The recent Ada Lovelace Day blogging event raised important points about the challenges of getting more young women and girls hooked on technology subjects – and dealing with the barriers which may cause some of them to fall by the wayside.
For this episode I travelled to the Electrical Engineering Department at Leeds University, for an event organised by the Women’s Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society, BCS Women.
The second annual Ada Lovelace Colloquium was organised by Hannah Dee with colleagues from the BCS Women committee. I spoke to Hannah, some of the speakers and many of the delegates as the day unfolded.
This Podcast is complemented by a series of You Tube videos showing excerpts from many of the actual presentations. One example is shown below. The others will be linked from here when they have all been published.
Alan Pollard is the President of the British Computer Society and is featured here delivering the introduction to the annual BCS Lovelace Colloquium for women undergraduates this year at Leeds University. He speaks here about why he and the BCS see the importance of encouraging more women into technology roles such as in IT. For more details (and for links to more of the video content) see the Podcast above this.
The biggest thing for Equality and Diversity in 2009 is probably going to be the new Equality Bill, which was announced in last month’s Queen’s Speech. Debate on that will begin soon in Parliament and then we’ll learn the precise details of what the Government intends.
During December I spoke to several audiences about the 40 year history that brought us to this point – you can hear a version that in an earlier episode. I plan to feature an update when the Bill has been published and there’s been a chance to study the fine print.
In the meantime, here is a keynote speech about trans people in social care, which I delivered back in October 2007 for the Commission for Social Care Inspection. The audience included over 300 inspectors, social workers and service providers.
As the festive season is upon us, and 2008 draws to a close, this episode is intended as a parting thought for the year.
Unless they are very lucky, most of the kinds of people we focus upon in Equality, Diversity and Human Rights will have had a close encounter of some kind with discrimination. Ideally that experience would make everyone that extra bit sensitive about respecting the differences of others. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Firsthand experience of hurt doesn’t necessarily make better people.
People from some ethnic backgrounds may express homophobic views. Some lesbian or gay people may express racist views. It can seem at times as though people with evangelical religious beliefs might be intolerant of just about everyone other than themselves. Disputes can extend even within communities who, while distinct, experience similar forms of discrimination.
Nobody ever emerges well from these affairs. People behave badly on all sides. The in-fighting detracts from the business of tackling wider issues. Hostilities alienate friends and allies. They sap energy and lead to disillusioned and bruised people disengaging altogether.
But if these disputes can sometimes feel like war then it’s worth remembering that it takes two to make an eventual truce.
Not all truces last, of course. Yet even a brief halt can allow common humanity to be recognised and highlight the pointlessness of the fray. The setting here is the multiply-divided LGBT community, but it could be any.
The Queen’s Speech in late autumn marks the beginning of each new Parliamentary term. It’s a time when the Government reveals its’ legislative plans for the coming year. This year’s event is on December 3rd. However, these days, the speech seldom contains any big surprises, as so much about the agenda is extensively trailed beforehand.
One item expected in this new term will be the new Single Equality Bill — the most radical attempt to overhaul Britain’s equality law framework in forty years. To mark that watershed this episode looks back on that forty year history, discusses some of the issues about equality legislation, how the Government has developed the new Bill, and what it is expected to contain.
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It is an occupational hazard of organising speaking events that now and then one of your speakers will be suddenly and unexpectedly indisposed. When that happens you can either leave a gap — or try and fill the breach yourself.
This is a problem that arose in the third of our recent conference / workshops on the Gender Equality Duty in Health. At each event civil servants from the Department of Health had volunteered to come and deliver their version of a common presentation about their department’s approach, and what it should mean. However, on our last day, one of them was prevented at the very last minute from attending.
Fortunately I’m familiar with what was going to be said — in part because I contribute regularly to two community stakeholder engagement groups, including an advisory group on Gender Equality. This meant I was able to step in at short notice and fill the gap — although the emphasis is inevitably my own as a result.
In the next episode we change tack again, with an in-depth interview with the Labour back bench MP Dr Lynne Jones. Lynne has lots to say about equality and diversity — in and out of Parliament, so be sure you don’t miss that episode, coming up soon.
In the third of this series of episodes covering the recent NHS Northwest Gender Equality conferences we come now to the advice and guidance of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Several EHRC staff contributed to the three events that we ran, and I’d like to thank Sam Pryke, David Howard and Vivienne Stone who all made great contributions besides Merryn Wells, featured here.
Merryn gave the main EHRC presentation at our third event in Preston. She is the Commission’s “Transfer of Expertise Manager”. Among her many skills honed in a 25 year equalities career she managed a recent project looking at gender equality in the NHS and also worked with the Royal College of Nursing, advising HR managers in that sector on the gender equality duty. For those reasons she was ideally placed to connect with an audience of NHS managers.
Click here if you would like to view and follow a handout of Merryn’s slides whilst listening. (PDF, 90Kb)
In the next episode hear how I ad-libbed my way through explaining the Department of Health’s viewpoint when the civil servant booked to speak was unable to attend for very good reasons
In the second of this series of episodes covering the recent NHS Northwest Gender Equality conferences it is the turn of the Men…
Peter Baker is the Chief Executive of the Men’s Health Forum — a charity which works to improve male health in England and Wales. His presentation to us in Preston was every bit as challenging as the women’s message featured in the previous episode, though markedly different.
It was research by MHF that first highlighted how many NHS gender equality schemes in England appeared to have very little disaggregated evidential data, were focussed on processes rather than outcomes, or were lacking in effective consultation and involvement with service users.
Many speakers stressed that equality in this context does not mean providing the same service to everyone. That’s not what the law requires, and stark differences in priorities were very clear in the different messages from the men and women presenters seeking the same equality of health outcomes.
Peter’s presentation highlights a set of key areas where he says targetted action could be brought to bear on specific health inequalities for men; he also demonstrates how novel approaches can be used to get essential messages across to the men themselves.
Click here if you would like to view and follow a handout of Peter’s slides whilst listening. (PDF, 1.2Mb)
In the next episode you can hear the EHRC’s guidance for NHS organisations on what they expect when examining equality schemes for compliance.
Attention has been focussed recently on whether NHS Trusts in England are responding properly to the Gender Equality Duty, since it came into force in April 2007. Research by the Men’s Health Forum highlighted that many of the published gender equality schemes it had researched were poorly evidenced, focussed on processes rather than outcomes, and showed a lack of effective consultation and involvement with service users.
Plain Sense was recently commissioned to put together a series of conference workshops for senior NHS Trust managers in England’s North West region, to discuss how to be more effective and compliant in this area. Presenters included figures from the Strategic Health Authority, the Department of Health and the Equality and Human Rights Commission to explain what was expected. Just as importantly, an array of stakeholder speakers were invited to explain their view of the real priorities for promoting equality.
Karen Moore is a policy officer with the Women’s Resource Centre - a national umbrella organisation based in London. In her speech, presented here in full, she challenged NHS Trust managers to look strategically at issues like violence against women and support for rape crisis centres as a means of avoiding longer term and more intractable mental and physical health issues. Afterwards her colleague, Darlene Corry, provided an interview summing up the challenges and opportunities in thinking ‘out of the box’ on these kinds of issues.
If you would like to view a handout of Karen’s slides whilst listening to her talk then click on this link. (PDF 141Kb; 4 pages)
This week, as the third and final installment of the “Life in a Day” conference coverage, I’m featuring my own keynote presentation at that event: And then we had ‘T’
With more time to spend than in the recent Nottingham event, and with a broader audience of public services in the audience, this presentation covers some different ground, and includes a tongue-in-cheek ‘confession’. There are, of course, some familiar elements too.
After quite a lot of LGBT coverage recently, the next few episodes will be moving on to look at Men and Women’s experiences of health, and the Department of Health’s strategy for Gender Equality. In the coming week I also have a very special interview guest booked, and they will be appearing in a later episode. So do ’stay tuned’.
Linda Bellos isn’t the sort of woman to mince words. She says she doesn’t care so much what people think, but about how they behave. She’s also angry about receiving a different level of treatment from public services when she’s paid as much for them as everyone else.
In the next episode you can hear my own keynote address at the same event — and don’t forget that by “subscribing” to this Podcast channel you’ll be notified automatically the moment this and other new episodes come online.
This week we begin the first of a new series of recordings taken from a conference held in Leicester at the beginning of June.
“A Life in a Day” was hosted by Leicester’s Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Centre at Leicester City Football Stadium on the 5th June and promised “Practical ways to make public services LGBT friendly”.
In this episode you can hear the welcome address given by one of the City’s MP’s, Sir Peter Soulsby.
Next week I’ll then be featuring the keynote address by noted BME and lesbian campaigner Linda Bellos.
This week’s episode features the speech by EHRC Chair Trevor Phillips to business leaders from the North of England at a working luncheon organised recently in Leeds.
The media’s stereotype of business attitudes to equality and diversity issues is a crude one, which tends to emphasise opposition towards regulation and any moves that might impact upon profits or flexibility. The reality is more complex. Many businesses understand already that embracing diversity is a good thing, and that private or corporate enterprise cannot pretend to exist in a bubble somehow divorced from larger issues about the kind of society we have.
Trevor’s speech reflected the former sensitivities whilst reaching out for a more sophisticated dialogue.
This week I’m presenting the third and final part in a series of episodes based on the recent Department of Health conference on LGBT Mental Health, which took place at the end of May in Nottingham. (For more details see part one)
I entitled my own presentation “Transgender Realities” and proceeded to pull very few punches about research-based evidence of trans people’s experiences of health discrimination, in a factual approach aimed directly at the 130 healthcare professionals present. I regrettably had to publicly criticise Nottingham PCT itself, having adopted a commissioning policy which is clearly discriminatory and unlawful in my view.
If you wish to follow the presentation slides then you’ll find these here.
This week I’m presenting the second of three episodes in which you can hear the speakers at the recent Department of Health conference on LGBT Mental Health in Nottingham. (For more details see last week’s part one).
Tim Franks is the Chief Executive of PACE, a leading London-based charity which promotes mental health and well-being within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community there.
In his presentation Tim talks about the different reasons that LGBT people may have for connecting with Mental Health services. Like many of the day’s speakers he emphasises that whilst being different in these ways is not a mental illness, people have the experiences of discrimination to deal with and, of course, they can experience conditions such as depression or psychotic illnesses like anyone else.
Tim also raises interesting perspectives about the way therapeutic relationships can benefit when service users don’t need to explain aspects of their identity and simply feel that their sexual orientation or gender presentation is accepted. He says that in PACE the service providers ‘come out’ about their position so that the service user doesn’t need to.
Just Plain Sense provides a mix of talks and interviews about Equality and Diversity in Britain today. There is a particular emphasis on the 'developing' areas such as LGBT but overall I set out to capture a truly diverse range of voices to talk first hand about what it means to work towards and live in a tolerant, diverse society -- and what we still need to do to get there.
Christine Burns
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