Just a few weeks ago, Edinburgh university granted this award to a mixed bag of people, still alive, including Eddie Reader [singer], Lynne Ramsay [film director] and Ellen Kullman [chief executive of duPont].
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| James Connolly - we only want the earth |
It would be but a small step in fostering good relations across Scotland's festering sectarian divide, where Catholics have long been kept several steps behind the progress being made by Protestants in all walks of Scottish life, whether it be in education or in employment. Who better to recognise in this way than someone who was born in Edinburgh, in poverty, and yet who left a gigantic footprint in history on matters of equality and social justice ?
It would be naught but a small step in a Scotland which was comfortable with itself, which recognised that prejudice and discrimination are alive and affecting the lives of tens of thousands of people every day, and which was as determined to eliminate that discrimination as it appears to be determined to replace one flag with another, even at tennis matches.
Trouble is that Scotland is not comfortable with itself. Elsewhere on this blog you will find evidence of how bigotry, prejudice and discrimination stalks the landscape of what we call the public sector in Scotland. My more recent blogs have shown that our NHS is, after decades of ducking and diving on meeting the law on eliminating discrimination on the basis of disability, race and gender, still unable to deliver the basics of equality, such as equal pay for women.
Evidence of just how uncomfortable Scotland is with equality can be found in reports universities published in April this year to meet the newest legal duties on equality. One of the many things they were required to do was profile their workforce according to protected characteristics, including such as whether a worker was disabled, from an ethnic minority, lesbian, gay or bisexual, and what religion/belief they identified with. My latest research provides an overview of how Scotland's universities are performing with meeting the law and eliminating discrimination.
On the employment of Catholics, the data reveals a stunning complacency in universities. Out of the 16 universities and schools Scotland has, 11 don't collect the data. Just 3 universities are able to report on how many Catholics there are on their payrolls. Out of the 38,555 people employed across the university sector just 373 identify as Catholic. Less than 1% of the workforce. The Scottish Bishops' Conference estimated at 2008 that the proportion of the population which is Catholic was at that time 12.9%.
As well as being poor, James Connolly was also born in Edinburgh's Cowgate of Irish parents and was a Catholic. Edinburgh university is only able to report that just 1.77% of the workforce is Catholic. I wonder what Edinburgh's figure will be when the centenary of his execution comes around in 2016 ?
I have worked at Edinburgh University for five years, and have never been asked - formally or informally - what my religion is. (Catholic, as it happens.) Before that I worked at Glasgow Uni, and there were enough ashen foreheads on Ash Wednesday and colleagues with Irish surnames (not an entirely scientific yardstick, but still...) to convince me that the "problem" is not as serious as you make out here.
ReplyDeleteIf you can provide another explanation for what the data shows I'm more than happy to revisit the blog and report.
Delete"Out of the 38,555 people employed across the university sector just 373 identify as Catholic."
DeleteWhat I'm saying is that the data doesn't tell us anything satisfactory, since...
1. I work in the Scottish university sector
2. I'm a catholic
3. I've never been asked about this
4. The nationwide figure of 373 is therefore not accurate. (It's only meaningful if we know how many people were asked the question.)
Glasgow Uni alone has 6,197 employees, and I'd suggest that far more (and I mean FAR more) than 373 are Catholic by upbringing.
Martin,
DeleteUniversities are required by law to collect, analyse, act on and publish this data [along with a lot of other similar data].
The data on Catholics employed may not be satisfactory but it does help illustrate how the performance of universities in meeting the legal requirements is very poor.
The 373 figure is accurate. It is what universities report.
Okay. You write "Out of the 38,555 people employed across the university sector just 373 identify as Catholic" but we can't tell from this account how many have had the opportunity to self-identify. If, as you also write, only 3 of 16 HEIs have collected/released this data so far, can you be specific about what their combined workforce is? Only then can we know the actual sample size.
ReplyDeleteYou also write that "The data on Catholics employed may not be satisfactory but it does help illustrate how the performance of universities in meeting the legal requirements is very poor." Agreed, it does. But why focus on Catholicism? You could choose to focus on ANY characteristic, let's say gender, and then added all three figures up (assuming there are three options), you would not come anywhere near to 38,555, because that is not the sample size. So women, men and trans would ALL be woefully under-represented, which of course isn't possible.
Martin,
ReplyDeleteIf you read the research report [link provided in body of blog text] you will find on page 6 under 'Quality of data' that 11 universities do not routinely gather data on the religious identity of employees.
Just because they have not done what the law requires them is not a good reason for not counting them in any analysis, in my view. The reality is that in the context of examining how universities are complying with the law to gather, analyse, use and publish data on protected characteristics of their workforce, just 373 people identify as Catholic. That remains a reality. The fact that 11 universities have not bothered to comply with the law and ask staff to identify their religious identity does not detract from that reality.
As to the focus on Catholicism, I should explain that in parallel with this research I also undertook research into the data published on disability, LGB identity and the BME profile of the workforce across universities and the NHS. The other reason is that in my work in the public sector I have come across a lot of denial from senior staff in even looking at the data on religion, never mind contemplating the reality that sectarianism is not confined to the grounds of certain football clubs.