h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hospitals have alot of male nurses etc, but if the United Kingdom was so good on keeping jobs up for the other genders,

why would they be looking at other countries for people to come and work in britain??

Hi Collif,

From what I've gathered, the main issue women have is that we are paid a lot less than men. That's pretty much a blanket rule when you crunch the numbers and even out the blips. I don't mean for exactly the same jobs, but I mean jobs that we are more likely to get locked into are paid less than jobs more open to men. Upper management is largely male, or to a far lesser extent, tough gay female. The real downtrodden group these days is the heterosexual female. We work hard in jobs which are paid less, and we are less likely to be promoted becuase we lack the masculine features interview panels look for.


My real problem though is with pay scales designed by management types that descriminate against people who do the actual work in favour of managers who go to "Quality" meetings and write "Strategic Plans".

Cleaners at my hospital have to wear a uniform, their time is intimately scrutinised and they get paid at a scarily low rate. Management, meanwhile, take long lunches, drive out to offsite meetings as they please, no uniform, get a much louder say in what happens and get paid massively more. Nurses too, a lot of responsibility, stress, powerlessness and small salary compared to the overpaid managers above them who never see patients. How did this inequity come to be so pronounced?

I work in an Australian hospital, the secretaries are all female and are paid a pittance, the nurses are largely female, and the nurses who are male seem more likely to get promoted to nursing management - at which point there is a massive and aforementioned inexplicable salary jump. Why does someone who goes to meetings get paid so much more than nurses who are on their feet and brains all day treating AIDS patients?

Anyway, to your issues: I don't think I'd have any problem leaving a child at a day care centre with men on staff. I might have a problem leaving a child in sole care of a male day care worker only because I spent 5 years with access to drug & alcohol patient's files and descriptions of their childhoods. Some men do unspeakable things to children, it's a fact. Women can too, but a lot less often. I would probably have trouble getting the things I've read out of my head, which is sad because on the whole I think men are lovely.

To the wider issue: discrimination is a huge and impossible field. I'm cautious about any system which doesn't allow an employer to take gut instinct into account when hiring an employee, but at exactly the same time I'd support a system that stopped an employer from basing their choice on dumb red-neck prejudice. It's all the worse in Australia because it's really difficult to fire anyone due to government rules and regulations. This means that an employer would be a lot more likely to play it safe when hiring - because if you hire the wrong person you are STUCK with them.


Are we enlightened souls here at H2G2 really as immune from discriminatory instincts as we'd like to think we are? Would you hire a 300lb woman over a slim women even if the heavier girl had better skills and experience? Discrimination based on attractiveness comes annoyingly naturally. Tall men do better. Beautiful women do better. An annoying voice can be an instant turn off to an employer. We are so shallow.

Discrimination isn't just about race, I know that. What I don't know is the solution.

I do however have a great example of discrimination to end on. When my husband went for his first job out of university one of the interview requirements was details of his birth time, date and place. The employer was hiring partly on the basis of astrological compatibility with the rest of the programming team. He is a Cancer, apparently he fit in beautifully.

Maybe that's what we need for the future: Hiring by astrology only - a completely random but therefore fair criteria for discrimination.

Yours Truly,

WennaKat

"why is the Government making such a huge effort on taking more ethnic people into universities"

umm..they're not.

As I said before the government is trying to get more applicants/students from low participation neighbourhoods, the choice of these neighbourhoods has nothing to do with race or religion but current participation in higher education. The government are trying to encourage people who never considered university to consider it.

This isn't about race - it's about class/wealth/background. And as I said before there are no targets or quotas - there is a financial incentive but it is a blind financial incentive (ie you don't know if you will get extra cash for one student or another...ever, but if you just happen to recruit more students from low participation neighbourhoods you will get more money from the funding body - but it all comes in a lump sum with no breakdown s there is no way to identify which areas are which).

Because the information about which neighbourhoods have been marked for extra funding is classified there is no way to determine whether these involve more students from ethnic minorities but I doubt it. There are more poor white people with low expectations as there are "non-white". 92% of the UK population is white, but education wise white kids don't do as well as certain ethnicities (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=268).

The traditional university market of middle class white 18 yr old is no longer growing, mature and ethnic minority applications are increasing, Universities need to fill their places to get their funding and if the best applicants are mature students or chinese then that is who they will choose, it's not about quotas.

If you think universities are accepting second rate ethnic minority students over white students then you're wrong - better applicants make cheaper students to educate which means more money for research...this is what drives selectors not meeting quota's and targets and looking pc.

If you can give me an example of a university's selection policy that states that they give preference to ethnic minorities then I will take your claims seriously - if you can't then I'm afraid your claims are unfounded rhetoric.

You said 98% of the UK's population is white, therefore if more than 2% of students in a university aren't white there has obviously been some form of reverse discrimination going on. Therefore, in my hall of residence (of 200 people) you'd expect to see 4 non-white people, which is about how many there is.

I said 92% of the UK population is white (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=272 "Minority ethnic groups have a younger age structure than the White population, reflecting past immigration and fertility patterns.") So 92% will not be the proportion of 18 yr olds.

Only 77% of the people who apply to university are white (and I would guess that this figure is very close to the 18 yr old proportion)...as I said university wise the traditional market is stagnating. Ethnicity varies hugely throughout the country "Eighty-seven per cent of the population of England and 96 per cent of the population of Wales gave their ethnic origin as White British. The proportion of minority ethnic groups in England rose from six per cent to nine per cent - partly as a result of the addition of Mixed ethnic groups to the 2001 Census form. In two London boroughs, Brent and Newham, the White group accounts for less than 50 per cent of the population." (from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=299) so london and the other major cities tend to have a higher proprotion os ethnic minorities - and so universities in those places tend to follow suit. Many campus universities have a very "rich white" emphasis because of the type of applicant that environment attracts.

To say "in my hall of residence (of 200 people) you'd expect to see 4 non-white people" is rediculous...for a start the figure suggest 16 ethnic minority students, and secondly this is based on UK students studing at UK universities. International students are great money makers for universities (why have a student for £3000pa when you can charge a Chinese student £10000-15000pa), and most universities offer international students guaranteed hall places for their entire course so any proportion of international students has 3 times the presence in hall.

I have to say I'm a bit worried that you go around counting non-white people (ps that was a joke)

Okay, I tend to get numbers mixed up (not good for a maths student, but hey...). In actual fact there's probably more than 4 people in my hall who wouldn't class themselves as white, the 4 I was referring to were people who were obviously black (I have trouble telling whether people are from an ethnic minority or just have a tan :oP not that I care, but they tend to!).

We only have 2 (that I know of) people in our hall who are not British nationals, both of whom are white.

About 50% of the students doing first year mathematics are Chinese, but I think that has an awful lot to do with the fact that due to the whole AS mess hardly any British students wanted to do maths.

Hull - the %of white people in the yorkshire & humberside area is quite high (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/rank/yhwhite.asp ...can you tell I really love that site) and alongside the stagnating middle class/white/18yr old market there has also been a big shift towards applying locally (either to stay at home - which wouldn't make much difference to halls, or to be within 30-60 miles from home) so it doesn't surprise me that you aren't surrounded by an ethnic melting point.

Plus there is also a tendency (and I'm not sure if I like this) for the people who allocate halls to group people together, not on race ground but on religious grounds. There might well be one hall in Hull where the majority of muslim students have been placed (here we try to make sure they get either an en suite or a room with a sink to allow ease of washing at prayer times). Most uni's do similar for international students (group them together). Personally I think it encourages segragation and a balance between the two would be ideal, it would be a shame to go to university only to meet people who went to similar school in a similar town from similar backgrounds.

Hey Wennakat,

Yes I can see what you mean. There is still alot of women, and other kinds of, discrimination around. I was just pointing out what I noticed about the whole women's point thing. Great post though.

On another note, I have been thinking about this discrimination thing since yesterday and I thought of something. As far as I can gather (this is my logic not fact), discrimintaion seems to come from the instinct of judging people. This instinct would have probably have helped the cavemen ("He big, he dangerous", or "She ugly, she unhealthy and unfit for wife"), but these days it only hinders. Once people realise that this is a wrong thing they try to help out these discriminated peoples and BOOM reverse discrimination. As I said these is only something I deducted on necessarily fact.

This topic is getting ridiculous, I understand what h2g2 is saying by mentioning this interesting topic!!!

But the facts that the Government
ARE trying to bring more lower class people to the Universities which is my point exactly LoLx. The majority of the Uk has a number of under privledged members of society and most of these people are inthe ethnic minority. In which these facts prove that the Government are bringing more people from ethnic groups will be going to University unlike the people who deserve to go there (people with the correct/relevant qualifications).

"But the facts that the Government ARE trying to bring more lower class people to the Universities"

Yup

"The majority of the Uk has a number of under privledged members of society"

Yup

"and most of these people are inthe ethnic minority"

Nope...although ethnic minorities are more likely to be underpriveliged there are only 8% of people in the UK who are ethnic minorities...and 30% of children in the UK are considered to live in poverty, this implies that the majority of underprivaliged children (the ones who are being targetted to raise aspirations) are white...however a large proportion of ethnic minority children probably also fit into that catagory but because of the huge difference in numbers they are still outnumbered by white kids.

(hoping that makes sense, my head is full of cold atm so my communications got all stuffed up)

Sorry messed up on my last post. it's not "on necessarily fact", it's
"not necessarily fact"

>I don't see any big campaigns to get more male nurses, or more men into any women-dominated profession.

actually, in Oregon there's a nurse shortage, and one of the big things they're doing for it (besides scholarships) is trying to recruit more men, they've got posters, and have male nurses go around and talk at schools (that's how i know) ... i guess it's not all that big a deal, but in my experience men ARE less likely to step into a "women's" role, ie, childcare or housecleaning, than women going to do a "manly" job, like factory work or corporate climber. And even if some fields stay dominated by women, the top executives in the really huge corporations are almost exclusively men, and women typically earn 80% of what a man does in the same job. And some jobs that used to be mainly women -- like teaching -- now have a much better balance. Just a few thoughts.

Hiya,

One point in response: cavemen loved big girls. Given the choice between a straight up and down skinny chick and a large curvy one, the caveman would have chosen the one with childbearing hips and good fat stores (indicating healthy slow metabolism or advanced food gathering skills) every time. She would keep him warm all winter, be able to suckle his babies and survive famine. Skinny chicks would just be bony, chilly, and hard to keep alive.

Guess who isn't a skinny chick.

But yeah, basing employment on whether you find someone sexually attractive is just fraught. You probably have other employers who specifically wouldn't hire a beautiful girl because of her potential to be harassed or cause a distraction to male workers, or worry his own wife. The same man might not hire a strong, charming, handsome male of fear the new employee might upstage him and take his own place as alpha male.

Maybe human beings are just not capable of being truly open minded when it comes to this kind of thing. We all bring our own unpredictable baggage, fears, experience and flawed instincts.

I still have no solution, but nice chatting with you.

WennaKat

I hate 'positive' discrimination. Why should a company be forced to take on an asian employee if he/she is the worst qualified for the post on offer?
That said, negative discrimination is even worse. What excuse has a company got for not taking on an asian employee if they are the best qualified for the post on offer?

The statistic that really ticks me off is the "You're 8 times more likley to get stopped and searched of you're black". Fair enough, but you'll only get stopped and searched in an inner city area. Now, what proportion of black's live in deprived inner city areas compared to the proportion of 'whites'.

And I am very bemused about the fact that despite a shortage of nurses, there doesnt seem to be any attempt to encourage more men to take it up.

Hey,

This is true(about cavemen and about the hard to find solution) but we have to start somewhere(not about caveman). Personally the way, I think, to get rid of discrimination, both normal and reverse, is to break down culture barriers. This, of coarse, will detsroy cultures and that is not a good thing. If we could find a happy medium somewhere it would be great.

Talk to ya later.

Think about something like door to door sales. A guy is less likely to slam the door on a good-looking girl. And I think people in general, men and women, have a tendency to attribute good qualities to good-looking people. You're just more likely to trust a good-looking used car salesman.

Yes, but what 'good-looking' is appears to be determined by society.

Pfff. What does that matter?

Ummm, I guess it doesn't. I dont know whyI said that.

Where do you get your ODD facts/statics from???? X:0P

You are a hippocrate, you said earlier that I was wrong about what I had said eg more lower class people going to universities but now you are saying I am right! Make your mind up once and for all