Vocal Voices

Or not.

So it starts with

He won in a process that shortlisted him and four women out of a total of 27 applicants, leaving the MPC with just one female member, despite repeated criticism about the gender imbalance in the central bank’s senior ranks.

Using the usual bit about how only ONE female member is left to beat them up about balance...

But later on you get into the detail.

It tells you that the MPC contacted 88 people for the role. 44 of them were Women. Exact split right..

27 of those 88 applied.

Of whom 8 were women. Leaving 19 men. So of the 44 women approached, only 8 decided to apply. Immediate bias right? We should have approached 100 women and 44 men to get a balance right?

Well, actually, no, the MPC had a better idea.

Of the 19 men and 8 women the MPC created a shortlist of 1 man and 4 WOMEN. Extremely balanced right.

Then when the MPC finally selects the one man left standing, they are lambasted for not having enough women. It is not the fault of the MPC that women do not want to apply for the job. After all they took 50% of the women to shortlist interview and 5.23% of the men.

How much more balanced do we need to get? Right, I know, only invite Women. That'll fix it.

I know, only invite Women. That'll fix it..

Ah, when I asked this in a previous thread it died.

There is no force in the Universe to make the numbers of all applicants equal.

Whatever happened to the idea that the best person, male or female, black or white, from those who chose to apply got the job, or at least an interview?

I cannot see a way around this unless every applicant's past is anonymous, and even then it is not possible to make people apply regardless of their ethnicity or academic qualifications.

Quotas: No Way.

I have a daughter who works for the NHS as a finance exec. At one point she was acting Finance Director for a fairly large trust, before refusing to apply for the job she was actually doing, even though she was asked to apply for the job several times. When the new "man" took over, she moved to a different job in a different area at a lower level.

Just recently I asked her if she wanted to move up to the FD level again. Her response was "Why would I bother with that? It's just a lot of hassle and they always wind up being sacked or having to leave".

A classic example of how a lot of Women think. So how can it be expected that we will have job parity across genders when the other gender simply doesn't want to be in the role?

I'm sure that some men get the job just because they are men; it happens.

But in the public sector people other than white males have been given jobs just to meet quotas, or to demonstrate inclusivity. The problem being with this approach being that tokenism isn't a reliable method for finding an able person.

The world is unfair in all sorts of ways I guess.

Workingman wrote:

I know, only invite Women. That'll fix it..

Ah, when I asked this in a previous thread it died.

There is no force in the Universe to make the numbers of all applicants equal.

Whatever happened to the idea that the best person, male or female, black or white, from those who chose to apply got the job, or at least an interview?

I cannot see a way around this unless every applicant's past is anonymous, and even then it is not possible to make people apply regardless of their ethnicity or academic qualifications.

Quotas: No Way.

I was getting wound up about this just two nights ago. The local MP posted on Facebook about a number of places available at the High Speed Rail college in Birmingham. I wondered if Joe would be interested so I had a quick look at entry requirements and saw this;
We are committed to improving diversity in the sector, so are particularly keen to hear from individuals who are currently under-represented

I said exactly the same as you Frank, whatever happened to going for the right person for the job/course/whatever rather than deciding to fill a quota.

I know someone who does not want to be a manager and sit in an office and having to deal with major problems. She likes meeting people face to face and help them to sort out minoe problems and serve them. She has a very good memory and can remember peoples names who she met over two years ago.
Very good cusome relations.

JoM wrote:[I was getting wound up about this just two nights ago. The local MP posted on Facebook about a number of places available at the High Speed Rail college in Birmingham. I wondered if Joe would be interested so I had a quick look at entry requirements and saw this;
We are committed to improving diversity in the sector, so are particularly keen to hear from individuals who are currently under-represented

I said exactly the same as you Frank, whatever happened to going for the right person for the job/course/whatever rather than deciding to fill a quota.

I know that the rail industry in particular has been pushing (and feteing in industry press) female graduates for some time now.

I'm sure technically they will be very good, but it's all a form of intrinsic discrimination nevertheless. Just as long as they can compile a timetable that works, though ....