AIBU to be stuck on the fence re BAME shortlists

[HubertHerbert]

I thought it sounded like a great idea. And then when I see how unpopular it appears and how reasonable some of the criticisms are...

Are there any better ideas to make parliaments/political parties more representative?

Poll - yes - BAME shortlists are a good idea

No - they're not

How many women want to be MPs in the first place? If it’s not equal numbers to men then presumably you can’t expect equal numbers of MPs and be reflective?

Apparently enough that Labour have managed to achieve equal representation.

Yep. But that’s not the same thing.

I'd like to see more work done far earlier - working with children & young people to challenge some of the issues.

I work in a really well paid profession that has good working hours. We cannot get black people to apply for roles, training level or more experienced, for love nor money. The feedback from our outreach programs to try to combat this is that our profession is considered "boring".

I look at my colleagues, all highly paid, predominantly white, and wonder how many highly paid career paths have the same problem, and wonder how much that is impacting ethnicity pay gaps.

I think we need to reach underrepresented groups much earlier and challenge perceptions.

Being an mp is a shit job, I wouldnt want it.

Best people for the job. It should be as simple as that really. Moving away from that means sub standard service on every level.

This is always trotted out as an objection to positive discrimination.

Why do people assume that the candidate's that will inevitably be shortlisted are substandard??? The reality is the candidate's shortlisted will be over qualified & have more experience.

@AuntyPasta

Apparently enough that Labour have managed to achieve equal representation.

And yet it did not “fix” the problems of structural racism or sexism within the party. BAME and women only shortlists are shallow surface changes. It’s an artificial veneer that only hides deeper structural inequalities and also works to deflect justified criticism.

Whilst I appreciate that London skews some of the demographics -many of the jobs for which people discuss an all BAME shortlist are in London. In which that should basically be at 40%, right?

The problem with the current system is a very small minority is in a position of authority. The suggestion that it should always be the best person for the job essentially accepts that only the same ethnic and class minority should ever get to the top etc. White, middle-class males are a minority group in the UK. The question is why is the majority of the population happy to be indefinitely managed by a minority group.

As always with these discussions, I recommend reading Invisible Women for research on all-women shortlists and their effect on the quality of the workforce.

Spoiler - they improve it. Best people for the job indeed.

Maybe not but it’s led to more women MPs. Men were traditionally seen as ‘safer’ candidates and more likely to be elected. When half your MPs are women ideas like that are challenged by default.

I’m using all women shortlists as an example because they have worked. They’ve changed the composition of Parliament and as a result some of the practices that arguably deterred women from standing as MPs were changed. Sitting hours were changed from a 10pm finish Mon-Thurs in 1997 to a 10pm finish on Mondays only by 2012.

Why do people assume that the candidate's that will inevitably be shortlisted are substandard???

Because that’s the psychological impact that happens when you exclude people based on race or sex from even being considered and say it is because of a fear that they would win too often.

@PlanDeRaccordement and how is this any different from the current system in which we effectively have a shortlist for white often mc men....and you are right it does make everyone else feel worse. So why not change it

@Pukkatea

As always with these discussions, I recommend reading Invisible Women for research on all-women shortlists and their effect on the quality of the workforce.

Spoiler - they improve it. Best people for the job indeed.

The problem with this sort of research is you can’t compare the possible outcomes that never happened to what actually happened. So say, you have a position and with an all woman short list you selected me, Plan. And I am qualified and yes I improved the workforce. But if that position had not been shortlisted for women only, and say a man got the job...nobody knows whether he would have improved the workforce more than I did or less than I did or perhaps even degraded it. It can’t be known. So that research is meaningless really. All it shows is that all women shortlists do not on balance harm the workforce. But it cannot prove that all women shortlists have a better outcome for the workforce than not using all women shortlists.

So that research is meaningless really. All it shows is that all women shortlists do not on balance harm the workforce. But it cannot prove that all women shortlists have a better outcome for the workforce than not using all women shortlist

I think there's been research done on companies which have increased their board to make it more female compared to those which haven't - and there have been differences in performance.

surely the point of these shortlists is to enable people less likely to pursue these careers to have role models within sectors that might seem entirely implausible for them to enter. for young people and societal change. things doesn't just change on their own because we decide it should be different or fairer without addressing past inequality, these shortlists are meant to address that

[quote plussize]@PlanDeRaccordement and how is this any different from the current system in which we effectively have a shortlist for white often mc men....and you are right it does make everyone else feel worse. So why not change it[/quote]
I agree with PPs that structural inequalities need to be tackled at their roots because this is what results in shortlists where the best qualified end up being dominated by white, middle to upper class men. Just crossing off the names of white men on a list does nothing for true equality. It doesn’t give young BAME girls a better education, or better work experience to get on that list in their own right. And, speaking from experience being selected as a BAME woman from a list that excludes whites and men feels like charity, not equality.

@chomalungma

So that research is meaningless really. All it shows is that all women shortlists do not on balance harm the workforce. But it cannot prove that all women shortlists have a better outcome for the workforce than not using all women shortlist

I think there's been research done on companies which have increased their board to make it more female compared to those which haven't - and there have been differences in performance.

Yes I read that research and what was found was that only the most already successful companies were able to make their board more female. There was no link between more women results in more success.

This thread started off about BAME shortlists but has produced more views on women shortlists. Why is this? I am genuinely confused 😕

@PlanDeRaccordement - i appreciate that it may feel like tokenism but when we have an all-white middle-class male list - they do not feel like charity but entitlement. So why shouldn't other people feel entitled to have a shortlist?? If all male mc white shortlists denote quality then why shouldnt BAME etc shortlist. Essentially because they are exclusionary but the problem is that we already live in a system with such lists.

If an Oxbridge educated white male doesnt feel like charity for being on an all white male mc short list then neither should anybody else.

I’m on the fence really. It’s clear that equality is important and that BAME are under-represented (as are women) in many workplaces and positions of influence. I can see the appeal of positive discrimination/pre-selected short-lists etc.

And yet, I can’t quite convince myself it is always the best approach. It might be for some situations. I also think it can give an excuse to paper over the cracks rather than address the root cause.

I am not BAME, so cannot comment directly, but from an outsiders perspective whilst I can see the term has it’s uses, I do think treating everyone who falls into that category as a homogenous group, with same experiences and challenges, is flawed and problematic. For one thing- what is the end goal? So if, say, 15% of the population are BAME then the aim would be to have the same number of MP’s (for instance)? If so, is that lumping all BAME into one single mass or is the aim to accurately reflect each ethnic minority as a proportion of the population? If not, why not? Surely if the aim is accurate representation that could be an important problem? for instance, It could be possible for Asian men to gain ground, but very few black women do. If so- do you then start having black women only lists? I think that then starts to get very close to shoe-horning candidates in. This then could feed the narrative of being undeserving of the post and so on. Not sure that this is the best approach. But then, current set up isn’t either! I’m getting splinters, I know.

And if we go back to the need to have proportionate representation, once/if we’d reached that “quota”then what? Do you just aim to kept it there or happy enough to have “over-representation”? And would that over-representation be acceptable or an issue in itself which would need to be monitored? I’m not sure, but I’m sure it could be a source of conflict.

I live in an area where the vast majority of people are white. I don’t see this as a good of a bad thing, just what it is. I think most employers will have “all white” interview lists more often than, say, London or Birmingham. You’d have to be actively recruit from out of the area to represent the national ethnicity demographics. Whether racism is at play is debatable- possible but not necessarily the case. I see no reason why a BAME MP (of either gender) could not represent this area in parliament but they would not be “ representative” of this areas population. But if we were to have an all BAME list on polling day, for instance, it would certainly not fit with our demographic. And would appear to be very engineered.

I just think it must be carefully balanced.

’This thread started off about BAME shortlists but has produced more views on women shortlists. Why is this? I am genuinely confused’

I used it as an example that changes to shortlists can (and have) been used to deliver significant change in a relatively short period of time.

I used it as an example that changes to shortlists can (and have) been used to deliver significant change in a relatively short period of time.

I’m not a fan of ‘all’ shortlists for anything, as I’ve said, but it is worth pointing out the key difference between BAME and women-only political shortlists. In any given constituency, definitely having a female MP won’t make the result less representative than having a male one, since female/male is roughly 50/50. But if you impose a BAME shortlist in a majority white area, you will definitely impact on people’s feelings of having been fairly represented. That’s not to say a BAME candidate wouldn’t ever win in a majority white constituency, but, if that was common, nobody would be suggesting all BAME lists. So they seem to me to be a deliberate attempt to skew how people vote in a less representative direction. Doesn’t seem quite right to me.

Bias in selection is often about the perception of how people will vote rather than how they actually will vote. It used to be that white, male, married with children was the default ‘safe’ option.

I think as something in isolation, no. As others have noted, you need to start much earlier with education and training. The pandemic has probably made things worse, given the higher proportion of BAME deaths from Covid (I think because more BAME people have jobs where they could not work from home) and the impact on education.