Current Affairs

A page where we will share and equality and diversity stories currently in the news.

Unconscious bias: what is it and who is responsible?

2016-05-17 11:55:17 slskg2

[Opinions are my own and not associated with the university].

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Last week a Sheffield Hallam University study has found that obese men and women are less likely to be employed because of their weight.

“Each of the employers who took part in the study were given identical, hypothetical CVs with accompanying photographs depicting fat and thin people. Each of the applicants met all the criteria stated within the job descriptions and person specifications and they were each given a suitability score out of 42.

Men of a normal weight received an average overall score of 39.14 while the obese male applicants scored 25.38.

The average suitability score for women of a normal weight was 34.65 out of a possible 42 while women who were obese scored 23.31.

The study also concluded that those CVs without an accompanying photograph scored higher than the applicants whose photos depicted an obese man (scoring 30.42) and an obese woman who scored 28.27.”

Read the full article on: http://www.poandpo.com/business-as-usual/obese-men-women-less-likely-to-be-employed-10-5-2016/

This got me thinking more about the unconscious biases we face everyday. Recruiters are expected to be fair throughout the recruitment process, judging candidates purely for their suitability against the person specification and criteria, but unfortunately this is not always the case. As we can see from the above article, even the addition of a photo sways recruiters to use their inherent personal preferences to make a judgement. Do companies do enough to counteract this?

To answer this we need to firstly explore what unconscious bias really is. The Equality Challenge Unit says, “implicit or unconscious bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgments and assessments of people and situations without us realising. Our biases are influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences. We may not even be aware of these views and opinions, or be aware of their full impact and implications.”

It is often said that we find ourselves preferring ‘people like us’. So if a White British man is on the recruitment panel then he is likely to unconsciously prefer the candidate that looks like him; or the basketball player on the panel prefers the candidate who also plays basketball; or the new mum favours the person who has just returned from parental leave. We are naturally drawn to people that we have commonalities with, we find comfort in what we know, regardless of whether we believe this to be the right choice. This can manifest itself in a bias recruitment process, such as the above example of weight and gender bias.

So what can we do? Many organisations deliver equality and diversity training, informing their staff population of the policies and procedures that they must abide by. This is a fantastic opportunity to inform staff of the requirements of the Equality Act 2010, aiming to prevent direct and indirect discrimination and provide an overall inclusive workplace. But this is a conscious act – a decision to take on board the information presented and it offers only a brief opportunity for staff to focus on equality and diversity.

Other organisations, including ours, also complement this with unconscious bias training. They widen the equality and diversity training emphasis to incorporate awareness of the natural, implicit biases that we all have. This is set in the context of our workplace, offering examples and scenarios that staff are likely to relate to. Should we be expecting all companies to deliver similar training? You could argue that the smaller organisations cannot afford to invest in such training, but perhaps these are the companies that are also more likely to allow implicit bias into their recruitment processes?

For example, I was recently talking to someone about the company they work for: a medium-sized company in the automotive industry. They don’t have any female employees in their company. None.

He argued that the working hours are not manageable if you have children: a statement that can be contended from many perspectives, notably the assumption that a) all women have children  and b) no man is involved with the care of their child. But what I find very hard to believe is that no women apply to work there. They’re a medium-sized company, and they offer a sizeable amount of jobs, so why wouldn’t at least the occasional female apply? Perhaps unconscious bias has a part in this.

Are there companies out there, like ours, that see unconscious bias training as an integral part of their equality and diversity training to ensure they offer an inclusive environment to all employees whilst there are companies, like the above, that see no problem with the way they work and have no awareness of unconscious biases? Perhaps it is time for the government to make unconscious bias training (or awareness) a legal requirement. Remove the choice to train on unconscious bias and perhaps this will improve the diversity of staff nationwide in a fair way.

If you want to check your unconscious biases try taking the Harvard Implicit Association test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/

If you’re a member of Sheffield Hallam staff then you can undertake our unconscious bias training at: https://portal.shu.ac.uk/departments/HRD/equality/Pages/online%20modules.aspx

 

 

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Public relations has a problem with gender: SHU lecturer's research

2016-05-11 09:28:36 slskg2

“The numbers tell the story. Entry level roles in public relations in the UK are dominated by women. In management roles the situation is reversed.

Women account for 70 per cent of the workforce in public relations according to the Holmes Report and yet account for only 30 per cent of the top jobs.

The salary gap between the sexes has consistently been around £10,000 for the four years that the CIPR has tracked data.

It’s nonsense. The Equal Pay Act outlawed any differences in salary between the sexes in 1970.

The CIPR has addressed the issue with advice and guidelines. It’s a start and it helps characterise the issue but there’s limited evidence to suggest that it’s making a difference.”

Full article on The Drum: http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/05/10/public-relations-has-problem-gender

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Venture Matrix Students Support School Pupils Exploring Hate Crime

2016-04-07 09:59:39 unspe

Guest Post by Natalie Whelan

External Relationship Officer (Schools and Colleges) – Venture Matrix

DSC_0029More than 130 school pupils from across South Yorkshire have recently visited Sheffield Hallam University, as part of a four day criminology event, in association with South Yorkshire Police. With the help of Venture Matrix undergraduate students, pupils were able to explore a range of crimes affecting the local community, from hate crime to burglary, among others.

South Yorkshire Police initially set a brief for students to support local school pupils in exploring the issues around four specific crimes; hate crime, cyber bullying, bonfire night crime and burglary. Following this brief, over 120 undergraduate criminology students set about designing, and then delivering, a variety of engaging activities for school pupils, to explore the causes and solutions of each type of crime.

DSC_0042

More than 135 pupils took part in the events, learning from real case studies and undertaking practical activities, such as court room drama roll plays and creativity tasks, looking at solutions and ways to promote help services. Pupils also undertook reflective tasks to help them understand and reinforce what they had learnt throughout the sessions.

One pupil from University Technical College when reflecting on the event said;         “I learned so much about hate crime and the different categories. We learnt how to solve the problem of hate crime and we got a chance to talk about it openly. I really enjoyed it!”

DSC_0050Natalie Whelan, External Relationships Officer for Schools and Colleges within the Venture Matrix team, commented: “The events not only provided pupils with the opportunity to learn about the causes & solutions of real crimes, but also gave them an opportunity to visit the university, engage with our students and raise their aspirations. The events were also a valuable opportunity for our students to engage, interact and support the local community, which really helps them to feel part of Sheffield.”

Venture Matrix offers Sheffield Hallam students the opportunity to work on real-life projects as an accredited part of their degree. The students who take part get the chance to apply their academic theory within a practical situation, whilst developing key skills which will help them to realise their full potential and succeed after graduating.

If you’d like to find out more information about Venture Matrix please call us on 0114 225 4468 or email venturematrix@shu.ac.uk

Did you know that Sheffield Hallam’s Student Union advice centre is a third party reporting centre for hate crime where both students and staff can report a hate crime or incident in complete confidence either by phone or in person?

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Gender gap in UK degree subjects doubles in eight years, Ucas study finds

2016-01-06 11:01:00 slskg2

Today everyone’s talking about the university gender gap! Ucas revealed that ‘Women now outnumber men in almost two-thirds of degree subjects, and the gender gap in British universities has almost doubled in size since 2007, figures show’.

Articles covering the issue can be found on the Guardian, Telegraph, The Times, Scotsman and The Mirror.

‘Among students who started degree courses last autumn, women outnumbered men in 112 out of 180 subjects, while men were ahead in 65 and there was equal representation in three. Overall, 66,840 more women than men are now on degree courses, compared with a gap of 34,035 in 2007.

The biggest gap is in nursing, where women outnumber men by nine to one, with 22,285 more female students than male. Psychology has the second biggest gender divide, followed by social work, education and design. Women are also ahead in areas such as history, philosophy, English, law and biology.

Among the subjects with more men, the biggest gap is in computer science, which has 13,085 more male students than female, followed by mechanical engineering, sports science, electrical engineering and economics.

Ucas noted that as there were more men in the population than women in general, there should be about 5% more male students than female in each subject.’ [Guardian]

 

 

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Equality, diversity and inclusion is everyone's business

2015-12-14 13:48:07 unspe

Guest post by Emily Connor, Students’ Union President 2014/15

I’ve always been lucky enough to be part of a large family of strong and independent women who have truly been an inspiration to me as I grew up. Going to University was something I wanted to do, and I never really thought much about my gender being a contributing factor. Same again when I ran for President; it was something I wanted to do, and therefore, taking the advice from my family, should go out and do it.

Personally, I have always been passionate and an advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion across all sectors, initiatives and roles. It’s not necessarily a job for one person, but something that everyone can and should be contributing to the development of. What is important, is that everyone sets and leads by example at every single level in order to set and change the tone of their environment.

For Sheffield Hallam, this means that everyone, from academics, to helpdesk staff through to our very own Vice Chancellor has a part to play in creating inclusive environments for our students and staff to operate and learn in. I’ve been partly involved in the recruitment of the new Vice-Chancellor, and it is imperative that the leadership of Sheffield Hallam recognises the importance of equality and diversity in learning, in spaces, in and in the culture of the organisation. This not only means demonstrating these behaviours him/herself, but inspiring and encouraging others to do the same in order to filter through to everyone else in the institution.

We have a beautifully diverse student population at Sheffield Hallam, and this is something we should celebrate and embrace more openly. As a Students’ Union we have begun work to tackle discrimination in sport, started campaigns on the BME attainment gap and looked intrinsically at the training we offer to our societies and sports teams. But this is just the beginning, and a lot of really exciting work is yet to come, but we can’t do it alone.

We need students to be open minded. We need lecturers to create safe spaces in their classrooms where we can challenge each other, we need support for our international students to enable them to stretch into their academic studies and we need to ensure that we adequately support our disabled students. We need commitment from the top to help to tackle all of these things.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a support network that helped me to get where I am now, and has kept me here despite its challenges. Not everyone is as fortunate, and that’s where we need to focus next.

 

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