DISCRIMINATION is becoming an ever-more complicated area of employment law. Racism, sexism, ageism... it's getting to the point where there sees to be an "ism" for everybody, and it's only going to get worse as more sub-categories are added to the mix.
A team from Michigan State University has produced a study showing that while being fat or obviously overweight prevents women being appointed or promoted and leads to them being under-valued and viewed negatively, being lardy has no such effect on m
en. In some cases, fat men are still perceived as being affluent and successful.
So now we have fatism – but only as a sub-section of sexism.
Pay-outs for isms can be massive, as shown by the £1 million in compensation and costs being awarded last week for ageism to a 56-year-old NHS manager from Leeds who was passed over for promotion in favour of a 43-year-old colleague.
Discrimination is wrong. Everyone should be judged on one factor only, which is their ability to do the job. But you can't help pitying the prospective employer faced with three candidates; a non-white male, a pregnant lesbian and someone of whatever gender in a wheelchair. It must have happened.
The problem is that discrimination is not, if you'll pardon the pun, black and white. It's a movable feast, the rights and wrongs of which can change depending on generation and culture.
My generation of women, for example, have lost out twice. When we set out in the workplace, young women (all mini skirts and flower power) were seen as flighty and unreliable. It was still felt that, being of marriageable age, we might meet Mr Right and leave employment for ever, so a young man who was expected to go on supporting his family was a much better bet.
Older women on the other hand, spinsters or those whose children had grown up, were regarded as efficient, hard-working and loyal. They'd been through the war, driving ambulances, putting out blazes caused by incendiary bombs, and nursing and feeding a family of five on meagre rations while their men fought in the battlefields of Europe.
Fast-forward to 2009 and things have changed. Everyone wants young women, dedicated and driven and with years of working life ahead of them. Having children is no longer a drawback. My lot, now in their mid to late fifties, are perceived as over the hill. Thwarted again. Join the queue for B&Q.
Nor is it the case that the views of discrimination legislators or experts necessarily reflect real life in the workplace. For example, I'm not sure it follows that a woman who is overweight is less likely to be promoted.
Sure, she might be seen more as one of the boys than an office pin-up. She's not going to make it to board level in the slimming business, but it hasn't done Oprah any harm.
In fact most of us are deeply suspicious about any male captain of industry who employs a stream of slender, young, pert, beautiful, hair-straightened PAs or executives. Were they really the best for the job or does he suffer from the Rod Stewart complex?
The most discriminated-against sector of society today is young men who don't wear suits. By rights, if we are talking about irrational prejudice, we should have hoodie-ism.
We can legislate all we like but can we ever truly reach a stage where discrimination doesn't happen? We are only human after all. How do we stop an employer turning down an applicant for other, equally irrational reasons such as wearing too much or too little make-up, not having an obvious sense of humour, having spots or even more nebulous grounds such as the interviewer and interviewee failing to "click"?
What's a genuine requirement of the job and what's just a personal preference or blind spot of the interviewer?
The fact is, we pick and choose our grounds for discrimination while ignoring the rest. There is not, and never will be, a level playing field. Or is that cynicism, and is there a law against that now?
Pedalling insuranceHOORAH! Someone is finally considering taking a reckless cyclist to court. David Hickling, 65, is thinking about suing after he was knocked down by a cyclist on Bruntsfield Links in January. He is still recovering from a dislocated shoulder, fractured arm, facial injuries and a fractured jaw.
Unfortunately, there is one problem with the plan. The cyclist may have no money, and you can't get blood from a stone.
Surely it has to be time for cyclists to be obligated to take out third party insurance. If claims are few, as the bikers will claim, the premiums won't be that high.
In cities such as Edinburgh where cycling both on busy main roads and pavements or walkways is a growing phenomenon, there has to be some means of making them responsible, like motorists, for any accidents they cause.
