atw: Re: Discrimination
- From: "Christine Kent" <cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 08:39:24 +0100
I didn't say there is nothing we can do about it, and I am certainly not
copping out.
I will work on how we change attitudes while you make sure the legislation
is there to protect us. Both need to be in place for either to succeed.
I have spent my life as an active feminist, subject to constant abuse and
ridicule for daring to state openly that I am a feminist, so I do know
something about the resistance of discriminatory attitudes - those of an
anglo culture towards intelligent capable women - to legislative
enforcement. We feminists were not good at PR, at changing perceptions, so
we lost. We thought that all we had to do was get legal equal rights and
simply prove how good we are. We were wrong. The statistically
demonstrated status of women has been on a serious decline for quite a few
years now. Perceptions of our incompetence and lack of worth compared to
men have not changed.
That experience has led me to realise that attitudes do not change just
because they are legislated to change.
I have spent too much of my life as the token intelligent woman in a male
dominated occupation, and now as the token intelligent OLD woman in any
environment, to want to spend any more of it as the token anyone. I want
the company of my own kind around me, engaging in an active and deliberately
aware campaign to change those perceptions.
But first we have to ensure that the perceptions are not correct.
Christine
-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter Martin
Sent: Thursday, 2 May 2013 3:27 AM
To: austechwriter
Subject: atw: Discrimination
Christine:
No, sorry.... it's a cop out to say that discrimination, like the poor, is
always with us, and then assume we can do nothing about it.
And it's wrong to say the law can't change things in this area. Pause and
think about black voting rights in the US up till the 1960s (actually, till
LBJ -- which surprises many people). Then ask yourself who POTUS is right
now, and how that came about. It wasn't magic.... enforcement of rights
under the law is a large part of what it was all about -- black people were
allowed to register and vote, once the law was strengthened and enforced.
Of course we're not going to get rid of discrimination everywhere. But we
don't have to meekly accept it as a "standard" and keep going back to the
seats in the back of the bus. And that's a very relevant comparison.
What is important at present is a combination of several factors:
economics, education in basic morality, and a touch of sensible law
enforcement. The economic imperative is with us already. If governments
and economists and employers etc want to whinge about how the aged, the
disadvantaged, the black, women and single parents etc etc are a drag on our
society which they can't afford, they have to know what to do: stop turning
the blind eye when job discrimination continues to prevent people in these
categories getting work and off their books for financial assistance.
On the information front, there's lip service already paid to the principles
of anti-discrimination throughout the community, and attitudes I think are
already changing here.... that is, attitudes to the principles.... not
necessarily the practice. My view is this process is always going to be
very slow, although most effective: it seems to work only through waves of
generational change.
So enforcement (or the threat of it) is a key area. And it doesn't have
to be perfect enforcement.
One might say drinking and driving is a practice that is always going to be
with us. And law enforcement hasn't brought the problem to a dead halt.
But the threat of detection via random RBT has had a huge effect in this
area. If you convince people that they might be caught out in breaking
the law, you probably do as much to bring about change as actually
penalising them for breaches.
The irony is that what we need is the basis of real facts. What we need is
for people who apply for work to be able to separately (and only once) state
their age, sex, marital status, "racial" origin etc and for those figures to
be available for analysis, and to know that when those (confidential)
application details are collected, they can indicate problem areas which may
then merit enforcement inquiries.
Something of this kind needs to start with government bodies and the agents
they engage: it's probably too much to expect immediately that private
employers are going to come into line with something like that. I notice,
however, that for example, some US employers actually do just this when you
apply for work with them. Google is very polite about it.
Those who've worked for government already know that there are already areas
where a deal of confidential data is already collected for new employees:
they're called police checks, integrity checks, security checks,
superannuation qualifications, health checks etc etc In government work, you
have to assume that these details are kept confidential... so what's new ?
I think it could be done. But saying discrimination is "always going to
happen" amounts to a cop out.
-Peter M
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