Gender Equality on British Railways

[whole diary]

[grahame]

DEVIZES MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post - a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London, depending on context) and rail minister Claire Perry has condemned the "dismal performance" of Britain's railways on gender equality after a study found just 16% of the workforce are female.

She said there was "no excuse" for the figure and warned that the railways risk "looking like the industry that time has left behind".

Campaign group Women in Rail found that just 14,024 of the 85,723 people employed across the rail sector are female.

It expressed concern that the majority were in customer-facing roles, with just 4% in engineering.

Ms Perry claimed this was doing damage to equal pay.

She noted that salaries for station assistants start at ^12,500 a year while Network Rail is currently advertising for engineers who will earn just under ^40,000 a year.

"When women are prevented from taking the jobs they could excel at just because they are women, they're not just having their choices restricted. They are missing out economically," Ms Perry said.

It is a big jump from "just 16% are female" to "women are prevented from taking the jobs they could excel at just because they are women".  Are there not factors such as women putting a stronger preference than men on jobs which do not involve late evening / overnight / early morning work which also slew proportions?

[ChrisB]

Shift-work & kids don't actually go well together - that is the crux of her problem

[chrisr_75]

Maybe women simply just don't want to or are not interested in working on the railways, same as many other 'heavy' industries? Can you really force them to do so in the name of equality?!

[Tim]

Maybe women simply just don't want to or are not interested in working on the railways, same as many other 'heavy' industries? Can you really force them to do so in the name of equality?!

No.  And you can only recruit from those who apply.  But the industry could do a better job at attracting applicants from the whole community.

[Tim]

Shift-work & kids don't actually go well together - that is the crux of her problem

NO.  With respect, the crux of the problem is that automatic assumption that looking after kids is a problem for working mothers but not working fathers. 

shift work can fit with parenthood.  My wife works lots of evenings (as a musician) and that fits quite well with my 9 to 5.  In my experience what really causes problems and what we struggle with is irregular hours.  As that makes paid child care impossible or even coordination between both parents really difficult. 

[ChrisB]

But shifts include early AM as well as lates. Could you cope if your wife did 4.30 to lunchtime for a week?

[chrisr_75]

But shifts include early AM as well as lates. Could you cope if your wife did 4.30 to lunchtime for a week?

Plenty of people do manage to juggle shift work with parenting outside of the railway industry (e.g. police, nursing, steelworks, bus driving, road haulage, offshore O&G etc etc etc), so why should shift work be any different on the railways?

[ChrisB]

reasonable comment, sir!

[Tim]

But shifts include early AM as well as lates. Could you cope if your wife did 4.30 to lunchtime for a week?

That would work very easily at least during term time.  I take the kids to school on the way to work, and she is home on time to pick them up from School. 

The problems would come if her shifts were forever chopping and changing, or worst still if we were both on changing shift patterns.

[Rhydgaled]

But shifts include early AM as well as lates. Could you cope if your wife did 4.30 to lunchtime for a week?

Plenty of people do manage to juggle shift work with parenting outside of the railway industry (e.g. police, nursing, steelworks, bus driving, road haulage, offshore O&G etc etc etc), so why should shift work be any different on the railways?

What is the male:female ratio of staff in those jobs? Other than perhaps police and nursing, I'd be supprised if the percentage of women in those roles is much different to the rail industry.

[phile]

There are cases of preferring women for jobs just to up the ratio.   People should be appointed on merit, the best person for the job, so long as no section is discriminated against.   This equality and diversity obsession takes the wrong direction.   I've never heard it said that more men should be recruited as nurses.
All that is needed is a law on one piece of paper saying:-

Nobody is to be discrimated against regardless of gender, race, religion etc.

[Tim]

 This equality and diversity obsession takes the wrong direction.   I've never heard it said that more men should be recruited as nurses.

I think it is important to separate two rather different, but related, issues: equality and diversity.

Equality is about non-discrimination in choosing the best person for the job.  I think that we both agree that that should be illegal to discriminate as it is.

Diversity is something else.  It is recognising that a diverse workforce as a whole performs better than a non-diverse workforce.  I would argue that an industry should improve its diversity  because it is good business sense.  At the moment, we have a rail industry with low diversity and that struggling to fill posts in engineering etc.  Attracting young women into those roles alongside young men is simple good business practice as it gives you a wider pool to pick the best person for the job from. 

There is a nasty chicken and egg situation here in that there are few women in the rail industry and that leads to the industry being perceived as male dominated and that discourages women from seeing it as a career option and that leads to few women in the rail industry and round and round the cycle goes.   A reasonable amount of extra support to get women to apply for the jobs (which are then allocated purely on merit) would make things better and you would start to see a virtuous cycle. 

And, I'll say it - more men should be recruited as nurses.  The Royal COllege of nursing has been saying so too for quite a while. 

[PhilWakely]

All that is needed is a law on one piece of paper saying:-

Nobody is to be discrimated against regardless of gender, race, religion etc.

A few years ago, before being 'enforced' to take early retirement, I remember going to what was then the new flavour of the month - Diversity training. One conversation that has stuck with me since then included this quote from the trainer....... "It is actually legal in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) to discriminate against the UK's second biggest ethnic group - the white, British male aged over 40". I have not been able to confirm this, but I recall the statement as if it were yesterday.

[ChrisB]

It's true.....on the premise that anything is legal unless it's illegal.

[Tim]

All that is needed is a law on one piece of paper saying:-

Nobody is to be discrimated against regardless of gender, race, religion etc.

A few years ago, before being 'enforced' to take early retirement, I remember going to what was then the new flavour of the month - Diversity training. One conversation that has stuck with me since then included this quote from the trainer....... "It is actually legal in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) to discriminate against the UK's second biggest ethnic group - the white, British male aged over 40". I have not been able to confirm this, but I recall the statement as if it were yesterday.

Don't be ridiculous.  It is not legal to discriminate on grounds of sex, race, nationality or age.  A white, British male over 40  (like me) is protected 4 times over.