Equality Act may harm those it seeks to help
30 Jun 08
Bringing in positive discrimination through the back door does no favours to those who have made it on merit
Last week Harriet Harman, minister for Women and Equality unveiled proposals for a new Equality Act, which would bring together, and extend, existing anti-discrimination legislation.
There are some things to welcome – cautiously – about Harman’s programme. For example, replacing the range of legislation brought out over the years with one Act could make life simpler for employers; there are some measures on age discrimination that many will support; and few could argue with banning homophobic bullying in the workplace.
There are also aspects that employers and employees alike should be concerned about. Above all, the proposal to allow positive discrimination is fraught with difficulty. You can see what Harman is trying to achieve. At present, faced with two equally qualified candidates it is not possible to select a black High Court judge, for example, or a male deputy head teacher at a primary school, to create some balance in the workplace and to reflect society.
The idea is that positive discrimination to redress inequality would be permitted, but not mandatory. My fear is that, in practice, public sector bodies would effectively make it mandatory for any businesses involved in the procurement process. They would have to provide information on the ethnic and gender mix of their workforce and potentially, on the distribution of pay between those groups. They would come under a lot of pressure to discriminate positively in order to present an acceptable set of statistics.
All that would mean extra bureaucracy for any companies looking to get public sector contracts. Also, I personally doubt that it would help those groups it is meant to help. Apart from discrimination itself, one of the toughest challenges that a woman or member of a minority has to face is the accusation that their appointment was based on tokenism, not merit. It’s an easy way to undermine someone who has actually got where they are through ability and hard work. Permitting positive discrimination, or even imposing it by the back door, could damage their credibility.
There’s no short cut to making equality of opportunity a reality. It has as much to do with the education system, and with workplace practices such as flexible hours, as it has to do with tackling outright discrimination. The “quick fix” of positive discrimination will only reinforce the views of the bigots.