Diversity and Equality - captured

[BewaretheIckabog]

My local NHS hospital has a big notice board on Diversity and Equality. It champions it’s LBGTQ+ with 17 categories.

It does not champion or even mention race, disability, age, ethnicity or sex.

From a patient POV, you would think it would be fantastic to say we have a mix of male and female doctors, from many faiths and backgrounds. We have x ethnicities and speak x languages. Positive messages about working with disabilities would be great.

I tend to think in most large organisations, especially public sector the LGB has quite rightly been largely accepted.

The TQ+ is now the whole focus at the expense of others. Why? What am I missing?

Lots of ‘diversity’ awards to be gained too without worrying about age, sex, race, disability, etc. So long as you cover the TQ+++ then you are diverse. If you are entirely TQ+++ then you have reached the pinnacle of diversity.

Same at my workplace. It looks like an excuse to have as many different types of (white??) men as possible - diversity without actual diversity.

The number of women overall doesn't change. And the number of black men remains abysmal.

I suppose its something that there's a lot of training/publicity about for at the moment.

I wonder if there's a perception of it as a very, very niche thing that doesn't affect people, so is 'safe' to talk about. Whereas if you raise the issue of sex, race, religion or disability you might be faced with a high proportion of people with those characteristics, that could very easily see you weren't ACTUALLY doing anything beyond paying lipservice? It's like a Brownies badge, really, isn't it? The less meaningful action that needs to be taken the better, from a corporate point of view. Rather than worry about disabled access, flexible working practise, tackling structural racism, sexism, etc, you can just say oh yes, we really care so much about the 0.5% of the population who need no provision beyond unisex toilets and everybody being NAICE (or so the narrative goes).

It's pretty crap how other protected categories are just swept aside as if they don't even matter any more. Agree with you, OP.

I googled the trust and diversity - apparently an award of some kind and a picture of an entirely white Caucasian team, 80% male.

Takes zero cash to champion the TQ.
Most brownie points for least cost.

@SweetGrapes

Same at my workplace. It looks like an excuse to have as many different types of (white??) men as possible - diversity without actual diversity.

The number of women overall doesn't change. And the number of black men remains abysmal.

Think you've hit the nail on the head there.

Its an amazing feat they have pulled really. In reply to pressure to actually diversify, the result is to make straight white men the most oppressed of the oppressed, and then suddenly, a team of all straight white men can be the most diverse of the diverse. Fuck all others.

We had a bring your whole self to work thing.

It was v funny. On the internet.

Started off with some people saying they were gay or disabled etc.

Then after only about 5 of those it was hi I'm Dave and what you might not know about me is I like model trains! And on and on in that vein...

Intranet not internet.

it would be interesting to compare the distribution of large corporate charitable donations by category now as opposed to say, 5 years ago. Judging by the PR of many global organisations it might show a sharp rise in one particular area but as the charity pot is finite, other areas may not have been so lucky.

I googled the trust and diversity - apparently an award of some kind and a picture of an entirely white Caucasian team, 80% male.

I'd love to see that, any chance of you posting that pic or maybe a link?