This is the [discriminatory] BBC

The BBC has been floundering around this week trying to explain the size of its pay gap [10%].


Having twanged some tweets on this, pointing out that at least the BBC has the data whereas the NHS in Scotland does not, I thought I'd look at other equalities data reported by the BBC.


It was not the easiest thing to find on the BBC web site, but using the search facility I uncovered what I was looking for.  It is not the best of web site sections for giving the visitor good quality accessible data on which to judge just whether the organisation is making equalities happen.  It is not the worst.


The report on workforce data offers the barest of pictures.  It does not offer an analysis of what has been learned or what new action is to be taken to tackle deep-rooted discrimination.  It simply reports data.  Shame.


It does set workforce diversity targets [on page 3] to be achieved by December 2012.  This is much more than most health boards and councils in Scotland have set.


The BBC targets are :

• 12.5% for BME employees overall [12.3% at September 2011]
• 7% for BME employees at Senior Manager grades [6.1% at September 2011]
• 5.5% for disabled employees overall [3.7% at September 2011]
• 4.5% for disabled employees at Senior Manager grades [3.2% at September 2011].

The report also offers readers an analysis of what the figures are by division or region.  In Scotland, the comparison with targets are :

• 12.5% for BME employees overall [2.9% at September 2011]
• 7% for BME employees at Senior Manager grades [0.0% at September 2011]
• 5.5% for disabled employees overall [2.6% at September 2011]
• 4.5% for disabled employees at Senior Manager grades [7.1% at September 2011].

The BBC, like any other part of the public sector in the UK, is still, after almost 40 years of legal imperative, shuffling about on the start line of dismantling structural and institutional discrimination.  There is no sense in the BBC diversity reporting that it has yet woken up to the need to work in power-sharing partnerships with people and organisations of and for the equalities communities to eliminate discrimination, or that it recognises that white people in the BBC will stubbornly resist, however politely and subtly, the transfer of what they still see as 'their' power to people from the BME communities.