Yasmin Alibhai-Brown spouts more sexist rubbish
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Dear Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
More often than not, I let your opinions on many issues just pass me by because your analysis is so wide of the mark that I don’t even know where to start. Today we see yet another example of how you (and the likes of Harriet Harman) have manipulated government statistics – in this case, the latest unemployment figures – to suit your own purposes. The economic situation facing everyone is becoming increasingly serious, and your vicious attack on employers (who are apparently all male) in today’s Independent along with your ’selective’ use of government data to support your views is unwarranted and unreasonable.
You have lept on today’s figures about male and female unemployment. According to the ONS official data release, “the number of people in full-time employment was 21.82 million in the three months to November 2008, down 89,000 from the three months to August 2008. Of this total, 13.99 million were men, down 36,000 over the quarter, and 7.83 million were women, down 53,000 over the quarter.” Well, if women are losing their jobs faster than men, it must be discrimination!!! I mean, what other possible explanation could there be? Your assertion that ”bad times are good for sneaky practices [and] bosses are using the recession to push out child-bearing women, those pesky breeders who will insist on working” is clearly true and impossible to argue against. Or is it? Here is a very interesting graph from the ONS website showing the industries that men and women are employed in:
What you will notice is that women make up a much higher proportion of employment in sectors such as personal service, administration, secretarial and sales/customer service. Guess what – these are the the first sectors to get cut from budgets when things get tough. For example, secretaries and PAs (roles which women often excel in) are very useful but are obvious candidates for job losses, not because they are women but because you can live without these people if push comes to shove. Customer service is another area that all companies hate and will therefore be happy to shed workers to cut costs, and do I really need to explain why sales forces are being sliced up all around the country in almost every industry sector? I hope not.
So, you see, women losing their jobs faster than men is not evidence of discrimination – far from it. It is merely a reflection of the industries that women choose. No doubt some women were caught up in the meltdown of our financial services but when more men lost their jobs in this sector than women, I don’t remember hearing you crying out for new laws to stop discrimination against men in the workplace. Why? Because people losing their jobs is not evidence of discrimination. To make matters worse, you also chose to ignore some rather interesting bits of data that the ONS released on the same day as your men/women unemployment figures. For example, the number of unemployed men rose 87,000 in the three months to November, while the number of unemployed women only rose 44,000. Furthermore, over the last 12 months male working age employment has dropped by 1% but for women it has only fallen by 0.3%. Both of these snippets of information tell me that you are not being wholly truthful with your account of what is happening in our economy. The number of people in part-time employment actually rose by 63,000 in the last quarter and women outnumber men by almost 3:1 in part-time work, so while men are being sacked all around the country and ending up with zero income, women are frequently holding their own.
I hope I have explained why your grossly misrepresentative opinions, which are no doubt related to the upcoming Equality Bill that I recently tore to pieces on the blog, have no place in political circles. By all means use government data to support your opinions but be careful not to accidentally miss out those all important facts that disprove your theories. Otherwise you might end up looking a bit ill-informed, and we wouldn’t want that. I have always been of the opinion that women are still discriminated against at some level and rebalancing parental leave towards men would certainly help address this. However, when I see people trying to deceive the public as to the reality of what is happening in the workplace, my sympathy for those on the receiving end of discrimation starts to wane a little. Please stick to the facts in future.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“Guess what – these are the the first sectors to get cut from budgets when things get tough. For example, secretaries and PAs (roles which women often excel in) are very useful but are obvious candidates for job losses, not because they are women but because you can live without these people if push comes to shove.”
Just imagine her reaction if companies decide they don’t need ‘diversity officers’ too…
I would agree that diversity officers should be the first to go, but I was under the impression that there were some legal requirements on employers to implement the equal opportunities legalisation and collect lots of information to enforce positive discrimination?….
The government wanted to push women out to work. Rather than educating them, it squeezed their benefits and pushed them out into McJobs which were usually in retail. The retail sector is in meltdown thanks to this government’s crazy economics. Ergo lots of women lost their jobs.
Its simple cause and effect.
I’m sure that some women have been badly affected by the downturn and there is reason to think that some of this might be down to a substandard education in the past.
What really irks me is that these unemployment figures tell us nothing about why these jobs are being lost, yet they are being presented as a closed case. Just like Harriet Harman declaring that men getting paid more than women across the entire economy in the complete absence of any supporting evidence that discrimination is taking place, we now have Yasmin Alibhai-Brown declaring that women losing full-time jobs faster than men is also discrimination. On both counts, the data presented is either deliberately misleading or woefully ill-informed – not sure which I prefer, mind.
Excellent. Add my signature to that.
Even if it is true that women are losing lower paid part time jobs slightly faster than men are losing higher paid full time jobs, the total ‘loss of earnings’ suffered by men is thus by definition many times higher and more devastating than that lost by women.
Anecodal, my wife’s nearly full time job will end next month and she has found a part time job on a similar hourly pay, this is not the end of the world for us.
Well even if women were being got rid of on a targeted basis, isn’t that positive discrimination anyway? Just what Harman’s been harping on about surely. You can’t please anybody these days.
Your assumption that women choose the types of jobs that would obviously be culled first in hard times is unsupported by any researched reference.
The rest of your argument fails if you cannot substantiate that assumption.
Susan Faludi in her book Backlash first highlighted the means by which women were being denied access to professions outside of their ‘traditional’ roles.
PaganPride, there are two possible options to explain why women end up in careers: either women are forced into certain careers by their evil male overlords or they choose them of their own free will. Personally I am of the opinion that women and men often prefer different types of jobs and styles of working, hence why they choose different jobs. There is no need for me to provide evidence to substantiate my belief that women choose their jobs because it’s just common sense – we all choose jobs. If you want to disprove this assertion, please provide hard evidence instead of the name of a book (although I’m sure this book is wholly objective on the matter, just like Yasmin Alibhai-Brown).
Mister B, positive discrimination is only acceptable if it helps women and ethnic minorities get into careers. If you use positive discrimination to help white working class men into jobs, you are clearly abusing the legislation. Duh.
“I would agree that diversity officers should be the first to go, but I was under the impression that there were some legal requirements on employers to implement the equal opportunities legalisation and collect lots of information to enforce positive discrimination?….”
Indeed, but you don’t need a seperate officer to do that – simply roll it into the ‘normal’ HR role.
Professor Gill Quango. BScUit BA,BA-blk Shp. LoL, FFs, WTF.
University of Idaho.
Abnormal psychology Dept.
Studying the profiles of the subjects, who’s identity will remain secret; let us refer to them simply as YAB + HH.
From our research we have concluded that they must have been really frustrated at some past point in their lives. Maybe HH never became Head Girl, and YAB lost a stud of a boyfriend to a prettier, air headed girl. A too busy mother or a father who doted on his sons.Who knows?
If we could trace these events that are deeply rooted in their psyche, perhaps psychiatrists could treat them, and help resolve their issues. It is important to help these individuals as its proved that the build up of perceived injustices and imagined repression leads to some very damaging behaviour and heightens inbuilt preconceptions of a minority status, or injured party.
Eventually this may well lead to a desire to eliminate the objects of their fears. We must try to find these people a path to happiness and a feeling of their worth. This has nothing to do with their position in society, many afflicted with this condition have done very well by societies standards, but it is their own inner area where their true happiness lies. Tests have shown that encouraging them to realise their true dreams and not the dreams of their peers or demons, will result in much greater happiness. Pottery for example, has worked in some cases, as has ballroom dancing.
There is historical evidence for this work.
If Adolf Hitler had just been allowed to paint his average watercolours the world would have been spared the second world war. If HH could be allowed to perform with the Bolshoi a major catastrophe, affecting millions unnecessarily, may be averted.
Imagine if Jeffery Archer had had his manuscripts rejected? Or Victoria Beckham told she lacked any talent whatsoever.
The future would be a much darker place today.
Mr Letters, please continue to urge your readers to fund this valuable research. We thank you for your support.
Much more needs to be done to help these unfortunates.
Professor Gill Quango. BScUit BA,BA-blk Shp. LoL, FFs, WTF.
University of Minnesota.
Abnormal psychology Dept.
Julia, I would love to see these ’specialist’ roles disappear under the heading of HR – which is where they belong. Surely they don’t require more than a few minutes a week, if that.
Gill Quango, I cannot imagine what torment drives these people to behave in such a manner but whatever it is, it has to be seriously bad to make them dream up this discrimination nonsense. I agree that a world without Victoria Beckham would be a dark place indeed.
“Susan Faludi in her book Backlash first highlighted the means by which women were being denied access to professions outside of their ‘traditional’ roles.”
By whom? Mother Nature, perhaps….?
I love the way left wingers imagine businesses operate. Do business try to maximise profits? Increase their market share? Increase turnover?
According to the Yaz’s of this world they do none of these things because employers spend inordinate amounts of effort trying to discriminate against designated victim groups rather than trying to operate as effectively as they possibly can.
LFAT, the IEA have picked up this thread, why don’t you go and point out that you beat them to it?
http://blog.iea.org.uk/?p=260
Julia, I fear that common sense and evidence have both been left out of this debate by Yasmin et al in order for them to put forward their arguments as swiftly as possible.
Ross, perhaps businesses being so preoccupied with stupid legislation is one of the reasons why our economy is so buggered. Just a thought.
Thanks Mark, have left a link there.
I fear that common sense and evidence have both been left out of this debate by Yasmin et al in order for them to put forward their arguments as swiftly as possible.
That’s really funny. This collapse into Keynseianism and the adancement of old-skool socialist policies of large state, nationalised industry and then a command economy is clearly being shoved down our throats because the crisis has made it possible. The free-marketeers are in disarray and a bit discredited so nobody can mount an opposition. This is deeply ironic; its the mirror image of the picture Naomi Klein paints of Freidmanites/The Chicago School in ‘The Shock Doctrine’…
PaganPride, you obviously don’t work in the private sector or know how companies work. a good business works on meritocracy alone. i would hire my pet hamster if if could work better, not because i am discriminating.
When i was a lad, i worked on a christmas tree farm, some one with a chain saw cut aload of trees down, and a bunch of us got paid a fiver for turning up and 50 pence for each tree we dragged to a wrapping machine. many of us lads could move more trees than the single lass that was there could do so why the **** should she be paid the same?
“So, you see, women losing their jobs faster than men is not evidence of discrimination – far from it.”
I disagree. Due to various pieces of (principally childcare related) legislation, women are more expensive and risky to employ. It should therefore come as no surprise that firms would seek to fire more expensive staff first (ceteris parabus) when they need to reduce their headcount.
Perhaps women are more expensive, but the unemployment statistics provide no eveidence that women are being selectively targetted – it’s just that they are disproportionately employed in more vulnerable professions.