Amnesty TV launches with 11 men and 0 women on its production team

[Bidisha]

bidisha-online.blogspot.com/2011/07/to-coincide-with-its-50-th-anniversary.html

Is this really a product by the same charity that tells us "Women's rights are human rights" on its web site?

I think 82's point was that positive discrimination means that you are not choosing people purely on merit. I don't think there was an intention to suggest that female candidates would be second best...

Maybe it depends on your point of view when you read a post as to what you read into a post...?

My question was to somethingwitty.

At the top right of the post you'll see a link which says 'message poster'. That's what you need if you're after a private discussion.

Somethingwitty - if you want to reply to me please feel free. I am interested in your take on why you feel these men are the best for the job. Of course if you don't want to respond, that is OK too.

The idea that there's something unfair about being aware of diversity in recruitment is false. Positive discrimination is an attempt to right an unfair situation. As you can see from the 11 men situation, recruitment without paying attention to diversity is not recruitment on merit. It's recruitment of white men in preference to anyone else of equal - or better - talent. Unless you honestly believe that white men - and usually middle class white men - are always the best candidates for the job.

I've filled in Amnesty's online complaints form, pointing out I'm a donor (have a direct debit). It says I'll get an acknowledgment in a week and a full response in 20 days, which seems very slow.

.... it is probably worth pointing out that, unlike the US, positive discrimination is illegal in the UK...

Positive action which can include recruitment activities in ways/locations available to 'non' traditional' groups, retention and training activities to enable a wider diversity ( and actually strength in breath of experience and perspectives) is fairly standard fare in many organisations today....and it would maybe expected that an organisation such as Amnesty Int. would be both au fait in and keen to continue, bearing in mind what they actually do.

Think who is best for the job?

Whos past form?

Hate the game not the player, these people didn't recruit themselves Im guessing, who did? Isn't the AI CEO a woman? I blame her :p

Why do you think the 11 men on the production team got their jobs based on merit and therefore are best for the job (despite the fact that only one of them has very limited experience in producing human rights films)?

I don't hate these men - what on earth gave you that impression? Why would I - I don't even know them! And my annoyance is directed at Amnesty International rather than these men (although the one that replied to Bidisha was pretty arrogant).

Shoot them on sight!

Them post the pictures online, £1000 bounty for info leading to arrest ;)

whoops! wrong tab, my witty double entendre wasted!

It is a reasonable assumption that anyone given a job has been given that job on the basis of them being the best person to have applied - in terms of their ability to fulfil the remit. The whole point of this thread is that either AI deliberately excluded everyone but white men or they simply failed to notice. Yes, it's odd - but surely only the paranoid and/or obssessed would think it was the first of these.

A second question is whether, on considering the appointment of the final few of these positions, had they noticed that the team possessed little in the way of gender or colour diversity, they should have delberately excluded white male applicants and favoured female or non-white volunteers. If you think they should, I'll not necessarily disagree with you. This is a question that the strongest critics of AI seem shy of answering.

what SB said. i saw the advert, applied and then i didn't get the job - wonder where I went wrong??

Second question/option is illegal, so not sure of the relevance of the question.

Many HR departments manage to have recruitment/diversity policies and processes to try and counter unconscious/implicit/inherent as well as active discrimination.

It appears here, that AI possibly didn't - I would say that is does raise questions about it's recruitment process.

If you are 'countering active discrimination' - as you call it - and have an HR who 'manage' a diversity policy, then how does this apply in practice? Seems to me it is pretty much the same as PD except we wriggle around not calling it this. Please explain the fundamental differences because these it isn't evident from your post.

Google HR, diversity, recruitment and UK for full details and how this can be worked in practice....short synopsis

1. PD = recruitment based sole on gender or race, ie equal qualifications/experience not mandatory.

1. Equal Opps/positive action = you have 2 candidates equal qualifications and experience, you can choose to pick the person from the lesser represented demographic as the final deciding factor....basically to attempt counter peoples tendency to be subjective at this stage, and think person a is just like us, so will fit in better than person b who is different.

All of the above assumes that due diligence has been followed throughout the HR process which can often not be the case.

Yes - so hardly miles apart then are they? The principle is effectively the same. One would deliberately exclude the white male because he is a white male. Sorry Snow, but that's what I asked in the first place: I quote "(should they have) favoured female or non-white volunteers?"

Well no, I would disagree.

If we take this scenario as the example.

1. If PD was in play, AI could have recruited any woman or non white person...just to say they had, regardless of the experience of recruitee.

1. In the second scenario....they would be saying, actually we did find someone else who did have the same level of experience as the 11 white men we recruited, but we chose not recruit them anyway, which would raise the question as to why.

Which would bring the discussion straight back to all the points already raised on this thread by others....about how white men are privileged in terms of access to jobs and careers, unless policies and processes are put in place to allow others equality of opportunity.

...anyway, it is way past my bed time..so I am out.

Moving on... because clearly no one will say explicity that AI should have deliberately excluded someone for being a white male, even if this is a necessary part of what they are suggesting should have been the end result...

How can a criticism be based on an assumption that AI recieved offers of assistance from equally skilled candidates when this is not known?

Those who happen to have privilaged access to careers may mostly be white men, but that does not mean that all white men have priviliged access to careers (all spaniels are dogs, but not all dogs are spaniels etc...)

Good night.

Jenny, I suspect we simply see the world in very different ways.

Either you believe in equality of opportunity or you don't....reasons why it may be considered important include, giving a wider group of society access to interesting and/or lucrative careers and from the employers perspective trying to recruit the best person from as wide a pool as possible, giving them access to the best team possible.

.....returning back to AI, if the argument is they could not in 2011, find any equivalently qualified women and/or people of colour, in the sector of media and human rights....then I simply don't believe it. Particularly, since some of the recruitees don't have a particular record in human rights. Which to me suggests they did not find the best people for the job, and by casting there net wider and using strategies to recruit better, they would have got a stronger team with stronger relevant experience.

If the requirement was just to be a media bod, human rights experience not required....then I again don't believe they were not able to find any women and/or people of colour to recruit. Where I suspect we disagree is that you appear to feel it would be unfair to swap some of the white men out of this or any all white/ all male team, whereas I would say that it looks like the recruiment has been from a too small pot, which heightens the risk that the best have not been recruited in this process...in which case I personally would have no issue replacing one or more of the white men (during the recruitment process).

..... the result of this recruitment exercise also portrays AI as being somewhat retrograde as an organisation.

...BTW your final analogy seemed to suggest that because not all white men could apply to the job, it somehow negated the debate about including any other group...is that what you meant?

The thing is, the idea of replacing one of these precious white men is met with horror and fury.

The fact that they have "replaced" a BME man or woman or white woman, doesn't matter. Because women and BME people, simply don't matter as much as white men, so it's not such a howling outrage if they don't even make it to the initial selection stage.