The Ministry for Inequality really is a bottomless pit of hypocrisy.  I sent the following Freedom of Information request the other day:

1.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. Male
b. Female

2.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. White English (or British if you don’t record English nationality)
b. White non-English (or British if you don’t record English
nationality)
c. BME

3.  What plans there are to appoint a Minister for Men.  If there are
none, why not?

The Ministry for Inequality has a Minister for Women but no Minister for Men and the three Ministers for Equality are women.  As expected, the Ministry for Inequality is heavily biased against men in its workforce as well:

Dear Mr Parr

GEO/09/FOI/000024

Thank you for your request for information sent on 28 April, which we have dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act.  I can confirm that the Department holds the information you are seeking.

1.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. Male
b. Female

Of our 118 staff in post:
42 are male &
76 are female.

2.  What proportion of the Ministry’s employees are:
a. White English (or British if you don’t record English nationality)
b. White non-English (or British if you don’t record English
nationality)
c. BME

Of the staff that have declared their ethnic identity:

36 are White British
30 are from Another white backgrounds
11 are from Black African/Caribbean background.

3.  What plans there are to appoint a Minister for Men.  If there are
none, why not?

Ministerial appointments are a matter for the Prime Minister.  The second part of your question is not strictly a Freedom of Information request, however we are sometimes asked about a Minister for Men. The following is the response that we use :

“The Government recognises that there are areas in British society where men face disadvantage or discrimination but the quickest glance at our income and poverty figures will show that overall, women are the main victims of inequality in our country.

This remains true today despite the passing of the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination legislation almost 40 years ago. For example:

Women account for over half of the United Kingdom’s population, but only make up 19.4% of MPs and 29.3% of local councillors.
Black, Asian and Ethnic minority women account for 11.6% of the UK’s female population but make up less than 1% of local councillors.
Only 11% of the directors in the boardrooms of the top 100 FTSE companies are female;
The gap between the pay of male and female workers is currently 12.6% for full times and 39.1% for part-timers.
In 2007/08 there were 106 homicides where the perpetrator was the partner/ex-partner of the victim. Of these, 72 victims were female and 34 male;
Women still shoulder the lion’s share of caring for the old and the young and 90.5% (2001 Census) of lone parents are female.”

So almost two thirds of the Ministry for Inequality’s employees are women, they have no male ministers and there are no plans to create a Minister for Men to represent the specific interests of men in the same way that the Minister for Women does for women.  White “British” (I would imagine “British” in this case mostly means English as the Ministry for Inequality is in London) employees are also in a minority if the recorded information is representative of the whole workforce.
How on earth can the Ministry for Inequality use the way people vote as justification for discrimination?  If we didn’t vote for any women in the next election, what business is that of the state?  The whole point of democracy is that we can vote for who we want, when we want.

There are plenty of women working their way up through the ranks at FTSE100 companies but large multi-nationals tend not to employ people just because they’re women, being able to run a large multi-national is usually one of the key requirements.

How much of the “gender pay gap” is down to the type of work being done rather than the fact that they’re women?

Is the Ministry for Inequality really suggesting that a Minister for Women can reduce the number of women murdered by their current or former partner?  Does Ms Harperson also have the answer to the problems in the middle east and a cure for cancer?

And the reason why 90.5% of single parents are women is because the system is institutionally biased towards women.  In cases of marital breakdown, the mother will automatically be given custody unless there is a good reason not to.

So the Ministry for Equality really doesn’t live up to its name at all.  Institutional discrimination is clearly rife in the Ministry for Inequality but they don’t seem to have any intention to clean their act up despite intending to pass a bill forcing companies to publish this sort of information.  If publicising the gender bias in the Ministry for Inequality doesn’t banish discrimination in a government department, why is it going to make a difference in a private company?

Harriet Harperson is a shamelss hypocrite.  Don’t forget to sign the petition calling on the Prime Minister to appoint a Minister for Men and deal with the gender bias in the Ministry for Inequality.

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