to risk possibly being put close to the position that women have been in for eons. I get a bit annoyed at the presumption that what we have now in hiring is a meritocracy - we've never had a very meritocratic hiring process. Quotas wouldn't make that worse.

I do think care would be needed about how this sort of thing is done. I recall back in the late '80s/early '90s BT increased it's percentage of female engineers significantly. They did it by re-designating call centre jobs (poorly paid and predominantly women) as "engineers".

'The discrimination has already happened in a thousand ways before anybody applies for a job, the only differernce in postive discrimination is that it would be obvious instead of hidden.'

I'm sure that's right, but I would hate to feel I'd been selected/promoted because of my gender. It's a recipe for insecurity, resentment and general bad feeling.

All the methods suggested in this thread of improving recruitment - gender-blind application forms, giving minority applicants automatic interviews, etc - are excellent and I'd like to see these used much more widely. Also more publicity given to the 'cultural cues' problem of why people see men as more worthy/able, which is clearly the case but which I have never seen discussed anywhere else.

I just don't think you fight discrimination with more discrimination. There are better, practical things that can be done before quotas.

The discrimination has already happened in a thousand ways before anybody applies for a job, theonly differernce in postive discrimination is that it wouldbe obvious instead of hidden and justified as being natural or inevitable.

It's a tricky one isn't it. This weight of expectation. If they were truly radical they'd be unlikely to rise to a position of influence in the first place. And I am a liberal feminist. If there's a way of avoiding controversy and making a difference I'm all for it. That's why I favour application forms and blind recruitment processes instead of quotas.

My reluctance is also spurred by the fact much of our equality legislation has yet to achieve equality...

No I agree she hasn't completely and utterly spoilt things but she's set us back a bit. She may well have blown the chances for quotas but I'm not a fan any way so I don't see that as being the end of the world.

I suppose the difference when a senior man fucks up is that there's always plenty more. When a high-ranking woman does there's rarely another in the wings

Not wanting to answer for jamma but on this issue Hewitt had the opportunity to do so much. She is arguably the most senior woman in government and the minister for women but she put that office into disrepute and gave ammunition to those who would like to keep the patriarchal status quo. In short she did much damage by failing to uphold her office correctly. What she did was worse than doing nothing.

She was the best hope we had to change things (at the current time) by virtue of her office and she sabotaged it.