Kemi Badenoch: Diversity policies should not "come at the expense of white men"

Her father was a doctor and her mother was a professor. She wasn't exactly from a deprived background. To be fair to her she doesn't go on and on about her NHS connections like the PM.

Well if it comes down to 2 people who are equally suited and qualified for the job the only fair way would be to toss a coin. Deciding you need to have more men/women/black/disabled people and choosing on that basis isn't treating people equally. It would mean one person starts out with an advantage that doesn't mean that are the best candidate.

What I've noticed with this is a lot of the work feels like treating symptoms rather than causes. E.g. we support women because they are likely to be disadvantaged by childcare responsibilities instead of supporting people with caring responsibilities. I worry that doing this in the wrong way further disenfranchises the already disadvantaged.

Actually there is a tool in EA2010.
Positive action in recruitment and promotion.
Presumed to be rarely used because it's not easy. As someone already mentioned Furlong V Cheshire police, is an example of wrong use of that. And iirc the only example actually.

You can prefer candidate from underrepresented background IF the final 2 candidates are of equal merit. Proving equal merit can be difficult because is there even such thing as actual equal merit which would stand up in tribunal if one candidate decided they were discriminated against?

I'm interested in this interpretation. What do you see as her privilege? As far as I can see she is not from wealth. She has worked very hard and is paving a path for others to do the same.

Yes blind cvs should be compulsory, but then you say half shortlist should be women. Doesn't that undermine blind cvs.

One of the biggest problems is the low status and salary of jobs which are predominantely female, largely caring roles. They need to be quantified differently somehow. At the moment GDP works against women - how do you increase productivity in care homes.

It depends on your processes. Blinding cvs for example is not discriminating. Saying half the shortlist must be women is not discriminating as you get a balanced shortlist from which you hire on merit. So there’s ensuring and encouraging opportunity for women without discriminating.

I want policies that allow women to have children without being disadvantaged. It’s still not properly done because child care and housing has got more expensive.

I think I feel women’s work is undervalued is the biggest issue.

Employers need to facilitate parents- part of the problem is that work is now so intense you can’t afford to be momentarily inattentive. People can’t afford time for parents’ evenings and medical appointments and sick kids. So someone is sacrificed and it’s almost always the woman. Men as a result fly because they have a live in housekeeper and nanny. Making it ever harder to keep up.

And honestly, kids of well educated and well off parents will always do better on average. It’s like complaining that wealthy people live in nicer places. Duh.

Who knows ? Take it as you find it.

My take is that what Kemi Badenoch believes very much aligns with what will further Kemi Badendochs chosen career in the Tory party.

The point has to be, if you are employing 6 people who are equally skilled, why are you giving the job to the white male rather than the black female if there's nothing to pick between them as candidates.

That would mean you were selecting based on gender/colour.

Is this actually a thread about EDI (an interesting topic), or is it just an excuse to sneer at Badenoch and the awful GC people who are associated with her?

I presume she wants to be Tory leader and PM.

What does diversity training achieve?

Like genuine question.

Does everyone get a positive experience from them or does it led to hidden resentment and a hidden toxic backlash building up?

Feedback from these courses is unlikely to result in honest comments because someone has literally just been told certain opinions are verboten.

Does it also led to others becoming zealots over the subject and this desire to demonstrate everything is diverse even when it perhaps isn't needed?

Does it actually improve things or is progress being made for other reasons - including pushier parents from different cultural backgrounds?

Does the focus become diversity rather than the actual problem/subject you are addressing?

Is diversity becoming a sector that grifts upon government for the benefit of those in that sector over and above those it's supposed to be helping?

We need to be seeing added benefit.

If we are also seeing very negative unintended consequences we should also be acknowledging this and talking about them.

Lots of us choose to have time with our babies even if it means we lose money
and others, male or female, progress in our absence. With one of mine I was pregnant at the same time as a colleague. I had a year off, well really more than a year as I tagged six weeks annual on to it. The colleague had 4 weeks off and included her two weeks foreign holiday in those 4 weeks. She ended up in a more senior role than I did and why shouldn't she. I had over 4 years maternity leave in total, she had 4 weeks (I have 4 children she has one.)

We both made our choices, she might think I'm a fool for letting motherhood affect my career, I think those years were priceless and I wouldn't do anything different.

I don't think anyone should lose out on life chances because they might make the same choices as me but I think it is perfectly reasonable that I lose out because life moved on while I wasn't at work. I think the same would be true of a man who decided to take 4 years out of his career to do something, being a SAHD, cycling round the world, living in a Buddhist retreat or whatever.

Adam - do you support the current idiocy of DEI, do you think it has anything at all to do with feminism, except in a performative way (menopause policies)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9ac50df5-657c-4b00-aa42-8a7b6162d976?shareToken=d8eef38dca6255a1c015538f27076fac

The position of women in the workforce has improved immensely during my lifetime. I'm seeing a distinct backward trend and increasing misogyny which concerns me greatly. As a 'woman in STEM' what's your strategy for achieving a feminist Utopia in your

lifetime? Or do you want to support yet more DEI training?.
Or do you just have an animus against Kemi?

My cousin works for a company that a year or so ago announced a target of recruiting 40% from ethnic minorities - which by itself discriminates against white people. One of their main bases was in part of the UK where the population of ethnic minorities is lower, so they relocated a substantial part of their business to a city in the midlands in order to help achieve this target. This left behind/undermined local initiatives and a new college campus set up to meet the needs of this employer in an area with poor achievement by the group which is actually the most underachieving group in the UK - white working class boys from seaside towns.

They are now finding it difficult to recruit sufficiently skilled staff in their new base.

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. If you don't understand why something happens you don't even know if it should change, much less how to do it.

Men neither get pregnant, nor suffer the potential aftermaths of pregnancy, and they don't experience the fourth trimester. They don't breastfeed, neither do they experience the hormonal and physiological processes that are designed to prompt them to care for their infants in the same way.

Even without considering that many women want to be the ones to care for their infants and young kids, even if you just take the effects and aftermath of pregnancy, that first year, and extrapolate it across the population, it is going to make a significant differernce to the outcomes. You will have a host of women taking one, two, and maybe more years off for infant care and breastfeeding, depending on how many kids they have; you will have some that have to stop work during pregnancy; you will have some that find they have to stop work after pregnancy, for a time or occasionally permanently.

This is just the reality of sexed bodies like we have, and until we start growing babies in bags t's going to affect workplace outcomes. And personally I hope we never start growing babies in bags, that is an anti-woman dystopian solution.

Seeing every part of life perfectly composed of population levels of groups is not necessarily an outcome that is important or even desirable.