Monday 15 June 2015

"Lack of women in London's refuse collection sector 'disappointing'"

From The Evening Standard:

More than one in four companies involved in waste management in London employ no women at board level, new figures claimed today.

According to the survey of more than 1,600 experts, leaders and investors, published today, 23 per cent of refuse collection businesses employ no women at all, from entry level to board level. Only 12 per cent had women in management roles.

The study, by the National Waste & Recycling Association, found nearly 60 per cent of respondents do not believe the capital’s waste collection services reflect the city’s diversity because of the lack of women operatives...

Russ Shaw, founder of NWRA, branded the figures “disappointing”.

"For a sector identified with underpinning public health and a green economy, these figures are very disappointing. We live in a city with a global reputation for diversity yet one of our most essential industries fails to reflect this from 'street' level to the most senior positions.

“London Waste & Recycling Week is a chance to showcase the scale of our sector but we must also use it as an opportunity to show women how starting as a dustbin woman can lead to a rewarding career.”

5 comments:

Budvar said...

Yes and I suspect that the number of women emptying rubbish into dustcarts are at an even lower level...

For some reason I suspect that the number of women shovelling shit down the local sewerage plant is also disappointingly low too..

Ralph Musgrave said...

Anyone know what the big merit of "diversity" is apart from the fact that it's flavor of the decade to be replaced shortly with some other near vacuous word with a semi-scientific ring to it?

Tim Almond said...

Let's say you're a tech startup. Two founders create the company in a garage. They show the idea to some venture capitalists who like it and offer them a little money. The founders realise they're going to need a team. They hire some people to work in the company. Let's say one of those people is an infrastructure guy. He's in charge of looking after the half dozen servers the company is running on... making sure they're patched, secure, backed up and keep running.

The company expands. Some more VC money comes in. The head of infrastructure now has 60 servers to look after. He gets an extra guy working for him.

The company expands again. You've got 600 servers. Infrastructure gets more people and budget. Then 6000 servers, some more people and more budget again.

If the head of infrastructure can do the job as the company expands, why would you replace him with someone else? If it's too much for him and he leaves with stress, maybe his deputy takes over and is head of infrastructure when it's as big as Google. So, the guy on the board in charge of infrastructure is employee number 5.

And the problem as far as women are concerned is that they generally don't join startups. They join tech companies when they're already well-established and mature. They might eventually be on the board, or even as CEOs, but the problem with tech companies is that they don't generally have long lives.

Bayard said...

What a load of feminazi crap. No mention of the simple fact that boys are more interested in computery stuff than girls and there just aren't the tech women out there to hire. Instead of going on as if it was some huge male chauvinist pig conspiracy, Baroness Fox and the others should be trying to get more girls to go for careers in tech industries.

Another trend this piece highlights is the "enthusiasm is for the workers" meme. It's OK for management to know little and care less about what the company actually does, we don't want them getting interested in that sort of thing, their job is to manage and enthusiasm might cloud their objectivity.

Random said...

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/15/urban-common-radical-community-gardens