This is a strange one (subs needed). Yesterday’s Irish News carries a story about the make up of the Equality Commission. According to the raw figures in the Commission’s own report:
Staff Religious and Gender composition 1 January 07
Gender – Male 48 (34.5%) Female 91 (65.5%)
Religion – Protestant 49 (35.3%) Roman Catholic 88 (63.3%) Cannot determine 2 (1.4%)
Great little review of Listening to Van Morrison by Griel Marcus… It’s a short book, not a biography or a career survey, but an attempt to follow those moments in Morrison’s music, as he’s made it from his first records with Them, from Belfast in 1965 to the present day, when something happens that breaks [...] read our review »
Coming up to the Halloween holiday, some people might be frightened of the idea of Voices from the Grave – but for others, the chance to hear an oral history of the Troubles from the mouths of two (in)famous protagonists, PUP leader and former UVF member David Ervine, and Brendan “The Dark” Hughes, is not [...] read our review »
Nevin,
As you well know ECNI have been publicly recording their alarm at the difficulty of recruiting enough Protestants right across the Civil Service for years.
Just as unionists have been publicising their hate for any moves towards a more equal society for years. Maybe it isn’t the ECNI who are humbugs.
Nevin “It seems ECNI isn’t fit for purpose. Why haven’t the other so called promoters of rights issues taken ECNI to task?â€
Because the inequality identified here is about Protestants not Catholics and men not women. They think, or want to think, that equality is a one way street. But I am sure you know all that already.
lib, at about 57/43 NICS is rather more representative than ECNI ….
It makes sense to have more Catholics working for equality as the prodesons are the ones who created inequality.
In a region with historically high unemployment differential birth rates will also have created unemployment, as will attacks on ‘economic targets’. Soggy socialist politics were also a great antidote to enterprise, keeping brighter people in the public sector on low pay. The tendency for both communities to keep ‘jobs for our own’ will also have led to economic inefficiency.
The men and women at the equality commission could be doing a great job. Maybe they have analysed the trends in employment and emigration of qualified people, projected employment patterns forward, and concluded that the unfair discrimination that is most entrenched is mostly directed against women.
There once was a Belfast Commission
Who had equality as their sole mission
They preached it all day and night
But something….wasn’t quite right
When we examined their own position
VERSE TWO
Sure as a dollar is one hundred cents
There was an acute shortage of gents
In their equality endeavours
Paddys outnumbered Trevors
As this thread on old Slugger laments
VERSE THREE
And so to equality lets all drink a toast
For fair play is what you love the most
Ah but…….unfortunately brothers
Some are more equal than others
In places haunted by a feminist ghost
My otherwise brilliant brain is no working too well this Monday morning, will somebody help me please? Who has responsibility for ensuring that the (In)Equality Commission itself complies with Article 75 – the SOS? Or have I, strangely, read somewhere that the EC itself is not subject to Article 75? Or should I just go back to bed!
These figures aren’t too worrying – I’d be more concerned if one grouping was reaching the 80% mark.
What’s more worrying is that apprently there are no athiests or non-christians working at the Equality Commission.
Dk “…no atheists or non-christians…â€
My understanding is that faith background is calculated from (a) those that are prepared to declare their faith position, and otherwise (b) a judgment made from the school(s) a person attended as recorded in their job application. These figures would therefore contain Protestant atheists and non-christians and Catholic atheists and non-christians – the way things are going that probably means there are an awful lot of both atheists and non-christians employed at the Inequality Commission!
Would you by any chance be a Catholic atheist non-christian female! God bless you.
getthefacts
for purposes of section 75 the equality commission is NOT a designated public body.
a few years ago there were moves on the part of the commission to develope its own ‘voluntary’ equality scheme.
it seems to have,uh, fallen off the radar screen. you might wish to contact ECNI to find out the current state of play, or lack thereof.
let us know what their response is?
wild turkey
Many thanks for rescuing my weary brain. Just been looking at the November 2006 report “Assessing the Role of the Equality Commission in the Effectiveness of Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998†by Brice Dickson and Colin Harvey of the Human Rights Centre School of Law at Queen’s. Page 5
“[This report] comments on the Commission’s power to request a public authority which is not obliged to submit an Equality Scheme to nevertheless make one……..The report commends the Equality Commission for its success in persuading the government to increase the number of authorities which must comply with section 75 and it welcomes the fact that the Commission itself, not before time, is in the process of producing its own Equality Scheme.â€
Did you ever! I have heard of Crown Exemption but would have thought it highly unlikely that the EC had a Crown about the place!
I gave David Abraham a ring to take his advice on contacting the EC about their own long impending Equality Scheme. His advice was to get a friend to do it for me, so I am waiting patiently to hear the result, which I will rush to Slugger as soon as it arrives.
Getthefacts
Is David an ECNI Commissioner?
Allegedly initial work started on the ECNI equality scheme somewhere between 2001 and 2003. Well, given competing pressures and priorities, especially the debacle of the legal funding budget, these things do take time. No doubt the Chief Executive can give a clear commitment as to when the ECNI equality will be out for ‘meaningful and inclusive’ consultation.
Given the meritocracy which lies at the heart of the ECNI, there are no doubt numerous crowns and other marks of distinction about the place. After all the previous Commission Chair was a Dame!
Happy Hunting
This would be patently illegal in Canada, what is the situation in nIreland? Are you allowed to ask?
Not just that but if you employ more than (IIRC) 10 applicants, you’re compelled to ask, although there’s supposed to be a fairly heavy firewall between the religion bit and the rest of the job application.
You just ask what school you went to. St.Malachy’s is a dead giveaway.
What happens if you went to St. Malachy’s and are a member of the Church of Ireland?
I commented on this very subject a few months back on Slugger. Obviously nothing has changed – the so-called “Equality Commission” still discriminate against men and Protestants. It’s slightly sinister to say the least considering the lack of parity of esteem for Protestants was brought up months ago by the DUP…
It should be one question. Do you worship at the alter of England. If yes then get out and go live there.
Posted by The Truth on Nov 30, 2007 @ 01:26 PM
Bigoted prick.
Interviews should have absolutely nothing to do with being Male, Female, Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter, Muslum, Jew etc.
Posted by The Truth on Nov 30, 2007 @ 01:26 PM
Try telling that to Patten, who might as well of made it illegal for Protestants to apply to join the PSNI.
gtf: “Strategic Enforcement – Female
Policy & Development – Female
Promotion & Education – Female
Employment Development – Female
Corporate Services – Male ”
Okay. Now, what are the qualifications for those positions and what is the profile of the university graduate educated in the fields that “feed” these positions? It’s not as simply as looking at either the aggregated totals or a few top positions.
If the population of applicants is skewed, then the employees drawn from that population, assuming no selection bias, should be similarly skewed at the entry level. With each “level” further away from the initial population, the initial skew will lessen a bit, but will still reflect that initial pool of applicants. Now, are there institutional biases? Sure — I suspect that few “women’s studies” programs are headed by men, for example.
If the profile of a social science graduate who goes into public service is predominantly female and predominantly Roman Catholic, then there is little to complain about.
And look on the bright side — obviously, there is no problem with women finding themselves trapped on “the mommy track.”
wild turkey “Allegedly initial work started on the ECNI equality scheme somewhere between 2001 and 2003.â€
I am advised that the Head of Corporate Services said yesterday that the EC Equality Scheme will be in their 08/09 Business Plan. Manyana Manyana
“Spanish singer Julio Iglesias was on television with British TV host Anne Diamond when he used the word ‘manyana’. Diamond asked him to explain what it meant. He said that the term means “maybe the job will be done tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe the day after that. Perhaps next week, next month, next year. Who cares?”
The host turned to Irishman Shay Brennan who was also on the show and asked him if there was an equivalent term in Irish. “No. In Ireland we don’t have a word to describe that degree of urgency,” replied Brennan.â€
Credit http://www.arcamax.com/jokes/s-151491-601772?source=1930
Dread Cthulhu “And look on the bright side—obviously, there is no problem with women finding themselves trapped on “the mommy track.â€
Unfortunately, as I am sure you well know Dread, the issue is no joke. There are at least 50,000 to 80,000 men out there who have been or are being abused at home, and Government Departments are acting as if they do not exist. They allocate millions to women’s organisations and blatantly humiliate male victims of domestic abuse by throwing them a few pennies in a vane attempt to salve their conscience. To add insult to injury the very body which should be championing their cause is sitting on its hands. The whole point about an Equality Commission is to deal with the equality skewing which takes place in society – not reinforce it by having its equality watchdog acting like a toothless blind dog when it comes to gender issues affecting men. And, they do not even have their own Equality Scheme by which we can test their performance, like most other public bodies, and bring them to book.
gtf: “The whole point about an Equality Commission is to deal with the equality skewing which takes place in society – not reinforce it by having its equality watchdog acting like a toothless blind dog when it comes to gender issues affecting men. And, they do not even have their own Equality Scheme by which we can test their performance, like most other public bodies, and bring them to book. ”
Still not getting it, are you. An organization can only hire from the pool of people who apply. If men and Protestants aren’t applying — and you have yet to demonstrate that they are and are simply being discriminated against — then, as a direct consequence, they will not be hired. If they are not graduating from university with the requisite degrees to enter the “upstream” positions that fill the leadership of the Equality Commission, then they will not be a department head within the Equality Commission.
No entity, not even the Equality Commission, should have to hire unqualified personnel, your sob stories and non sequiters notwithstanding.
In reply to Dread Cthulhu:
You tell getthefacts that he / she is “Still not getting it”. I would disagree. If you look at the post from getthefacts on 1st December when he / she refers to the huge amount of photos of women in The Equality Commission’s annual report while there is not a single photograph of an adult male, it is quite obvious that this Commssion is not behaving in a gender neutral manner. In that post getthefacts stated that there was “not a single adult male in sight. And as if to rub it in, the same offending selective use of photographs is repeated ad neuseam on every one of the 88 pages of the report”. He/she goes on to say: “look again at the photographs yourself and imagine the reaction if all the 178 adult female photographs were replaced with 178 adult male photographs”. This bias cannot be explained by saying that more women than men apply. According to getthefacts there are 178 photos of adult women in the Commission’s report and zero photos of adult males. If that isn’t biased, then Gerry Adams is an Orangeman.
In my own post on December 1st, I said: “Suppose (a )The discrepancies in gender and religion were reversed ie., women and Catholics were clearly under – represented and (b) This under – representation of women and Catholics was found in a company under investigation by The Equality Commission. If this occurred, The Equality Commission would be highly critical of the company. But when the exact same thing is happening behind The Equality Commission’s own doors, it seems to believe this is perfectly ok.
Personally, I don’t believe that there should always be an equal number of men and women, of Protestants and Catholics etc., I believe the best person should get the job. However, if a company with a majority of males in senior positions tried to defend itself by saying they were just the best people who applied, I don’t think this would wash well with The Equality Commission. So, if they want to apply these rules to others, they should apply them first and foremost to themselves. If they cannot do so, then they shouldn’t be imposing their “equality†on others”.
You are saying “An organization can only hire from the pool of people who apply. If men and Protestants aren’t applying—and you have yet to demonstrate that they are and are simply being discriminated against—then, as a direct consequence, they will not be hired. If they are not graduating from university with the requisite degrees to enter the “upstream†positions that fill the leadership of the Equality Commission, then they will not be a department head within the Equality Commission”. I don’t believe that the average feminist would accept this argument if it were applied to an organisation which had more men employed and more men in senior positions, regardless of how many women were applying.
q@tb: “Personally, I don’t believe that there should always be an equal number of men and women, of Protestants and Catholics etc., I believe the best person should get the job. However, if a company with a majority of males in senior positions tried to defend itself by saying they were just the best people who applied, I don’t think this would wash well with The Equality Commission.”
They can if they document everything.
There are a few factors which contribute to male having an advantage in numbers at senior positions, including a willingness of men to take risks, the willingness of men to claim credit for their (and, sadly, others) accomplishments and the conflict resolution styles — women tend to operate on consensus, which leads to a sharing of credit, while male are more willing for a “winner take all” conflict / challenge approach.
q@tb: “I don’t believe that the average feminist would accept this argument if it were applied to an organisation which had more men employed and more men in senior positions, regardless of how many women were applying. ”
Which is why we go back to the matter of documentation and record retention. You can do just about anything you want, provided you can document your reasoning in an acceptable fashion. If a firm retains the resumes they receive, has a valid policy for hiring, adequately advertises in accordance to the accepted practices and norms of their profession and follows their policy, assuming there is nothing blatantly against the law — and, having retained said documents, can prove it — the average feminist can go pound sand.
And, frankly, if a feminist can’t handle the reality that the world is neither tidy nor wholly fair, she can toddle off back to her women’s studies classes and sing another verse of “I am Woman” until she feels better, because men and woman are different, the percentages in any given profession are never going come out even-steven and until and unless they are willing to embrace those aspects of true equality that work against them — and few are willing to do that in my experience — I really don’t care if they get their noses out of joint, assuming a fair and level pitch.
As quietattheback says, there seems to be an inconsistency between the EC’s (or the media’s or political observers’) apparent rule of thumb that disproportionate numbers of one group strongly indicate discrimination, and the EC’s own practice of, well, disproportionate numbers.
Now, as DC suggests, this rule of thumb is not enough on its own. But it is “interesting”, and it does suggest that further investigations may be in order.
The EC is not there to “represent” men, women, catholics, protestants, or transgendered atheist muslims. But it is there to represent the interests of disadvantaged groups.
If their leadership and staff is predominantly female, then they may simply be unaware of issues that affect men, or they may believe that “their” issues are “more urgent”.
Of course, they may be insightful paragons of even-handedness, but evidence in this discussion suggests a degree of gender bias – from the use of predominantly female images in publications, to a failure to address issues that significantly or disproportionately affect men: like domestic abuse (of men by women), poor (male) takeup of healthcare, poor (male) performance in education.
Similar factors could also be at work in the catholic/protestant area, though I suspect that there are more advocacy groups to raise awareness of those issues.
Finally, if the EC were predominantly (or exclusively) white, Christian, and English or English-and-Irish speaking, then issues of race, religion, and languages other than Irish can too be easily ignored or put on the long finger!
They may be brilliant at all this other stuff – but if so, we’d probably have heard by now?
We are in real danger, including me, of replicating the ‘Yes Minister’ scenario; focusing on getting the hospital properly organised and deciding that admitting patients would mess things up.
Essential and all as it is to get well organised, which includes an appropriately balanced workforce, this is not the primary ‘output’ of the Equality Commission. The primary ‘output’ is, as its annual report strap line says ‘Equality for All’. The EC has itself underlined the primary importance of ‘output’ rather than ‘process’ – for others of course!
The real significance of the staffing imbalance is not that it sets a bad example for others and appears hypocritical, both of which are true. The real story is that this staffing imbalance might skew the primary ‘output’ of ‘Equality for All’. As has been argued by others, it may be ‘impossible’ and/or ‘undesirable’ to apply positive discrimination to the employee appointments process, but it is both possible and essential to have mechanisms in place which ensure that the EC itself produces its primary ‘output’ ‘Equality for All’, without bias or favour. That mechanism is, as it preaches to others, an Equality Scheme and effective ways of ensuring compliance. The lack of these is the real hypocrisy in the Equality Commission today. Is its ‘output’ ‘Equality for All’ or ‘Equality for Some’?
I have given one significant example, earlier in this string and there are others, which demonstrate that the EC are showing gender bias where it should and could take action. Government is failing to ensure equality for male victims of domestic abuse and the EC does nothing.
I have also identified the gender skewed choice of photographs in the Annual Report. This is not a minor detail botched up by a junior graphic designer – final decisions, on important presentational details like this, are made at a very senior level. This choice of photographs screams out loud the Commissions understanding of gender equality. The report should be withdrawn; the photographs changed and re-issued with an unqualified apology to everyone, but particularly adult men.
I am disappointed that Dread Cthulhu, who I am sure is otherwise a very caring person, should describe my reference to male victims of domestic abuse as ‘sob stories’. He/She clearly has no experience or understanding of domestic abuse, or perhaps we are seeing some gender bias. Would the same words have been used regarding female victims? Contrary to popular myth and uncaring public ‘servants’, real men do cry and real men do feel pain, just as much as women.
gtf: “I am disappointed that Dread Cthulhu, who I am sure is otherwise a very caring person, should describe my reference to male victims of domestic abuse as ‘sob stories’. He/She clearly has no experience or understanding of domestic abuse, or perhaps we are seeing some gender bias. Would the same words have been used regarding female victims? ”
It is a non-sequiter in the flow of the conversation and a blatantly emotional appeal to avoid the more rational aspects of the conversation.
The fact of the matter is is that your arguments, up to this point, were myopic, insofar as you focus on a single point in the employment stream of the EC and assume discrimination / bias without sufficient analysis of the upstream considerations, such as who are the students who enter those fields that the EC would normally employ and who in society is attracted to that sort of position.
When challenged, you fall back to an emotional redoubt, daring anyone to challenge you on that subject, as if your challenge there would somehow validate your flawed analysis elsewhere. Your crude riposte was expected.
The fact of the matter is is that the world is not a tidy place and the numbers will never work out perfectly. Your inability to debate without seking to hide behind emotional charges amply demonstrates that you are insecure in the face of challenge. You have no answer to my questions and to response to my challenges, so seek to retreat to some redoubt from which you may make ad hominem attacks on the character of those who challenge you.
When you’re ready to discuss this like a grown-up, feel free to come down.
Dread
Love You. Or is that too emotional for you!