BME women suffer gross gender and ethnic penalty in workplace

While a demonstrable gender agenda has continued to make noise across the media and in Parliament in recent years, the category of “Women” persistently fails to take into account the full gamut of diversity that exists within that word. BME women or disabled women rarely have a stake in the gender equality camp. When it comes to employment, certain groups of ethnic minority women are among the first to bear the brunt of the economic downturn, undoing the progressive movements of the last fifteen years.

Let’s take just one important job as an example: data from the NHS shows that African midwives are 5 times more likely to be sacked than white midwives. In fact, last year, all of the midwives sacked in London were of African origin.

This micro-reality might seem excessively specific, but the overall trend is even more disheartening. Current figures show that 20.5% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women and 17.7% of Black women are unemployed, while only 6.8% of their white counterparts are unemployed. For Black, African, Caribbean and Pakistani 16 – 24 year olds, this figure rockets to 44% unemployed. Consider this unequal distribution with 2011 census data showing a rise in the BME population in the UK, and this issue becomes an urgent socio-economic deficiency. Those in power can no longer afford to gloss over the intricacies of unemployment with a ‘colour-blind’ approach.

In response to the prevailing sense that BME women have largely been invisible to policy makers, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Race and Community has just completed its inquiry into ethnic minority female unemployment. At the last meeting of the APPG in September, OBV heard evidence from an expert panel. This session, chaired by David Lammy MP, focusing on Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, was designed to get to the bottom of the causes and contexts of the problem, and to drive possible policy initiatives.

The resounding cry from the panel was that residual inequalities in employment have fostered a perception that leaders and politicians do not care. “Non-BME people have to own this problem as well. It takes two hands to clap,” said Yvonne Coghill OBE, Senior Programme Leader for Equality in the NHS. In all sectors, from the top - the Police, Health, Education, Finance, Enterprise - we need to hear that leaders in all sectors care about diversity. With a racially unrepresentative elite, white people need to be as vigorous as BME people in driving change.

Currently, the government operates a ‘colour-blind’ approach to tackling unemployment. But when certain demographics are disproportionately affected, is this the right method?

The path to employment is blockaded by covert discrimination. Sandra Kerr OBE, the National Campaign Director for Race for Opportunity, reports aspiration and frustration in the recruitment process. White people are “easier to place”, while employers reported back a “lack of chemistry” as the reason they failed to hire BME women. While it is possible to indignantly claim that this smacks of racism, Race for Opportunity is using the term “unconscious bias” that latently creates racial prejudice. At a more practical level, BME women are also less equipped in networking skills, or interview proficiency; often lacking the skills or financial means to re-contract or set up alone.

Factors outside of the workplace include a dearth of culturally sensitive childcare and barriers to more traditional types of networking, such as after work socialising that frequently centres around alcohol. BME women need to be able to drive their own agenda when seeking employment, and cement professional relationships regardless of religion or motherhood.

Alarmingly, for women in employment, the future is not secure. Public services are making redundancies faster than the data can be collated on exactly who is being made redundant.

Inside the NHS, the biggest organisation in Europe, 70 – 80 % of the workforce are female. Undeniably, the NHS was built on back of the graft done by BME women in the 1960s and 70s, yet senior level management, boards and director roles are overwhelmingly white. While the NHS employs over 1.3 million people, there are currently only 4 BME chief executives and 30 BME directors. Approximately 45% of doctors in the NHS are BME, but at this time of increased cuts, BME women are more likely to lose out. Primary Care Trusts, which did a lot of work on equality and diversity, are scheduled for complete abolition by March 2013, under the coalition’s Health and Social Care Act. Increased private contractors in the dismantling of the public sector, also included under this Bill, means that even less monitoring of diversity will take place, unless legislation is introduced.

Professor Monder Ram OBE, Director of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship at De Montfort University, made an excellent case for regulation. To his critics, who may lay the charge of buzzwords such as “red tape” and “inefficiency”, Prof. Ram differentiated between rhetoric and practice: “evidence says regulation and red tape is not as much of a problem as it is spoken to be”.

In fact, legislation is essential to force employers to take the problems seriously and is not a constraint on employment. Currently, it is not a requirement to have a diversity assessment when hiring in the UK, and the issue has been jettisoned and diluted in the coalition's proposed changes to employment law. Yet there is a huge opportunity for the government to encourage enterprise, transparency and accountability by implementing measures for inclusive job creation.

Furthermore, failure to monitor diversity data is a denial of the problem. Only through information, and by improving equal opportunities forms that bracket ‘gender’ and ‘ethnicity’ separately, will it be possible to gauge the challenges and inequalities for BME women in the workplace.

Problematically, however, it is not always straight forward for legislation to intervene, and monitoring cannot account for the numbers of BME women who are self-employed or not on a payroll. Small businesses have always been the refuge for BME people, either in recessions or when they are simply shut out of the labour market. For the most part, it is not women who own these SMEs. But behind the scenes, women play an integral role in running the business, termed ‘micro business households’. When an entire household is invested in a business, it becomes extremely difficult to untangle child care, labour market issues or employment costs.

With a myriad of factors trapping a high number of BME women in lower paid, insecure employment, or shut out of the job market all together, what policy measures can be taken? And what is the incentive for employers to take diversity seriously? Cynics might venture that racial equality has not been enough of a reason for those in power. One thing is certain – leaders and governors might ignore the ethnic penalty as a minority concern, but UK industry must wake up to the commercial benefit of harnessing diversity, because BME women are its consumers and voters.

The findings of the APPG’s inquiry will be published in November.

Philippa de Lacy