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Equal opportunities monitoring - valid or discriminatory?

Discussion in 'Serious' started by Pete J, 6 Jul 2020.

  1. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Shall I stick my neck out or not on the gender pay gap? Okay, go on then. Please bear in mind that as with any post on the internet, this is just my opinion and am willing to have it challenged, provided it's done so reasonably. I think that it's difficult to present a clear cut case on the gender pay gap. Unfortunately, there's a potential argument that it's a de rigueur thing at the moment to do and that if you're feeling a little paranoid, there's a hidden narrative being pushed.

    I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the data? I imagine that the answer would be 'no' as it's probably confidential.
    I think Jordan Peterson explains very well why men tend to be in the more senior roles:



    Now, how do I feel about those weird womenfolk in the workplace? Well, at my ex-job, they were lovely and competent. I hope they were getting paid fairly. In the office environment, I'd say the spread was about 50/50, but on the shop floor, no women at all - small company and women tend to stay away from manual labour in my experience. Now, let's focus on two women - one who had the same job title and age as me and had worked at the company for 12 years (as opposed to me just starting there), and another who had just finished her PhD and was just getting into the world of work (and had a position junior to me). In the first case, I'd expect her to be on more money than I was because she'd work at the same company for years and deserves a reward for loyalty. In the latter case, I'd expect her to be paid less - as I did when in the same position. Because experience. Indeed - I bet she's actually getting paid a LOT more than I did for my first job after finishing my PhD.

    I've also worked in the past with incompetent women who would play the blame game, but that is also true of incompetent men I've worked with.

    Anyway, let's end on a funny but relevant video:

     
  2. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    I do go out into the real world. Strangely, someone who works in IT consulting does kind of need to go out into the real world. The last three customer sites I've been to are;

    Component manufacturing - Both in the office and on the production lines
    Organisational system design & manufacturing - Primarily office, but the route there was through the manufacturing line
    Laboratory equipment manufacturing - Both office and production line.

    I meet a lot of people at all levels of business because of the nature of my job.

    I also don't particularly like avocado, so.

    Then you need more experiences.

    I've lost count of the number of sexist things I've heard and seen in the workplace. I dare say some people could call me as a witness in workplace gender discrimination cases, harassment cases, and perhaps even a race case or two.

    You rather astutely point out the reason that the kind of data you ask for is hard to find, and even give what I would wager is the most accurate reason for that data being hard to find - Publishing it would open the company up to lawsuits. The ability to prove that you weren't hired, or were fired, for reason X is quite important in employment disputes. Companies won't want to publish that information freely if it negatively impacts them. Although there are some studies that control for that, and show that the pay gap is alive and well.

    I think, however, you're operating under a false idea of what the gender pay gap information you read is actually representing.

    My understanding of it is that the pay is averaged out across multiple levels of business because the difference between these two "pots", as you call them, represents a difference in hiring practices for the two genders. It's not that a lady cleaner, to use your example, should be on a male CEO's pay scale - It's that there are more women in lower paid, easier to replace, roles than men. We could discuss the reasons for that until the end of time, I reckon.


    https://www.weforum.org/reports/gender-gap-2020-report-100-years-pay-equality

    This report covers what I've just said, but with facts and figures. Here's a not-very-snappy-quote from it;

    "The report highlights three primary reasons for this: women have greater representation in roles that are being automated; not enough women are entering professions where wage growth is the most pronounced (most obviously, but not exclusively, technology), and women face the perennial problem of insufficient care infrastructure and access to capital."

    https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...-pay-women-paid-less-motherhood-a8856121.html

    This article covers what I believe to be the fundamental misunderstanding you have, and is also pretty recent.

    Another not-very-snappy-quote (Although succinct);

    "The gender pay gap is the average difference between hourly wages for men and women."

    https://www.engenderhealth.org/about/gender-pay-gap-report/

    Another report (The PDF is linked in the latter stages of the explanation on that page). More not-very-snappy-quoting;

    "The gender pay gap represents the difference between the average pay of women and the average pay of men in an organization, irrespective of job positions. It is expressed as a percentage of the average pay for men. The pay gap is often an indicator of gender balance (or imbalance) in leadership, middle-management, and lower-paying positions."


    I'm not a football kind of bloke, so I'm not sure of the ins and outs of this - Although I do recall that example of pay difference.

    If I remember rightly the factors to consider in that pay gap are;

    The womens team had a base salary - The mens team did not. The mens team were paid based on playing and performance. Why's that relevant you ask? Read on!

    Both teams would earn bonuses based on their performance - The mens team could earn much higher bonuses compared with the womens team.

    The womens team were kicking ass at the time, on the pitch - The mens team were, generally, playing badly. They weren't present in the mens equivalent version of the competitions that the womens team were (And were winning), so their pay was considerably lower - Because they weren't paid a base salary like the womens team. I'm given to understand this wasn't a one-year situation, and in fact was a recurring situation, which made the pay disparity seem larger in favour of the womens team.

    Had the mens team been playing better than a pile of goldfish flopping around on the pitch, they would have consistently out-earned the womens team. That, as it happens, is why the womens teams case was thrown out.

    https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/may/04/uswnt-us-womens-soccer-team-equal-pay-lawsuit


    This one's easy.

    Because generic white blokes have ruled the roost for too long. Discrimination against people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, people of various religious backgrounds, and so on is rampant and not good. Employers need to broaden their staffing and to offer the same opportunities to people as generic white blokes have been getting since forever.

    It seems unfair to us generic white blokes because up until recently we've only had to compete against other generic white blokes. Doors are opening that should never have been closed in the first place. I'm no expert, a casual observer if anything, but from what I see the kind of rejection that these people experience is so much more soul destroying because they already have to fight so hard for something they should just.. Have.

    Taking trans people as an example - If only because I see more of that from the sidelines than anything else - They face a daily fight with the NHS to get hormone-related therapies, to get support through a transition that is frankly terrifying. To not be mocked by the rich and famous, to not be treated like some sort of expendable "maybe if we wait long enough it'll all blow over" statistic.

    For people in that position to then have to fight to get a job that they are qualified for only to be rejected because, although unsaid, the employer went for a generic white bloke instead is crushing. That shouldn't be allowed to continue. The gender pay gap needs to be solved faster than the next hundred years because that, too, has to be soul destroying to have to fight for every single day - When there's no excuse for it.

    Women, men, and everyone on the gender scale (Or, also, not on the scale) is equal and should be offered positions and remuneration regardless of anything but qualifications for the job.

    Until there is that kind of level playing field, I don't believe it's unfair to stack the deck in favour of anyone who isn't a generic white bloke.

    Part one!
     
    Last edited: 7 Jul 2020
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  3. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    Part two!

    For someone who is in a group that is regularly discriminated against, I imagine they'd consider it a win, because without the world pushing towards equality for every person they probably never would have had the opportunity to even get in the door.

    Would it be preferable that they weren't picked for the purpose of diversifying the employee pool? Of course it would. But until the workplace is as diverse as it can be, I don't think that's going to be the case.


    Well, the first two of those examples are from 2003 and 2006 respectively. I'm not sure it's wise to make an argument about a current topic based on evidence from fourteen and seventeen years ago.

    The BBC newsbeat thing is a little more of a recent example (Although still two years old at this point), and on the face of it seems a shade racist.

    However.

    Given what I remember of BBC news staff, it wasn't particularly well rounded. Of the main BBC news team I only really recall Naga Munchetty being a regular who was non-white. I didn't see much of Newsbeat, but I don't recall it being drastically different. Although I do recall seeing a black gentleman presenting on there - But I couldn't tell you when that was.

    If you've got a newsroom full of white people, I'd say it makes sense to try and broaden your scope with a non-white hire or six. It's definitely phrased poorly, but given that white people could then, and can still now, quite easily get employed I'm not going to get my pitchfork out over it.


    With football I have no idea who any of these people are.

    However, you don't improve diversity by hiring the same ten white guys every time.

    I'd go out on a limb and say that people of colour don't have great representation in football coaching because they haven't been given a fair shake.

    You say that two of these black former players played for England, and then went on to coach a lower league team, or under-15's. Did it occur to you that, perhaps, racism is why they weren't offered a more high profile job?

    I'm not a football guy, but I do know a few names (Peer pressure in school days) and I'm pretty sure one of them is Gary Neville and from what I know of that generic white bloke is he went from Man U to England to a senior management position.

    Suggests to me that, perhaps, there's a level of discrimination at play in picking which generic white blokes get to do the managing/coaching in football. Hell, I recall seeing several managers or coaches do interviews post games and they could barely speak English - Which I found odd, as they were coaching or managing a team of English players. Which must have made it interesting when discussing plays.

    So.. You don't know that the non-generic-white-blokes at your former workplace (With whom you presumably interacted) weren't qualified?

    So how do you know that a non-generic-white-bloke getting a job instead of you isn't qualified?


    But you are the kind of person to lambaste equality in hiring practices on the internet.


    I mean.. If she had a couple of long term illnesses, then I imagine she was on statutory sick pay for most of it. If you had a lot of short illnesses then I'd wager you weren't often on statutory sick pay, so were costing the business money and not earning it back for them, so.. To me it doesn't sound like grounds for discrimination based on the information provided.

    I mean.. Anyone can be racist. I've been called a fair few things by non-white people when I was in college. I don't think that's in dispute here.

    It's the kind of racism that's a problem - A white person not hiring a person of colour because that person is, in fact, a person of colour is far worse than a person of colour calling a white person "white trash".

    At the time, when I was on the receiving end of it, it bugged the **** out of me that no one lifted a finger to punish "teh racisums". Looking back, though, I don't think it mattered. It didn't affect me at all. I still finished my BTEC. I still went on and got jobs. Who cares that I was called something?

    I could, were I of the disposition to, be in a position of hiring people. If I took that experience and used it as a reason to not hire people of colour, that is a very damaging kind of racism and infinitely worse than what various people of colour have said to me in the street.

    In short, I'm not going to cry about white people's feelers being hurt by people saying the kind of **** that white people have, historically and no doubt presently, thought and said to prevent people of colour progressing at the same rate as them.


    I really can't get my head around what's being said in this bit. It reads kind of like a brain fart onto a keyboard and I can't get through it.
     
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  4. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Of course the world ain't perfect, now get the liquid helium cooling ready for your brain...

    The "eeeeevil" progressives are the ones who are trying (relax, I said trying, I didn't mention succeeding) to actually do something about it while the "miss goody two shoes" conservatives are trying to keep things as they are (or even roll it further back).

    You may think you are being clever and getting in some jab... but stroking our hipster beards in some gentrified part of London while wasting £20 on avocado toast is sooo pre-lockdown, we've since advanced to home made aubergine hummus.

    Also FYI, avocado references just reveal which flavour of right wing cranks you are parroting the view points of rather than saying anything about the people you are arguing against.

    There is only one world.

    So close yet so far...

    The Pay Gap is merely a symptom that can be measured in cold hard numbers.
    To get to the actual problem you have to address the root causes.

    Like for example when little girls are being taught that back braking labour in an elderly dumping facility care home for min wage and no chance of career advancement is a good thing while little boys are steered clear of such dead end jobs.

    Also might I add, it is also in your own interest to make sure women earn as much as possible, because if they don't then your taxes will have to top up their insufficient pensions.

    Announcing a target to the public is not evidence that any specific action is being taken to meet said target.

    No one believes that anecdote without evidence.

    Complete nonsense, you (or anyone else) can't just yell discrimination and get what they want, you would need evidence that it actually had something to do with discrimination.

    Complete nonsense, you (or anyone else) can't just yell discrimination and get what they want, you would need evidence that it actually had something to do with discrimination.

    I'm just repeating myself? Touché brother, so are you.

    Replacing "I'm not racist but" with "look over there, a human with the theoretical capacity to be just as racist as me" doesn't work to make any point.

    Shops don't have the money to have a security guard follow you just for shits and giggles (regardless of race), something about your behaviour or demeanour will be the common thread in the vast majority of times it happened.

    Ah the good old "Everything is a conspiracy trope".

    To quote Trump: "Fake News!!!!!!".

    Stuff like that doesn't happen at companies big enough to have a proper HR department.
     
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  5. Spraduke

    Spraduke Lurker

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    My anecdotal experience from the world of engineering (primarily oil & gas) is that there is a severe lack of diversity in most meetings but that this is not inherently down to racism/sexism in these companies.

    Taking the SME I work for. We are a small team but have women, black people, gay people (etc) on our team but when we are recruiting (often at graduate level) the majority of applicants are young white men. Out of 10 telephone interviews I did this year (pre corona) not a single one was a women but there was some diversity in terms of ethnic backgrounds (Asian and eastern European).

    I would like to think we give everyone a fair shout and decide purely on skill but when they're not even applying (or simply don't have the degrees/grades required) its bound to be lopsided. This needs to be combated at school age by giving capable young (mainly poor) people the same education chances as trust fund kiddies who can buy the best education and encouraging (but not forcing) more women into STEM subjects.

    As for gender pay gap - a big chunk of the gap (but almost certainly not all) is that so many women take up part time roles or take long maternity breaks which sets there careers back vs their male counterparts and often precludes them from being promoted to high power positions (for at least some years of their career). After all its difficult to have a senior manager who only works a few days a week or is on reduced hours. If we ever reach the point where its equal split of men to women taking on childcare duties I would expect this effect to reduce. Again for my situation it was the obvious choice for my wife to work part time for 3 years then give up work 2 years because I'm the bread winner. If she had been the bread winner it might well have turned out the other way around.

    This is a problem that is only solved over generations, not overnight. Its getting better but change is slow. The more diverse a company is the more diverse it remains and most people would argue the healthier it will be as you avoid too narrow a world perspective (after all how well can 'rich' white men in the UK relate to challenges facing poorer nations in say Asia or Africa).

    All of the above is my anecdotal experience and opinion and not researched in any form.
     
  6. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Perhaps, but at the same time there's an element of chicken and egg here. Firms can be reluctant to promote women without children because they are worried that they will take time off for maternity leave at some point. And again, to labour a point, if the senior leadership who are making the decisions about promotions are all men then this sort of thinking doesn't get challenged and thought diversity is reduced.

    And in any event, just because you take a year out for maternity leave doesn't somehow render you less capable or committed. You can be just as good a senior manager or partner with a career break or maternity leave behind you as you can without. And being part-time needn't be a barrier either.

    Put it this way: if you're a project manager, say, who is juggling work with being a mum and all that that entails (and I'm not going to get into who assumes the majority of the burden of bringing up kids and running a household, because that's another, albeit related, discussion) then I'd argue that your job-relevant skills are likely to be more developed than many others!
     
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  7. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Well actually, the info isn't confidential - employers over a certain size have to disclose this data. Take a look here for gender pay gap reporting. I won't link to my own employer specifically as I prefer not to say who I work for - that's personal info and not something I'll share.
     
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  8. damien c

    damien c Mad FPS Gamer

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    Thank you for at least posting something that is actually thought out, and @liratheal.

    I agree with what you say about the "Pay Gap" the issue is not women being paid less than men it's actually about less women being employed by a company in higher paid roles, that is the issue and as you say we need to get out of the whole "Girls should only do this job, or that job but never those jobs", Women should be encouraged to do any job they want if they are capable.



    In regards to the office situation of only a few people being "White", yes it may seem hard to belive but it's true.

    Whether someone wants to belive it or not is up to them but I know that is what it is like, but if I went to the other side of the building it would be more White people, because there are more white people in the Customer Services/ Customer Ordering team than in the Technical part of the business which is side I work on.

    The descimination thing, well I am sorry but people do shout about they have been discriminated against when they have not and generally to avoid a public backlash from social media these days those people/companies generally cave to the demands.

    Look at what is going on within the gaming industry at the moment with blokes being called out for "Bad Behaviour" they are being treated as guilty and losing sponsors etc without any proof, it's just the mere accusation and they are screwed, that is discrimination based on Gender because they are believing the women with no proof, and it's not just in the gaming industry that this happens.

    Yes some of them are guilty and yes trying to prove something is difficult, but look at the whole Angry Joe situation he lost so much only for the women who accused him a couple of days later to admit he did not abuse/assault her but he was discriminated against because he is a Man.

    Look at Justin Bieber, he was accused and people instantly jumped on him saying he should be killed etc etc on social media, they believed the women instantly until he proved it was wrong but his name is now tarnished because of it and will be discriminated against because of it.

    Then you have women who are genuine about what they report and they are discriminated against for reporting it which is a shame and shouldn't happen but it does happen.

    The problem is people are discriminated against all day every day, but most of the time it doesn't get a eye brow raised because people just don't see it.

    Being followed around a store that I worked at, by Security has nothing to do with my look or anything else, it's all about that security guard looking at me and thinking "Young lad, better make sure he is not a thief" despite me previously working there, and they only stopped when I mentioned it to one of the staff members that I use to work with.

    Again believe it or not but these are my personal experiences, the same with the questions being used to remove people from the list of applicants for a job to be interviewed.

    Thankfully that company was shut down because they were commiting tax fraud.

    That doesn't mean it doesn't happen at other companies though, in order to meet a target of having a certain percentage of people meet a certain criteria, the probelm is you shouldn't have those questions on a application form because they do not mean anything about whether you are capable of doing a job.

    The only time I would see it being acceptable to refuse to employ someone based on those questions is if that job is something like working in a womens shelter where they may not want blokes working there or something similar, then yes by all means exclude people who wouldn't be a good fit.

    Companies should not be setting targets to have a certain percentage of people be this or that, because the people who should be employed should be the best person for the job that fits in well within the team etc, the problem is people mainly the younger generation don't look at it like that and just scream it's discrimination when they don't get the job or enrolled in to a university etc.
     
    Last edited: 7 Jul 2020
  9. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I've talked about this issue on the forums before: a good team is a diverse team, it's as simple as that. You can have a team made up of the very best people possible, and if they're all white men (or black women, or purple aliens) you're going to run into problems a more diverse team would not.

    This isn't opinion; this is fact, and very easy to back up.

    If Nikon had even one Asian on the S630 development or testing team, it wouldn't have run into this problem.

    If HP had even one Black person on the facial-tracking webcam development team, it wouldn't have run into this problem.

    Similarly, Microsoft and Kinect.

    I'm not sure what company made this soap dispenser, but I can guess at the skin tone of the development and testing team.

    If Microsoft had had just one woman, or even a squeaky-voiced man, working on its speech recognition API, this wouldn't have happened.

    It took until 2011 for car manufacturers to test with female-shaped test dummies, which saw some vehicles' crash safety ratings drop from five-star to two-star with a 40 percent risk of death or serious injury - a risk which had been completely ignored 'cos nobody thought testing exclusively on a male-shaped body was a problem.

    Chances of a Black person having been on the team for the development of Google's image classification algorithm, which tagged Black people as "gorillas"? Slim.

    Apple's HealthKit got selenium tracking a year(!) before it got period tracking. No prizes for guessing the gender of the development team there.

    Those mmWave scanners at airports? They can't tell the difference between a hidden weapon and an underwired bra. (Ctrl-F "underwire".)

    It extends outside of the workplace, too: the FDA has warned on a lack of diversity in clinical trials, which can have a major impact on healthcare for those from under-represented groups.

    To quote the World Economic Forum, "there is substantial research to show that diversity brings many advantages to an organization" - including a 19% increase in revenue due to innovation in businesses with a more diverse management team.
     
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  10. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    As should anyone. Woman, man, black, white, straight, gay, binary, non-binary.

    The number of white vs non-white employees wasn't really a point of contention for me. It read to me that there was some suggestion that the non-white people might not have been qualified, and might only have been there because they were not white. Which I find somewhat harder to believe. A business, at the end of the day, is there to make someone money. Employing people who can't do the job tends to not further to goal of making that someone money, and I'd wager doesn't happen as often as people might think. Less qualified? Less experienced? Less than acceptable work ethic? Sure, I could believe that. But flat out not qualified? That I am less willing to believe.

    Cultural differences might be at play here. I am aware that some cultures prize qualifications and well honed skills above all else, which tends to lead towards certain cultures being more represented in certain environments than others.

    Of course they do. It's not unheard of for people to make false allegations against someone in an attempt to cost said someone their job/personal life/whatever. I'd contend that it's rarer than the actual accusations, and statistically insignificant as we humans grow and change our position on discrimination, harassment, abuse, and so on.

    I don't tend to follow gaming industry people because, frankly, I find their social media posts often insufferable. I don't even know who, or what, Angry Joe is.

    Again, though, I find myself unwilling to pick up a pitchfork.

    There is a real problem in many, probably all, industries with discrimination and harassment - Whether it's against women, people of colour, people of religious persuasions, people who don't identify as straight (I thought non-hetero-normative was the 'right' way to reference here, but some googling has suggested that perhaps it isn't, so.. I'm not really sure how else to phrase it).

    Until reporting that behaviour through the correct channels and having it dealt with outside of the court of public opinion is actually viable, that's all victims have. To try and deny them that on the basis that a few false allegations are involved? I really can't see that argument.

    Right now, certain behaviours are protected, or written off as "jokes" internally when a senior person abuses their position of power because it's safer within the company to play ball. You don't have to look hard to find evidence of that in a lot of different industries. You do, however, have to look a bit harder to find unsubstantiated claims against someone.

    You don't have to look hard to find people being complete dicks about something. Mike Pence, the VP of the United States, has said that he limits his one on one time with women because he doesn't want the chance to be accused of inappropriate behaviour.

    Y'know what that says to me? It says to me that he knows that his behaviour towards women is inappropriate in some way, but instead of changing his behaviour he'd rather just ignore women in the workplace. That mentality is just not on. It's discrimination against women, but instead of being because he doesn't believe women can do the job (Although I dare say he thinks that too), it's because he'd rather not change his behaviour towards women. It's a dick move on his part, and if he had any spine at all he'd get all of his **** together and be a decent human being.


    I'd rather not look at Bieber, if I'm honest. However, I am dimly aware that he has a long and storied history of being insensitive to certain issues, appears to believe he's above the law, and is a hormonal young man with millions of young (And old, I guess) women and girls lusting after him. I'd not be surprised to hear he'd behaved inappropriately.

    And with how many women still go crazy for him today, I don't think his reputation (Which, even without the allegation, was not beyond reproach) has suffered for it.

    And I'd be willing to bet it happens far more often than any false allegations do.

    I am quite sure that most generic white blokes are blind to many forms of discrimination and kinds of harassment because the gift of being a generic white bloke is that you slip under basically every radar. We're not harassed (As much. I'm sure Ewan McGreggor or George Clooney or something would have claim to having been harassed). We're not discriminated against. Until recently we've basically been bulletproof in the workplace, and boy have some generic white blokes indulged in that.

    I haven't been through an airport without being manually patted down, my carry-on searched, or manually checked (Passport, questions, etc) on returning to the UK for as long as I've been travelling without my parents. It's annoying, sure, but I am also aware that anyone who isn't white as the driven snow is going to get far worse treatment than I do. I've done some properly stupid **** in my time that, were I not whiter than white, would no doubt have landed me in cuffs in the back of a police car.

    That's racial profiling. I'm white, thus, I'm not a threat. If I were slightly darker? I probably would have been. Not cool.

    I've never seen, or heard, of that happening - But I also haven't been in a position to need to know, or hear, that kind of stuff. I've heard some dodgy **** out of a HR person, but only because they forgot I was there. Yay IT worker, I guess.

    Companies absolutely need to set targets.

    The only way this kind of workplace discrimination, harassment, abuse and unfair treatment changes is from the inside. And if there aren't hard targets set, then the existing generic white bloke hiring person won't be going out of their way to hire the kinds of people that would change things.

    I'd wager, quite often, that a person of colour, or a person of some religious persuasion that isn't Jesus-y, or isn't applying to what is considered "traditional" for their gender wouldn't be far off the mark in assuming some kind of discrimination.

    Of course it goes both ways, it's not hard to find gender bias in custody cases, in the realm of childcare, or nursing - But the imbalance is heavily towards anyone not a generic white bloke. Until there is a balance, there's no point wasting time "solving" those situations. Deal with the big **** first, the little **** after. And right now, the big **** is definitely not to do with generic white blokes having a harder time getting custody of their kids. Or being nurses.
     
  11. damien c

    damien c Mad FPS Gamer

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    @Gareth Halfacree @liratheal Thank you both, to be honest some of the points you have made I had not thought about, and I am happy to admit if I am wrong on something and you have pointed out where I am wrong so thank you both.

    I will look in to things, because quite frankly if people are not willing to point something out when someone is wrong with actual information then how is that person supposed to learn from there mistakes or ignorance etc, and clearly I need to look in to a few things on a personal level to understand stuff more than I currently do, or to correct my thoughts on something based of personal experience because it's not always going to be like that.

    Yes I may come across as a ass at times, and all I can do is say sorry about it, that is the way I am and people who know me, work with me etc understand I am the way I am and they point out when I am wrong about something so I can better myself just the same as they expect me to do the same.

    There are changes that need to be made within every aspect of the world, but honestly I cannot see them happening anytime soon.
     
  12. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    I suspect that if this discussion had take place face-to-face (while socially distanced, of course!) then it'd would have had a totally different tone. It can be hard to discern tone from a purely text-based post (tbh I struggle with that face-to-face anyway), and the kind of posts that others have written in this thread are the kind of things that could be spoken far quicker than they can be written. It would have taken me a long time indeed to try and write the kind of stuff that the others have done because I tend to agonise over everything and write/re-write until I'm sick of seeing my own words - that's a 'me problem', not a 'you problem'.

    But there is one key point I almost forgot however:

    [​IMG]

    :grin:

    EDIT: In case it isn't clear, that is intended a joke ;)
     
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  13. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Large parts of what you wrote there effectively says more about the inherent evils of social media and celebrity culture rather than the allegations / investigations into said allegations / eventual outcomes.

    But I just wanted to pick up on this bit because it is quite important:

    A lot of that could be avoided if the "proper" authorities did their job, for example in America there is a massive backlog of untested rape kits:
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rape-kits-are-sitting-on-shelves-untested/

    Or for an example closer to home the shocking ignorance by the Police on the subject of abuse when Jimmy Savile was interviewed years ago and they missed all the red flags:
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/15/jimmy-savile-boasted-police-abuse
    (The original transcript is still available elsewhere... but I'd strongly caution anyone against reading it)

    And the less said about the non-prosecution agreement Epstein got in 2008 the better.

    Why am I bringing up stuff like that? Because it all erodes the trust actual victims have in the "proper" authorities effectively pushing them towards what (most of the victims) see as a last resort to get some sort of Justice.
    And at that point we then have to circle back to the problems at the core of social media.

    and all that then circles back into what @Gareth Halfacree said about how a lack of diversity harms the designing of processes etc.
     
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  14. Bloody_Pete

    Bloody_Pete Technophile

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    I went to uni with a load of upper middle class white geniuses, and they were very skilled but the echo chamber effect was awful. In group work there was rarely more than one idea, and very few people offered different suggestions, it was only the older people like me and the two women in my year! It really showed me that often when employing people after a certain skill level you can basically ignore the aqualifications and you look at the person and the experiances far more, as often they offer far more to jobs.
     
  15. damien c

    damien c Mad FPS Gamer

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    Yes it's difficult to determine the tone of a conversation via text and I do the same thing where, I type something out and then look at it and think I need to change that and then forget why I am changing it and often it's to my own detriment as it doesn't come across correctly and then, due to my own personal attitude at times I stick to my foot in it even more by thinking I am right.

    The thing is I have learned some stuff today that will hopefully help me understand things better in the future, and also I should not let my personal experience fully dictate my attitude towards things.

    Very true around the untested kit's etc.

    Personally I dealt with a false accusation whilst in high school, and I will be honest one of them has completely messed me up and I do not trust any female who I do not know, because of what happened to me in high school.

    Let me be clear I did nothing, and I will not be posting about them because they are very very personal and it's not something I want to share with people.

    All I will say is that my life was difficult between the ages of 15 and 19.


    As much as I would like to believe these people who come forward, I find it very very difficult and I shouldn't but I do because of my own experiences.

    Personally I would like the people who make false claims to receive the same penalty that someone who has commited that crime receives, but that is not the way the world works from what I have seen they basically get away with it after ruining someones name and life be them male or female.
     
  16. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    The argument against that is the same as the argument against the death penalty: what if you're wrong?

    It goes further, though. These figures are from 2019, but claim 58,657 rape allegations and only 1,925 successful prosecutions - that's a 3.28% rate.

    Now, it's possible that there were 56,732 people making malicious false allegations of rape in the UK in 2019 - possible, but not likely. What's more likely is that the majority of those cases were legitimate, but lacked sufficient evidence for prosecution.

    Put yourself in the shoes of an actual, genuine, legitimate victim of rape: you're going to go to the police knowing there's a 96.72% chance that your rapist will walk free. That's discouraging, right? Now imagine there's a 96.72% chance that you'll go to prison instead of the rapist. You willing to take those odds? Are you going to report the crime, or are you going to up sticks and move and hope your rapist doesn't follow?

    There's a reason courts can't find someone innocent: they can only rule guilty or not guilty (yes, yes, there are some other possible rulings, but let's not get bogged down in minutiae.) Yes, there absolutely needs to be a way to criminalise false accusations of rape (and there is, or rather are: Perverting the Course of Justice and Wasting Police Time if the allegations are in the form of a police report, or defamation, libel and slander if it's spoken or written publicly) but you need to balance it against the risk of making it even less likely genuine victims will come forward (and, as I say, the odds are already stacked a mile high against them.)
     
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  17. damien c

    damien c Mad FPS Gamer

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    What I mean is the people who make a claim and it's proven to be false, just making a claim shouldn't be treated as true or false unless it can be proven either way, and I know that means probably a large chunk of people get away with it, but if we want to avoid sending someone to prison when they shouldn't then that is something that we have to accept, the same with accepting that the majority of people who make false claims will get away with it.

    It sucks yes, but we have a system of needing to prove guilt but it doesn't work when it comes to this subject because the person being accused is always Guilty until proven innocent and then even then is still treated as guilty by people when proven to be innocent if they are.

    The problem is that for those who as you say are genuine about what has happened to them, or people who are falsely accused, the system let's them down massively but I am not sure how to fix it because it's so difficult to prove unless the person committing it happens to record themselves doing it or brags about it.

    One of my friends will not sleep with someone unless before they "Start" they both sign a document that he has had drawn up, and if that person is drunk etc he won't go anywhere near they have to be stone cold sober, how it would hold up I don't know but it's interesting that he does that and I have heard other people considering it as well.
     
  18. enbydee

    enbydee Minimodder

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    You can't sign away your ability to withdraw consent. If someone asked me to sign something purporting to disclaim my right to accuse them of rape I would worry what was about to happen.
     
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  19. liratheal

    liratheal Sharing is Caring

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    It's such a complex subject, the consent one.

    Changing of minds before, or during, is one level of complexity - But changing after? It's so complicated. More so that we're all blokes (I think), so I doubt our understanding is 'right' enough to really debate a possible solution.

    I, personally, struggle to see how one can withdraw consent after the fact - But I'm also thinking that there are so many contributing factors to not being able to say no in the heat of the moment. I hate to refer to a show I've not seen, but "She won't say no, because of the implication" springs to mind.

    Every time my girlfriend and I discuss stuff like this all I keep coming back to is 'damn, I'm glad I'm not a girl' 'cause holy **** does it sound like a minefield of risks if you're a girl.
     
  20. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Indeed, if someone asked me to sign something like that even as a bloke I'd be out the door before they got halfway through explaining themselves.
     

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