Diversity or Discrimination?

[TopStar74]

As a part of seeking opportunities for my 16 year old son, I am discovering things in the recruitment industry which are quite troubling and in some wordings agitating. Here is a link from GCHQ recruitment -
https://recruitmentservices.application ... 6/opp/2702

The link seeks only "ethnic minorities" or those "identifying as female". I agree the two groups are probably highly underrepresented in GCHQ and they are doing a stellar effort to push to recruit candidates from those groups. However, this way of specifically seeking only these groups is positive discrimination and to see it happening in a reputed government organisation is quite worrying. For this period of summer recruitment, there are White English Male students who are going to miss out on the opportunity coming Jul-Aug, for a summer school with GCHQ as they have literally been barred from applying for it.

I constantly see such wordings sometimes quite subtle. While the wording may be subtle, the actual process of recruitment is probably not. It is probably planned to work a certain way, thus eliminating certain groups or focussing on only one set of group etc.

Though I am from a ethnic background I feel irritated at this bias. Diversity means people from ALL backgrounds, abilities etc. not just minority ethnic backgrounds. I believe there are thousands of bright young white Male English high school students from underprivileged, rundown towns and cities this summer, who might also benefit from being given this summer school opportunity! Even if there was just one disappointed 16 year old English male student who has been stopped from applying because of this specific diversity criteria, it means injustice has occurred within the organisation.

Funnily down the lengthy description there is a paragraph about "Equal Opportunities" which ridiculously is by the very nature of this "focussed recruitment" not being "Equal" in it's intent!

[Bminusrob]

It is clearly wrong, and probably illegal, but it is not new. Ten years ago, my son spent some days carefully completing a civil service application form, having graduated, with a master's degree from Oxford. He sent the form off at about 9:30 one evening, and within less than five minutes, received an anonymous rejection. I am sure the application will never have been seen by a human being, and would have been rejected by an algorithm. The suggestion at the time was that there was positive discrimination against Oxbridge. Hey ho. Let's rule out all graduates from two of the world's top five universiites.
My son was lucky. He missed out on the civil service and got a real job, where, needless to say he is a high flyer in a company where politics is not to the fore.

[Lanark]

You have to read the advert very carefully, it states:

This opportunity is open to people from an ethnic minority background, or those identifying as female (from any background)

Nowhere does it use the word only, if they did it would be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.
It is sneaky but there is nothing there to stop a white male from applying.

I actually find this kind of advert a bit of a red flag for the employer, what it tells you is they have such an unbalanced workforce, an all white boys club that their HR dept are stooping to this kind of trickery to try and correct things.

For a woman: is that the kind of place you want to go and work? probably not.

[Watis]

You have to read the advert very carefully, it states:

This opportunity is open to people from an ethnic minority background, or those identifying as female (from any background)

Nowhere does it use the word only, if they did it would be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.
It is sneaky but there is nothing there to stop a white male from applying.

I actually find this kind of advert a bit of a red flag for the employer, what it tells you is they have such an unbalanced workforce, an all white boys club that their HR dept are stooping to this kind of trickery to try and correct things.

For a woman: is that the kind of place you want to go and work? probably not.

To avoid any possibility of rejection, the white male merely needs to identify as female during the application process.

Watis

[Dod101]

I think that the OP is being altogether too sensitive. There is nothing in the stuff from GCHQ to suggest that they are only recruiting from ethnic minorities or persons identifying as female. Indeed they stress that they are an Equal Opportunities employer and I suspect that not that long ago, they would only have recruited straight white males, although they have employed females for quite a long time now.

Most people in the two categories mentioned would have assumed that GCHQ would not recruit them anyway, for well known reasons, the risk of blackmail being an obvious one. Their ad is making it clear that they are not discriminating against these minorities. What actually happens of course, is another matter altogether.

Dod

[Lootman]

You have to read the advert very carefully, it states:

This opportunity is open to people from an ethnic minority background, or those identifying as female (from any background)

Nowhere does it use the word only, if they did it would be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.
It is sneaky but there is nothing there to stop a white male from applying.

I actually find this kind of advert a bit of a red flag for the employer, what it tells you is they have such an unbalanced workforce, an all white boys club that their HR dept are stooping to this kind of trickery to try and correct things.

For a woman: is that the kind of place you want to go and work? probably not.

The version I have seen is "applicants from minority groups are particularly encouraged to apply", which manages to be discriminatory without crossing the line.

Many places have an "unbalanced" workforce. You cannot micro-manage your workforce so it exactly matches the local demographic. And as a hiring manager I would not want to reject the best candidate just because it was a white male, and settle for someone inferior.

[Adamski]

This type of recruitment is common in the whole of the public sector. The funniest was the British Army recruitment ad from a few years ago which showed a Muslim soldier praying in the middle of a battle, and the rest of the soldiers stop to respectfully let him finish his prayers. that tickled me. They employ 10,000 diversity officers in the public sector. But where i work (private sector) in recent years getting more common to have courses on how to think, basically brainwashing sessions. Like everyone just go along with it but privately thinking and in conversations after saying this is all a bit crazy. I view HR/Diversity officers perhaps a taster of life under the next labour administration.

[Lootman]

I think it is the White English youngsters who actually may think justifications on positive discrimination are acceptable or should be just ignored because the minorities have had a tough time for decades anyway.

Doesn't it depend on which non-white minority though? For instance in my career, there was no shortage of Asians working in technical and managerial roles, in the City. I know there are a lot in IT as well. So when people talk about so-called "affirmative action" they are usually talking about blacks or Hispanics. And blacks and Hispanics often resent Asians because their success can be seen as undermining the argument that non-whites have a disadvantage. I believe it was the New York Times that coined the term "model minority" for Asian-Americans, comparing their out-performance in academia and the professions with Jewish-Americans.

In the US a lot of affirmative action programmes have been dismantled by the courts, especially for college admissions. Schools and colleges still play that game but they cannot legally discriminate based on race, so they instead try and achieve that through the back door by giving extra weight to economic factors or geography. If you choose poor kids from the south side of Chicago or south-central LA, then you're going to get mostly blacks anyway.

If you take the idea of race quotas to the logical conclusion, then you might have to include more white basketball players in the NBA. But wouldn't that be ridiculous?

[Arborbridge]

This sentence:

This opportunity is open to people from an ethnic minority background, or those identifying as female (from any background).

Is a little troubling, and could put off some white kids - particularly when coupled with the section under Eual Opportunities - though frankly, I doubt it. You might say they are going on a bit about it! However, I don't think this is discriminatory - although they appear to be trying too hard.

They are trying their best to make sure it's known that they open to all, which can only be a good thing, in my view.


Arb.

[Lanark]

To avoid any possibility of rejection, the white male merely needs to identify as female during the application process.

Watis

I get that you are just trying to be snarky, but in reality if they gave preference to someone because they were female or trans, without a good reason, that would also be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.

[Dod101]

Y

"Most people in the two categories mentioned would have assumed that GCHQ would not recruit them anyway"
- It's not people, it is young students. 16 year olds. This is also not a full time job but a summer school just for a few weeks. This generation and age of 16 year olds from minority backgrounds are a lot more clued up and savvy than you think. They are aware of equality and diversity rights. They do not lack the confidence which, probably people from these backgrounds might have felt in the 70s and 80s. Thanks to having been brought up since they were born on a diet of social media, they are very shrewd and knowledgeable. Further, I think it is the White English youngsters who actually may think justifications on positive discrimination are acceptable or should be just ignored because the minorities have had a tough time for decades anyway. Having wording like "Open to ethnic minority backgrounds" is either quite stupid or implying that the potential people who read it are stupid and have to be made aware that they are welcome to apply.

So 'young students' are not people? That is a bit of an odd view I would have thought. The ad/wording is probably quite a general one.

We are I think in a transitional period at the moment where, I would agree, older people find the need to stress ethnic minorities as being welcome, whereas younger people such as those being sought for these placements are probably much more 'blind' to the problem. I think this is just something we all need to live through. I am ancient by most measures and certainly find the world a very different place from the one I was born into during the time of the Second World War. Time will heal these current issues and then everyone will wonder what the fuss was about.

Dod

[XFool]

So... Has he applied?

[XFool]

"Most people in the two categories mentioned would have assumed that GCHQ would not recruit them anyway"
- It's not people, it is young students. 16 year olds.

So 'young students' are not people?

Made me smile.

[Bminusrob]

The these of threads like this make me glad I am retired. I just couldn't handle all the political correctness, which was just starting to take over before I retired. I ran a team of about a dozen graduate engineers. I always said that I didn't employ women, gays, foreigners, transsexuals. I just employed competent engineers. At the point when I retired, my team included women, a gay man, a transsexual woman, Indians, Irish, a black Zimbabwean refugee - oh, and a token straight white man or two.

[servodude]

The these of threads like this make me glad I am retired. I just couldn't handle all the political correctness, which was just starting to take over before I retired. I ran a team of about a dozen graduate engineers. I always said that I didn't employ women, gays, foreigners, transsexuals. I just employed competent engineers. At the point when I retired, my team included women, a gay man, a transsexual woman, Indians, Irish, a black Zimbabwean refugee - oh, and a token straight white man or two.

Hey - I might be a middle aged hetero white male in an engineering department that is a sea of variety but I would like to think I got my post through merit rather than tokenism (or because my parents relegated what was meant to be my name to middle-name status to avoid limiting my emploment prospects to Wimpey)

Thank you very much

I remember having the GCHQ application papers sent to me by a former project supervisor; what had originally looked like an interesting audio signal processing proposal had turned out to be for saving bandwidth in tank comms. I did consider it for a bit (they do get some fun toys) but there was a section for having your family interviewed and I figured that could possibly put me on a list I would rather avoid

-sd

[Watis]

To avoid any possibility of rejection, the white male merely needs to identify as female during the application process.

Watis

I get that you are just trying to be snarky, but in reality if they gave preference to someone because they were female or trans, without a good reason, that would also be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.

Not snarky so much as highlighting the words 'identifying as female'.

If 'trans women are women' then 'female' would have been sufficient. Can't have it both ways.

Watis

[servodude]

To avoid any possibility of rejection, the white male merely needs to identify as female during the application process.

Watis

I get that you are just trying to be snarky, but in reality if they gave preference to someone because they were female or trans, without a good reason, that would also be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.

Not snarky so much as highlighting the words 'identifying as female'.

If 'trans women are women' then 'female' would have been sufficient. Can't have it both ways.

Watis

Really? It seemed a pretty succinct way to indicate they're not going to be pricks about it
- which seems wise as unfortunately in this day and age I can fully imagine plenty of Mail reading type snowflakes getting irked enough enough about an advert like this to take their social accounts for a whinge

[BobbyD]

This opportunity is open to people from an ethnic minority background, or those identifying as female (from any background)[/i]

Nowhere does it use the word only, if they did it would be a breach of the Equality Act 2010.
It is sneaky but there is nothing there to stop a white male from applying.

...so they've built a reading comprehension test in to the advert. Seems very efficient.