Work has a ‘Leadership Development Programme’ for Women and Ethnic Minority People

Information and statutory guidance does not go out of date.

If the EHRC page has not been changed recently, nor has the statutory guidance.

Old laws do not go out of date because they are old.

This page is still the legal position
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/your-rights-under-equality-act-2010/race-discrimination#circumstanceswhenbeingtreateddifferentlyduetoraceislawful

It's a virtue signalling exercise OP, like draping pride flags around. They don't really give a flying fuck about women or ethnic minorities but they've got to be seen to tick a box. As you discovered to your cost in the all male meeting.

No, it doesn't quote info already online. It has that info in it's training model, which was used to teach it human responses, but quality of the training data has never been verified. It contains more bullshit than actual facts, as the training data also has just about every random social media post in it that you can think of.

Furthermore, these LLM's are trained to give you responses you want to hear, not facts.

How are they going about the training?

Is it possible that the title "Leadership Development Programme for Women and Ethnic Minority people" is for the purpose of applying to the programme which once they have numbers and people in place will they be adjusted according to the needs of the people that have gained access to the programme?

I used to work for Barclays, who had "Women" as part of their diversity agenda. I did point out (to whatever-the-PC-equivalent of deaf ears is) that women make up 51% of the population and were hardly diverse. The fact they paid them less than the men was the issue - not that there were fewer of them around!

The Women's Network did themselves no further favours when interviewing a world-leading female economist and asking her about her nail varnish.🙄

Admittedly this was 10 years ago, but I felt the industry had a long, long way to go.

Go to the trusted sources - EHRC / ACAS

Well as I have already posted on this thread the EHRC info is old and not helpful.

And in fact I have checked ACAS. Their's is more up to date, but sheds absolutely no light on the situation raised in the OP.

But thanks for your post as it confirms what I have just said, if you dont know what you dont know. it is too easy to feel you are being so helpful based on your (limited) personal knowledge, but in fact turns out to be useless.

I think this comes under picking your battles and is a bit of a non event.

If a company has done a review and found a lack of women and ethnic minorities in leadership roles, offering a course to gain confidence in applying/something to put on the CV to help their application isn't doing any harm. I'm assuming there are also courses for everyone? Maybe white men dominate or there is specific funding for applications from minority groups.

Nitpicking that they have to run separate courses will end up with no courses, it might be a small company for a start.

I don't think this is our battle, tbh, if white men want to make a fuss it's up to them.

As ChatGP just quotes info already on the internet, it is find to quote it.

But they dont, as i pointed out, always give the link itself.

However, what it does do far quicked than wading through endless results present you with an overview of the information available.

The concept that anyone using an ordinary search engine will be directed to THE source about anything is rubbish, as they filter info based on the slant of the owner of the search engine.

And if you are totally new to an issue how would you know the authoritive source and not be misled about the search engine.

Perhaps you need to understand what AI can be used for is the problem.

ie it can scan and present sources far quick than any individual trudging through pages of search results.

Obviously if you know the authoritive resource on an issue you wouldn't be using chatGP to begin with. You would go direct to that web site.

A) Never trust ChatGPT - it hallucinates
B) Go to the trusted sources - EHRC / ACAS
C) Your boss is a wazzock if he gave you a public dressing down for this

Do they also have a leadership programme for staff with disabilities
or are they cherry picking the EA2010 PCs

Combined is probably best initially, but with breakout groups so people can get advice from those most likely to understand THEIR situation

If you have two separate courses, one for women, one for ethnic minorities, both open to women in ethnic minorities, that's fine too.

This is spades!

Applying the logic of the Supreme Court decision:

Once you decide that you have reasonable grounds for single-sex provision, you must exclude all men, not just some men.

That's because, if you don't have grounds to exclude all men, you didn't have reason to exclude any of them to start with.

If the training is not specifically targeted at women, but at under-represented groups one of which is women, it is hard to see grounds for excluding e.g. a disabled, working-class and/or younger man.

I am not a lawyer but this is how I understood the Supreme Court judgement.

They get to go to both because they are doubly disadvantaged!

I’m sure the SC ruling recently said that groups should not cater to two protected characteristics at the same time.

Also, previous experience suggest that informing someone something is wrong gets their back up. They respond better if you send a querie- I’m a bit concerned this might be breaching the SC guidance on protected characteristics. Could we ask the HR department to check whether we’re compliant with that?- tends to work better as it saves face.

It sounds like a 2 for the price of 1 virtue signalling exercise, or it might come under the heading 'intersectionality', the real bus that the all purpose 'feminist' threw women's right's under.

Should have included that for instance in targeting women they should consider, or accept that whatever training etc., is offered should be by a women.

There is info about this on the EHRC web site, and thanks to chatGPT they found the quote.

But for the life of me I cant find it on the EHRC website. (Naughty chatGPT for not siting source.)

So it is legal to have positive "action" ie training for women to help them become part of a male dominated area of work. Similarly for race.

But in the same way as the EHRC talks about how discrimination against women will relate to their lived realilty, it doesn't then try and say how people from Black and Minority Groups are discriminated against is in the same way as women!

That's why there are separate categories of Protected Characteristics and not everyone lumped in together.

So when adopting a plan of Positive Action this should be tailored to the protected characteristic.

This is just typical male management style. They dont understand. They dont care. Because they know they have the power to bully people.

I haven't time now, but maybe somebody can find the quotes about this on the EHRC web site. If not will try and hunt later.

(I did find one from quite a few years ago, but I am sure there is an updated version.)

For professional reasons, I can say with knowledge of leadership programmes that those that are most effective separate these two groups. Rather than you talking directly to HR, how about gathering a group of women and a group of ethnic minority people who want to sign up, gather evidence and examples of why two groups would work better than one, and set up a meeting with two people from HR to talk through the issues? Delegates and HR want the same thing after all: a successful leadership programme.

This makes sense but the question arises in which group does a woman who is an ethnic minority get added into?

This morning I was pulled into a room full of men and belittled and spoken down to.

This here is precisely why a women in leadership programme might be useful! Why else do they think women are held back if not by the institutional and systematic misogyny as perpetuared by men and male led institutions?

I'd imagine it might be so much harder to talk about these issues in a room including men. Just as it might be really hard for a person of colour to talk about the institutional racism that is holding them back when there are white people (who they might like and value as colleagues) in the room.

Hi @LaundryLoop

Im sorry you’ve had such a rough day. It’s crap.

I too think the area of law is untested but objectively it is a pretty stupid approach in my opinion. Just lump everyone apart from the white men together….. it’s very othering….

What is annoying you about the approach? What outcome do you want?

They could have a leadership development programme as a positive action to increase the participation of women.

They could have a leadership development programme as a positive action to increase the participation of people from ethnic minorities.

If they can show that the same generic leadership development programme meets the needs of both these groups then I can see no legal reason why they must be kept separate. E.g. there could be one leadership development programme that is open to everyone but they could reserve a certain number of places for women as a positive action, and separately reserve a certain number of places for people from ethnic minorities as a separate positive action IYSWIM.

The question is, would a generic programme be effective for each of the two groups? Looking at each group separately, is the programme a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim?

IANAL though and from what I understand this is a largely untested area of law.

Whether you are correct or not, you shouldn't be treated badly for raising this. That is unlawful victimisation.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/27