Equality and Diversity

Some Common Misconceptions

There are many misunderstandings for employers and employees with regards to equality and diversity and new laws that have been adopted in the UK recently.

Acas the Conciliation and Advisory Service, which set up over 100 years ago in the UK to assist and help mediate differences between workers and management (rather old fashioned terms now), identified and discussed some of these issues on its website recently. ACAS discussed age prejudice, pregnancy concerns and race discrimination.

When advertising for a fluent language speaker for language jobs, preferably a native, you may not use the words mother tongue, regardless of the fact, for example, that a French person is likely to be the most fluent in French. Mother tongue is considered discriminatory. In the translation industry, mother tongue is a must when translating into the target (your own) language, but the words target and source are used, rather than native.

It seems that disability is one issue that concerns employers and what determines a disability? If a person develops ME, the debilitating disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, it would no doubt be considered a disability while it lasted, which can be some time. You can't be sacked for having ME and being away from work. Before the medical profession recognised ME as a serious and incapacitating disease, some employers thought the sufferer to be a malingerer.

Some employers believe that age discrimination applies only to more experience people. Not so - recruiters have been strongly advised how to write their advertisements when looking for someone with so many years experience for a job. The answer is do not mention length of experience. If a person is young, but completely capable of performing a certain job, they have the right to be considered.

The continuing argument goes on about equality in pay for men and women and while most Western working societies do make sincere efforts to observe equality and diversity in the workplace, many countries do still fall down in their efforts.

In the end it all comes down to care and common sense. Care for each other and our needs and common sense about what is workable and practical.Last night I saw an extraordinary short film on the way to treat each other called 'Binta & the Great Idea' ( Binta y la Gran Idea)- one of the producers/distributors is the UN and if you have the opportunity, do see it.