Best practice & Ethics
Women from ethnic minorities lose out at work
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black Caribbean women experience
significant difficulties in getting jobs and progressing within them, and tend
to be segregated into certain types of work, a two year
investigation by the
Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) has
discovered. This is despite leaving school with similar aspirations to white
girls and similar or better qualifications than white boys.
“Time after time,” said EOC chair Jenny Watson, “women told
us about the ‘unwritten rules’ in their workplace, hidden barriers that prevent
them from realising these ambitions.”
In areas with above average numbers of black and Asian
women in the labour market, the EOC found them to be absent from
three-out-of-ten workplaces and unrepresented in almost three-out-of-five.
The EOC said British employers must develop “cultural
intelligence” – the awareness and understanding to communicate with people from
different cultural backgrounds, and how to get the best from them at work.
Failure to achieve this will result in a high economic and
social price, argued the EOC: between 2001 and 2020, ethnic minorities are
expected to account for over 70% in the growth of UK population aged 16-59. With
the UK facing skills shortages, said the EOC, it is essential to tap into this
growing and increasingly well qualified pool.
Links
Equal Opportunities Commission
Moving on up? The Way
Forward
April, 2007 |
