Category Archives: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
Graduate Retention Strategies: Ageist, Sexist Or Just Shortsighted?
Graduate retention is a serious aspect of any decent policy for regeneration. But the emphasis on new / young graduates alone is strange, when there are always also other highly qualified and more experienced people who might offer at least as much in any developing economy.
A recurring theme in the regeneration of cities and regions is the emphasis on retention of graduates. This is an entirely reasonable focus, given the cost of producing graduates and the potential which they have in terms of economic value. The flight of bright graduates from regional to capital cities is a well-marked issue for most regional economies.
Reducing the loss of graduate talent is generally a task allocated to the regional universities which have educated them. There is a whole sector of most regional knowledge economies which is dedicated simply to training and retaining graduates in the hope that they will enhance the economic performance of that region.
Extending the scope for retention
There are also now schemes which train ‘women returners’, women who have taken time out to raise a family or who have
only later in their working lives decided to develop their formal skills. Generally these schemes give good value for the ‘returners’ and their future employers, at least in terms of providing competent middle-level practitioners and professionals; and certainly they can make a really significant difference to the lives of the women who undertake the training.
Overlooked and under-used
But there is another group of people with high skills who are often simply not geared into their local and regional economy in any meaningful way. These are often older, highly qualified and experienced graduate women who are no longer working (but are usually not registered as unemployed), and who may remain living in an area because they have family or other personal commitments there.
These women generally do not need any further training (except in the same way that other practising professionals might need it) and they often undertake a good deal of voluntary and unpaid work in their communities. Little of this work however is given any formal economic value, and even less of it is focused strategically on the requirements of their economic location.
How could their activities be strategically focused, when these women, often for reasons beyond their individual control, may have almost no continuing professional connection in their communities?
Invisible people
In an economy with a significant proportion of women leaders and decision-makers the ‘invisible’ older female graduate might be identified as a person with serious economic potential,
someone for whom every effort should be made to find or create suitable high-level employment or enterprise opportunities commensurate with her qualifications and experience.
Highly qualified men are likely, we might suppose, to move to a job elsewhere which meets their requirements; the women may have no choice but to relinquish their employment, if their family moves elsewhere or if circumstances mean their job disappears. In many challenged regional and local economies however the scope to realise this female potential remains unperceived by those (mostly men) who decide the strategy for their local economies.
Doing the audit
Has anyone tried to estimate the numbers of ‘non-economically-productive’ highly qualified older women in a given regional or
local economy undergoing regeneration? Does anyone know what these women currently contribute informally to their economies, or what they could contribute formally in the right contexts?
Older women are often seemingly invisible. My guess, from many private encounters, discussions and observations over the past few years, is that here is an almost totally untapped resource.
Nurturing all available resources
Retention of young graduates is of course critical to economic renaissance; but so is the gearing in of the potential of older and more experienced graduates. This is another example of why economic regeneration strategists need to appreciate and nurture more carefully what they already have, as well as what they would like for the future to procure.
This article is also linked from the New Start magazine blog of 14 March 2007.
International Women’s Day: Let’s Focus On Feminist (Gendered) Economics
Today (8 March) is International Women’s Day, when women are celebrated in many parts of the world. But after more than a century of campaigning, women and men remain unequal in wealth and power. It’s time for an overtly feminist, gendered approach to economics, examining the differential impacts and advantages of economic activity on women and men.
The campaign for ‘women’s rights’ has been going for a very long time now.
One of the original texts about women’s rights, The Subjection of Women
The question is, therefore: despite worthy events such as International Women’s Day, why is there still such a long way to go?
Convenient inertia
‘Convenient’ is probably too kind a word to describe the collective failure to see the negative experience of most women in regard to economics, employment, public life and business. Nonetheless,
the word convenience points us in the right direction if we want to explain the stifling inertia many women experience in their quest simply for equality.
There are many fair-minded and decent men, but there are also large numbers who would rather see inequality and exploitation anywhere except on their own doorstep. And since men still have more power and influence than women, it’s often their perspectives which have the most weight. ‘Women’s equality’ may not be a taboo subject, but it is certainly a sidelined one.
There’s always something more urgent and important to address…
Economic analysis
So let’s start to approach this, seriously, another way. Let’s look routinely and quite expressly at how women and men fare in the
economy and the corridors of power.
In other words, let’s have an Economics which uses gender as an analytical tool in the same way that other Social Science analysis does. Only once the unspoken taboo had been broken did social scientists begin to perceive the realities of gender impact, direct and indirect, on society itself.
Moves in the right direction
Big steps are being made, with the introduction of equality standards for all English local authorities.
As part of these standards, Gender Impact Assessments, required from April 2007, are to be the vehicle through which the Women and Equality Unit and the Department for Trade and Industry is bringing into sharp focus the issue of gender in relation to the Government’s Public Service Reform.
Start them young
Government policy, excellent in intention though it may be, is one thing. Taking matters seriously in wider society, even if there are sanctions for not doing so, is sometimes another.
The next steps are to ensure that Business / Enterprise Studies and Economics embed gender differentials into their curriculum from the very start. This should be as much a part of the Economics (and other) GCSE curricula as it already is the Social Science one. Early on is the best place to start.
And at the other end of the scale corporates at every level should be required to give much more ‘gendered’ (and other diversity-linked) information in their annual reports. Business moves where its pocket takes it, and the bottom line here is exactly that, the visible bottom line. At a time of claimed skills
shortages, becoming gender conscious is good for business, as well as good for people.
Progress?
There are small initiatives such as the idea of the Conference Diversity Index, and also some much larger pointers to the future which thread through this train of thought.
In 2006 the London Business School launched the Lehman Brothers Business Centre for Women, with the intention of providing solutions for the challenges that businesses face in attracting and retaining talented women.
Signs of success
But alongside the urgent necessity to get more women to the very ‘top’ we need to ensure that most of them don’t stay much nearer the bottom.
The costs of gender inequality impinge on us all. There are a few thinkers and scholars who have established a baseline here, but only when gender is a clearly articulated part of mainstream public consciousness, politics and business will we really be getting somewhere.
A shorter version of this article was published as a letter in The Guardian on 8 March 2007.
The Cost Of Childcare: Women’s Work And Women’s Wages
Pre-school childcare is generally regarded as expensive. Even with government financial support, it stretches many household budgets. But there are now many more childcare places than hitherto. More places and higher costs, properly handled, may together be a longer-term sign of better status for women in the labour market.
The cost of pre-school childcare, we are constantly reminded, is ‘spiralling’ – highest, as ever, in London, and lowest in the north-west of England. The Daycare Trust tells us that the average cost of a full-time nursery place for under-twos is now (as of January 2007) £152 a week in England, and £131 in Wales. With individual average earnings at £447 a week, this is a hefty chunk out of some household budgets.
Early years support
Few would deny, however, that the government is doing its best to provide quality care for pre-school children. Welcoming recent developments, Alison Garnham, joint Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust called on the Government, as well as other political parties, to deliver the Ten Year Childcare Strategy:
‘At long last we have a government that is committed to making
progress in childcare facilities in this country. When New Labour came to power they faced major challenges in delivering high quality and affordable childcare to all families and we welcome wholeheartedly the improvements that have been made under the Ten Year Strategy.‘
Big changes from the past
Long gone is the grim time when finding childcare was an individual (mother)’s nightmare, relying only on a hunch and perhaps a local health visitor – who probably didn’t ‘approve’ of working mums – in the exhausting search for someone reliable to care for one’s children whilst the money to feed them was earned.
In 2007, Sure Start is metamorphosing into Children’s Centres,
and the tax credit system – to the daily tune of more than £2m for almost 400,000 families – helps many parents, as do tax-relief childcare vouchers (now up to age 12); and three- and four-year olds are entitled to 12.5 hours of free nursery education a week. In London, there is also a Childcare Affordability Programme which subsidises the cost of childcare by up to £30 for eligible parents.
Direct costs are up
Nonetheless, parents in the UK pay about 70% of the costs of childcare, compared to an average of about 30% for other European parents. (Where, of course, childcare patterns are sometimes very different.) And costs have risen more quickly than inflation – almost 6% in 2006, against inflation of less than half this.
Alongside this, there are reports that affordable childcare is
difficult to find in many areas.
Not all bad news
I have three takes on this situation:
There is the individual problem for parents who find it hard to fund good childcare; there is the opportunity for business-minded child carers at last to earn a decent living; and there is a shift in the labour market which, longer-term, may well serve everyone well.
Parents’ stretched budgets
First, I have every sympathy with parents who struggle to make ends meet and find the costs of ‘quality’ childcare so difficult. Raising young families is always a challenge and it is crucial that every possible support is given to parents in their efforts to do this responsibly and well.
It’s very important from every perspective that parents – including, but not only, single parents – and their children receive all the help which can be mustered by their communities, employers, and the government.
Childcare entrepreneurs
Second, this situation is by no means bad news for those entrepreneurs – almost all of them women – who see a childcare market opportunity and grasp it.
Childcare providers, at least in Britain, has traditionally been appallingly badly paid. It is about time that this changed. These days many people are concerned about the quality of what they eat. If there is now a public debate also about the quality of care for their children, this can only be to the good.
The market will rise to the opportunity; but, just as with quality food, provision may not always be cheap. (Though expense is not always the issue: sometimes it’s actually organising the right thing which is the problem. Neither home-grown food nor local, small-scale quality childcare need be so very expensive.)
The labour market
Finally, if I were a feminist economist (assuming such persons consciously exist), I would be pleased about the current scenario.
It is likely that most of those who are pushing for higher wages in response to childcare costs will be women. By the logic of the market this demand will have to be addressed and to some extent met.
And a corollary, given only finite amounts of available money,
may well be a market shift towards more equality of income between women and men. If women demand more pay, male employees (or indeed their managers / shareholding employers) will have to give way to a degree at least – especially as women are increasingly vital to the workforce, now often taking the field in terms of qualifications (sometimes gained whilst their little ones are receiving childcare) and skills.
Courage in transition
It’s a long, hard struggle, this childcare – equality scenario. But things overall are already better than they were, and the likelihood is that more pressure, higher expectations and political will together really can make a difference.
The Government’s Every Child Matters programme can of course be improved as experience in ‘how to do it’ is gained in
communities and by decision-makers. Potential for improvements in childcare is however a positive, never a negative. The Government must keep its nerve.
The debates about affordability and quality in early years provision are welcome signs that every child does indeed ‘matter’, and that, slowly, the economy is adjusting to recognise just that.
International Mother Language Day
Today is International Mother Language Day. Celebrated for the first time in the Millennium Year, it is a programme promoted by UNESCO, the 2007 theme being multilingualism.
But why is it important?
The promotion of multilingualism lies at the heart of International Mother Language Day. Introduced in 2000 by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 21 February is the day in the year when we are asked to recognise the uniqueness and significance of the 6,000 languages known to humankind.
In doing this however UNESCO has not set itself against the grain of ‘progress’, for the other emphasis on this date is acknowledgement of the value of shared language, of the ability to communicate in more than simply one’s own mother tongue.
Powerful instruments
UNESCO offers a strong rationale for its promotion of mother languages and multilingualism.
These are, it says, ‘the most powerful instruments of preserving
and developing our tangible and intangible heritage…. [helping us to develop a] fuller awareness of linguistic traditions across the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.’
Linguapax
A corollary of this approach is the on-going (since 1986) UNESCO Lingupax project, which aims to promote a ‘culture of peace’ through the promotion of multilingual education and respect for linguistic diversity.
In that respect it seems sensible that people resident in a country learn to speak its main, official language/s, that they are also encouraged to respect and use the language of their immediate culture, and that schools offer those who wish it the opportunity to learn languages which may be culturally and geographically far
removed from immediate experience.
Idealistic but important
Idealistic and architypically platitudinous these notions may be….. but who could deny the truths behind them?
The need to talk meaningfully and insightfully with one another has surely never been more pressing.
Single-Sex Schools Or Classes? What’s The Longer Term Impact?
Recent figures confirm that girls are doing better at school (and university) than boys. Single-sex classes within co-ed schools are not however generally seen as a way to resolve this inequality. But how much do we know about the longer-term impact on men and women of single-sex or mixed gender teaching?
Increasing concern about the higher academic achievement of girls than of boys in the U.K. has again raised the issue of single-sex classes (or even schools) as the norm.
Reasons for this concern are interesting, given the historical lack of concern* when girls under-performed relative to boys (and given also that even highly women still earn much less than their male counterparts). Nonetheless, current concerns are both legitimate and pressing.
[* With honourable exceptions – e.g. the fourth letter by Edward Brotherton in this 1864 Manchester Guardian correspondence.]
There is an uncomfortable feeling, overall, that the underperformance of boys is likely to lead to a larger disaffected ‘underclass’, than when things were the other way around.
And we can add to that the obvious consequence of
underperformance, in restricting the availability of talent to the economy, whether this be a male or female issue.
‘Solutions’?
For these reasons, as well as for reasons of equality of opportunity as such, much debate has recently occurred on the subject of mixed-sex and single-sex classes and schools. The general (but not unanimous) opinion on the basis of available evidence, it seems, is that there is little impact either way.
Frankly, I have my doubts about whether this analysis is adequate.
The evidence over many decades is that women do significantly less well economically and professionally than men, if you look at mature outcomes. And this happens even for people with the same qualifications. In other words, any initial advantage
diminishes as time goes on, almost regardless of family, parenthood (men become parents, too) and much else.
Early impacts
But there is one element of background which seems to make a difference, for women if not for men – and that is the ‘space’ in the secondary years which single-sex classes offer girls, to learn (some) things independently of boys.
It seems, especially in the more mathematically-related curriculum, that this helps girls; and it probably also helps in terms of self-determination and a conviction that it’s OK as an independent person to go ahead and do things with one’s life.
Certainly, this was a major indicator, in research undertaken quite early on by myself and others looking at how women scientists hold their own.
And perhaps the same applies to boys. If the girls aren’t there to talk about all the soft stuff in class, maybe the boys would have to have the courage to talk about it themselves – which could be an important help when ‘real life’ catches up with them in later adolescence and adulthood.
Balancing different agendas
There is a suspicion that some schools prefer mixed teaching because they see the girls (more mature and less disruptive?) as a stabilising influence on the boys. But this is not an equitable way forward and two wrongs do not make a
right.
I’d go for the so-called ‘diamond’ arrangement – segregated teaching for some core subject in the early years of secondary school – but not, if at all possible, for totally separate schools for girls and boys. There can surely be a middle way.
Even more critically, I’d make sure that analysis of research findings routinely extends beyond formal education to life outcomes, so we begin to understand more fully ‘what happens’ when individuals receive single-sex or co-ed teaching in their formative years.
International Women’s Day 2007: What Will You Be Doing?
International Women’s Day is coming up on 8 March. It’s an event celebrating more than half the human population but it has a perennially low profile – often like the gender it celebrates. What’s International Women’s Day for, and how ‘should’ it be celebrated?
International Women’s Day is once more almost upon us.
Big events take a lot of organising, but, despite the IWD announcements, as in other years scarcely anyone is talking about how to celebrate this particular event. Of course there will be a scattering of (very welcome) arts happenings, and a conference or two, but… excitement in the air, there is not.
Celebration or frustration?
Perhaps the low-key approach to International Women’s Day is because many of us, women increasingly long in the tooth and short on patience, wonder if we will ever have an equitable stakehold in what’s on offer. Or else, still young and hopeful, perhaps we don’t yet think much about these matters.
Whatever, who wants to invest a lot of time and money in celebrating ‘women’s issues’?
One day a year is women’s notional allocation of celebratory time, and that’s not far off the proportion of wealth and top-level influence which women have, either. (I exaggerate and overstate the case a little, but not much.)
For those of us who, as women, value what we are and what we actually do, ‘progress’ does indeed seem to be very slow.
The dilemma: What does it take?
Our dilemma is this: Intuitively, we seek to celebrate, not stipulate. But celebration could be perceived as a very weak response to the multiple ‘challenges’ and deprivations which, globally, are still the lot of many more women than men.
Perhaps we should be marching in the streets, not sending out yet another lot of (idealised?) sisterly love, solidarity and affirmation.
Marching on the streets has however been done before, with sometimes important but generally only limited success – and often with fierce downsides for particular individuals.
And if we take just the harsher route of campaign, never celebration, we become very much like those whose behaviour, stereotypically, we may not always wish to emulate.
Solutions?
So is International Women’s Day worth celebrating?
I’d say, Yes – both because it focuses on issues which have particular resonance for many women of all ages and statuses, and because it reminds us of women elsewhere (than in the modern, western world) who should not be forgotten.
My ‘answer’, however, takes us almost nowhere in terms of how we should actually conduct our celebration.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store, and share your thoughts on the meaning of International Women’s Day, and how it could or should be ‘celebrated’.
A Civil Society University For The U.K.?
The place where non-state, non-business public activities challenge the assumptions of wealthy organisations and the ruling classes or prevailing consensus is often referred to as ‘civil society’. A proposal that this place have its own university in the U.K., to scrutinise and develop the core skills and specialist knowledge base of the ‘third sector’ of the economy, is now being taken seriously.
PrimeTimers is a London-based social enterprise promoting cross-sector transfers of people, ideas and methods. In Autumn 2005 they held a conference, Agenda for Change, from which emerged the idea of a ‘Civil Society University’. This idea is also a response to the UK Government’s review of the Future Role of the Third Sector in Social and Economic Regeneration.
A key concept underlying the idea is that third sector values and practices should be submitted to rigorous testing in terms of intellectual integrity, reasoned debate and scientific research. Such an approach has welcome and important implications for how civil society might develop over the next few decades and beyond.
Multiple conceptualisation, multiple benefits
Like many other good ideas, the Civil Society University concept
has also emerged in other places – for instance, at a Council of Europe conference in September 2005 and in a submission dated December 2005 to the Organisation of American States from the Permanent Forum of Civil Society Organisations.
Civil society is the arena where the right of free speech and association is exercised to promote many and diverse causes for what their proponents believe to be the greater good. Often these beliefs challenge the prevailing or most powerful consensus; yet rarely is attention given to the skills and knowledge which could best support such a challenge.
The benefits which might accrue from rigorous scrutiny by the academy, by those who practise their skills in higher education, are what make the idea of a Civil Society University appeal to many involved in widely diverse parts of the third sector.
Education, not ‘just’ training
There is a real need for parts of the third sector to move away from its historic philanthropic roots towards a sharper professional focus. Volunteers (nonetheless, preferably trained) will always be at the heart of at least some third sector activities; but they usually cannot provide the hard headedness which is required in running large-scale or complex modern organisations.
Indeed, thus far it would be difficult even to estimate what added value (or not?) would derive from a more fully functioning and defined third sector key skills ‘toolbox’. And the same applies to issues around third sector career structure and professional development. This is where the Civil Society University fits in.
Challenge and opportunity
For some the proposal to subject the third sector and its operation could pose a perceived threat, but that does not do the idea justice.
Those who share a concern to ‘make things better’ will more likely welcome the chance to support a move to do exactly that, to ‘make good things more effective still’.
What could be better than to subject our ideas and practices to a form of scrutiny – always itself open to scrutiny and challenge – intended to make the very best of the resources, people and commitment available to effect a more equitable and civil society?
Contacts
The Civil Society University is proposed by Professor Martin Albrow, Dr Mary Chadwick and Brent Thomas, all of PrimeTimers.
They can be contacted at info@primetimers.org.uk.
Monday Women ’06: Liverpool’s No-Cost Mutual Support Group Relocates
![MondayWomen{small].jpg](https://i0.wp.com/www.dreamingrealist.co.uk/MondayWomen%7Bsmall%5D.jpg)
Monday Women is a no-cost group, open to all, which meets and has an e-group. With affliliation of hundreds, it welcomes discussion and activities around topics of interest to women from all walks of life. After four years, the meetings are re-locating.
Please see also the Monday Women section of this website for up-to-date inormation on meetings etc.
Monday Women meetings for early 2007 are moving to the Heart and Soul Cafe-Restaurant in Liverpool.
Monday Women (Liverpool) is an open-access social and e-group for women to share views and news. ‘Members’ keep in touch in two ways: via open meetings-cum-social-events on the first Monday of the month (except Bank Holidays) and through the e-group. Women attending face-to-face events do not need to ‘belong’ to the e-group, nor do e-group members necessarily attend Monday Women events. (N.B. Children are welcome at the social events where this allows their mother / carer to attend the group.)
The Monday Women e-group has just one aim: to facilitate contact and networking between women from all walks of life, some of whom will be able to attend our events and others of
whom may not be able to. The intention is quite simply to encourage the sharing of news, views and companionship.
A no-cost, informal and open-minded network
There is no formal membership for the Group and no Officers, or agenda. There are no costs, fees or admission charges for meetings or for ‘joining’ the e-group, which are both open to all on a no-obligation basis. This is simply a relaxed and informal meeting arrangement for women in Liverpool and Merseyside.
Topics for discussion and exchange of information between individuals attending / joining in the e-group might be anything from the possible need for a
playgroup, traffic crossing or bank in a particular area, to considering plans for regeneration and renewal of the city, to informing people about a special event, or enquiring who else might be interested in setting up a business or community group!
The group also occasionally shares ‘outside events’ such as the recent highly successful visit to the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth and two other adjacent sites of great civic and historical interest. There is in addition an annual Christmas celebratory event on the first Monday in December, organised, like every other occasion, by volunteer members of the group.
Relocating for 2007
The group was inaugurated on Monday 3 March 2003 in the Liverpool Everyman Bistro, where it has met every month since until the end of 2006. We are much indebted to Paddy Byrne, Geoff Hale and colleagues, the Bistro owners and staff, for their generous support over the past almost four years, as we now move on to new premises for early 2007 – the upstairs room of Chumki Banerjee’s Heart and Soul Cafe-Restaurant , and then from 2 April to Dragon in Berry Street. ‘Meetings’ will be from 5.45 pm until about 7.30 pm (some people stay later), although people come and go within this time span, arriving and attending for as long as they wish.
Each person joining a Monday Women event at our 2007 venues will (as before) select and buy her own refreshments – if required – in the actual cafe and then take them into the ‘meeting’ with
her. This enables everyone to choose items of food and / or drink which suit individual tastes and budgets.
PS Monday 5 February 2007:
Our meeting at Heart & Soul was a big success (thanks, Chumki!!), as the photo below shows….
Becoming a ‘member’ of Monday Women
All women are welcome to ‘join’ Monday Women (Liverpool). To become a ‘member’ all that is required is that women turn up for a meeting – a warm welcome is assured! – or that they join the e-group. To join the e-group women are invited to email Monday Women, or to contact Hilary Burrage direct via this website.
Or perhaps, if you’re a woman reading this away from Liverpool, you’d like to set up a Monday Women group too? If so, do let us know about your plans. There’s room for Monday Women everywhere….
The Christmas Charity Gift Dilemma
Christmas is a time for giving. But what, and to whom? Many would like Christmas to be less commercial, whilst helping those not as fortunate as themselves. Doing this in a way which shows fondness for family, friends and colleagues but also benefits others can sometimes be a difficult balance to achieve.
The Christmas charity gift brochures these days often start to arrive with the August Bank Holiday. We therefore have plenty of time to ponder the dilemmas which then arise:
(a) Do I buy gifts from these brochures, actual items, to give directly to friends and family? or
(b) Do I buy ‘gifts’ which are actually donations towards items required by needy people elsewhere, often in the developing world – and give my own folk tokens which say that’s what I’ve done, of my own volition, on their behalf? or
(c) Do I give gifts which I have chosen elsewhere and then think about the charitable giving at some other point?
Not comfortable options
Most of these options leave me, at least, feeling rather uncomfortable. Buying charity Christmas cards (or some direct gifts, if genuinely appropriate) is one thing; the recipents still receive the original item. Buying charitable items which are not intended for the ‘recipient’, but for someone who for us is without a name, living elsewhere, is another thing altogether. The big question is, is it alright to give to charity on another’s behalf, without seeing if that’s what they wanted?
And, indeed, is it even OK to ask them if it is actually what they’d like to do? Perhaps, they’re doing it already? Or even, uneasy thought, perhaps they wouldn’t choose to give to the charity we’ve chosen on their unwitting behalf?
Of course, the precise intention of the charities who mail us is to encourage ‘giving’ – and few would deny that such giving is needed.
I do not subscribe to the idea that there is no point; I’m quite sure much of the money raised does indeed go to very good causes.
Nonetheless, is it OK to ‘give’ in the name of someone else? Should we give only what we own ourselves? Is it right to divert gifts from people one knows personally, to people one does not know, whilst also proclaiming a good deed on their behalf?
Another way?
Many would agree that there is a real sense in which charitable giving does reflect the ‘meaning’ of Christmas. The question then is, how can we do it without seeming to give what is not exactly ours – in other words the gift we would ‘give’ to our nearest and dearest?
I’m beginning to think there may be a way. This ‘solution’ depends on the amount of cash available and the sort of personal contacts one has; it’s not really appropriate, say, for hard-pressed families with children where money is scarce. But for the rest of us it might work.
Christmas consortia
How about an agreement that, special exceptions apart, we all give direct personal gifts costing no more than an agreed sum – but at the same time we get together to ‘buy’ that much-needed donkey, tree, kids’ trip, hoe, emergency kit or whatever?
It would take someone to make the initial arrangements and act as ‘treasurer’, and maybe each year a different member of the group might undertake that task. But it’s a project which would enable us all to choose something personal for those we know and love, whilst also sharing a goal in a positive group activity, be it as colleagues, family or friends. How much each person can give would be confidential between themselves and the ‘treasurer’ only, but all would have contributed.
Maybe 2006 is the year to set up the rota, even if there’s no time now to try the idea out fully before the festivities begin? And here are some of the many links which will take you to see what’s on offer:
Concern Worldwide
gifts4life
Oxfam Unwrapped
Wish List (Save the Children)
Has anyone tried this way? Does it work? Maybe you could let us know in the Comments box below?
Conference Diversity Index: The Sustainable Development Of The Liverpool City Region
A conference supported with public money on the sustainable development of a city region is obviously a matter of considerable public interest. It needs, therefore, also to be a conference in which deliberative democracy plays a part, and in which the diversity of all those ultimately involved is acknowledged. It also needs to support easy accessibility in terms of attendance and recorded output.
A Conference Diversity Index is being developed on this website to see how well these requirements are met by conferences such as this.
I have already written on this weblog (and in New Start magazine) about my intention to develop a Conference Diversity Index. I have also shared my concern on this site about how Liverpool, perhaps even more than other places, is a location where local women in visibly influential positions are not the norm.
How can organisations, conferences, presentations which concern public life and which involve public money (for instance, public sector attendance or speakers) offer maximum value when those actually involved do not at all reflect the composition of the population they seek to consider?
Is diversity essential for policy-making?
* How can genuinely wider engagement occur at a meaningful level when those most visible all reflect the power and influence
of only one part of the population?
* How can the understandings and experience of everyone be seen to be respected in such circumstances?
* How can we be at all sure that the decisions taken in the wake of these events offer best value for money when only small parts of the diversity even those well qualified to speak whose lives will be affected have been visibly involved?
What follows is a first attempt at a case study to arrive at possible answers to some of these questions. In it I have tried to establish the extent to which the conference addresses matters of public interest, and compared that with the extent to which it acknowledges issues of diversity of experience and accessibility of outcomes, awarding up to five ‘stars’ for good value.
Conference themes
The Sustainable Development of the Liverpool City Region event is a one-day ‘strategic’ conference organised by the Waterfront Conference Company of London, at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Liverpool on 5th December 2006.
The conference concerns ‘how Liverpool and Merseyside can develop sustainability’, discussing strategic development issues, removing the barriers to development, gateways to Liverpool and Merseyside and transport links, and getting the most from leadership structures.
>> Merseyside remains an area where there is considerable poverty, where fewer women , working class males and people from ethnic minorities have high educational qualifications and /
or well-paid employment, where public transport is a critical issue (fewer car-owning families), where health is a challenging issue, where there are very few women at the most senior levels of local public life and decision-making.
>> Diversity of experience and role models is therefore a central concern.
Score for relevance to public issues: ***** [5 stars out of a possible maximum of 5]
Speakers
13 speakers, all well-known in their fields, are listed in the brochure. 12 of them are male. Liverpool is not the professional base of the only female speaker.
>> This gender distribution does not remotely reflect the
distribution on men and women living and working in the ‘Liverpool City Region’ – or, indeed, the country as a whole. Nor does the list of speakers reflect any evident ethnic or community diversity.
>> Discussions of sustainable futures, encouraging businesses, transport, environmental ‘friendliness’, ‘barriers to development’ and the like are all issues concerning everyone. These are not issues which can only be addressed at high levels by white males, however impressive their particular expertise.
>> The list of speakers (as opposed one hopes to the content of the speakers’ talks) offers no positive role model, or encouragement, for most people in Liverpool, to the view that their experience and opinions count.
Score for diversity of speakers: – [No stars out of a
maximum of 5: fewer than 20% of the speakers are not white males.]
Attendees and fees
Those who ‘should’ attend include private investors, local authority, regional and national public servants through to ‘environmental and other pressure groups’. Fees for these various categories are respectively £468.83, £351.33 and £233.83. It is however possible to purchase the CD-Rom of the conference papers alone for £179.19.
>> Large numbers of those attending can be expected to be public officials, or involved in financial dealings in the public domain. They must pay quite a lot of money frm the public purse to attend (and to be paid their publicly-funded salaries for their day’s work as attenders).
>> The reduced rate is too high for most local and community bodies to become involved; and the cost of the CD-Rom is, frankly, exhorbitant.
Score for accessibility: ** [2 stars out of a maximum of 5 : There is a reduced rate for voluntary bodies, and at least a CD-Rom is available, and therefore potentially accessible somehow.]
Overall score
We have seen that this conference is about issues of central importance to Liverpool and Merseyside. It addresses matters which concern everyone. Yet it offers no acknowledgement of diversity of experience, and little in the way of accessibility in respect of outcomes. Significant opportunities to lead by engagement and personal example have here been lost.
I therefore award this conference an overall diversity value score of ONE STAR out of a possible five.
Dreaming Realist 