Wednesday 9 December 2009

Thank you to our colleagues at The Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education

CSIE conference


Thank you to our colleagues at The Centre for Studies in Inclusive Education for yesterday’s conference: Is everyone welcome? Being invited and welcomed was certainly essential to our inclusion! And we do not take it for granted - thank you!

It was a much needed oasis in a turbulent world. A chance to reconnect with friends and meet new people. Possibly not as effective in the march forward on change, but hugely beneficial to our own wellbeing when engaged, as we all are, in the huge job of trying to achieving a more inclusive education for all young people.


Mel Ainscow’s presentation provided food for thought. It was very helpful to get time to think about the most pertinent challenges facing schools at the moment with the emphasis on the levers of change and therefore identifying activity most worthwhile on this issue. It gave us all an opportunity to get to grips with where our efforts could be better employed.


The CSIE’s Welcome Workbook is an exciting publication - ‘essential for anyone interested in developing inclusive provision for all young people in mainstream schools’. It is certainly appears much less daunting than the Index, which needs to reflect the complexity of the task involved. It will no doubt give people an more gentle ‘way in’ to the profound task of system change. It must be congratulated on its accessibility! I do hope it will support many organisations to tackle the first steps in the changes required.

Available from: admin@csie.org.uk.


It was fascinating hearing the Canadian perspective - a school board determined to provide flexible and inclusive institutions - without the need for any separate provision whatsoever! It can be done. Jackie and Les provided many insights into real possibility. It is reassuring to know that while far from perfect inclusive practice is an evolving reality. We heard about the leadership, the vision and the dedication of so many people. These stories from different countries prove change is achievable, the ideas must are not directly replicable without serious thought to our own context.


Our workshop on increasing practitioner confidence and expertise provided many great ideas to support the change in mindset required to enable and liberate us all to make a difference. We talked about community participation, the role of parent partnership and increasing opportunities for continuous professional development. Making inclusion more central to all aspects of educational purpose and organisational transformation.


A few questions remain for me:


  • Will ‘inclusion’ ever be understood as a whole community issue?
  • Will we be able to move beyond the ‘disability’ or marginalised groups angle which in so many cases solicits a benevolent response?
  • Can we keep maintaining support to vulnerable children while improving wellbeing across the board for all young people?
  • Will organisations be able to place ‘inclusion’ on the strategic agenda and question their core purpose: what are schools for? What is the purpose of education?
  • Can equity and social justice ever become important outcomes in England's materialistic and individualistic society?


Please post your views


Mole 9/12/09

Wednesday 16 September 2009

More happiness in schools please!

An argument for acknowledging happiness as a central educational priorities.

This document outlines ideas from recent research on wellbeing that support the need for education to provide more opportunities for understanding enjoyment and learning. It makes a case for developing children’s understanding of happiness by putting less emphasis on results, and increasing opportunities and developing the skills needed to support relationships.

Wellbeing … is indirectly but powerfully part of the educational and societal goal of dealing with the emotional and social consequences of failing and being of low status. (Fullan 2007)


Wellbeing in Education

Children’s wellbeing has always been of great concern to teachers. Appreciating the role of happiness in learning is hardly new; it promotes children’s participation, social interaction and ultimately gets results. However, with social and political pressures arising from a culture of testing and league tables, there is a fear that teaching priorities are subject to pressures that create specific stresses that affect the wellbeing of teachers, parents and children. Clearly, learning in an environment preoccupied with academic performance fuels feelings of inequality. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider the principal purpose of education, and making happiness a clearer in purpose. This will also have a positive impact on success and therefore ultimately results. In other words, results are still important but not the only outcome of a more holistic and balanced learning experience.


A right to happiness

Learning is a personal experience, in which happiness is fundamental, so needs to be understood as more complex and long-term than simply pleasure or satisfaction. Having an optimistic attitude does more than make learning enjoyable, happiness literally unlocks potential, enables flexibility of thought, and allows openness to new information.


‘Schooling’, where it is still perceived as the delivery of curriculum content, imposes a homogeny on children that denies their fulfilment; the system stifles growth and inhibits flourishing by restricting options and limiting choice. A whole child approach requires a deeper understanding of learning as personal growth, it needs to be one that accepts all progress and effort as valuable. Human intelligence is far more diverse than intellectual capacity, and teaching needs to cater far more broadly than to the requirements of different learning styles or multiple intelligences.


Based on consultation, five principles underpin the Children’s Plan:

government does not bring up children – parents do – so government needs to do more to back parents and families;

all children have the potential to succeed and should go as far as their talents can take them;

children and young people need to enjoy their childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life;

services need to be shaped by and responsive to children, young people and families, not designed around professional boundaries; and

it is always better to prevent failure than tackle a crisis later.


Community and family - relationships make us happy

According to Diener the factors that affect our happiness fall broadly into three categories: relationships, meaning of life, and interesting activities that use our strengths. Happiness levels can increase over time with different strategies and practice, as evidence suggests the skills and behaviours that raise optimism can be learnt. Although good exam results are an indicator of life chances, the belief that they ensure happiness in the long term is far too simplistic. Long-term enjoyment comes from joint activity, in jobs that satisfy, and qualifications only increase happiness for those who can make choices that suit their strengths (Diener 2008).


Our relationships are key to our happiness, according to Diener (2008), happier people are more likely to have supportive families and more friends, and people with good relationships are more likely to be happy – essentially the two are mutually reinforcing. Furthermore, evidence shows that both introverts and extroverts have more positive feelings when they share activities with other people, as other people’s ideas challenge, broaden and entertain, this fuels creativity, diversity and increases people’s the ability to specialise.


While schools have a limited influence on children’s background and community, they have an influence on relationships, as they can provide opportunities for social interaction on all sorts of levels.


In a culture where only high performance is valued, the cost is a widening attainment gap. A target focus can organise performance, but it marginalises more deep-seated needs such as enjoyment and collaboration. On the other hand, a value based system, places emphasis on what children need to learn – relationships.

An inclusive approach is no less concerned with achievements but with all the achievements of all children and young people, and with the meaning of achievements within communities. An inclusive approach is equally concerned with learning, but instead of focusing on outcomes gives equal attention to the conditions for teaching and learning, so that the resources and relationships that support the active and sustained involvement of children, families and practitioners in education are maintained. (Ainscow, Et al. 2006, page 29)


Raising aspiration for all children

The second of the Children’s Plan principles articulates a need for educational culture to be more proactive about children’s long-term success. Working with the expectation of positive outcomes raises aspirations and develops potential, ensuring greater success for all regardless of levels of performance. In essence, if children are happy while they learn, they learn more, and they also learn about what makes them happy. Happiness also has a role in addressing inequality, as it focuses on what people value: relationships and meaningful activity; and lessens the negative impact of competition: social comparison.


In short, if learning about happiness is seen as a central aim, it guarantees a culture in which all children grow and flourish. Working in ways that support relationships, uphold values and promote engagement also insures fairer distribution of resources, as collaboration and effort are seen as primary priorities and get most attention. In these conditions every child is better off, as those who previously languished are enabled do moderately well, and those that did moderately well are enabled to flourish. The key is to create a culture that reflects the idea that every child is capable of learning and the same effort. As such, all learners have a right to learn, their differences are accommodated and their strengths and needs are respected.


A right to enjoy - Broaden-and-build

What enables young people to be happy depends on thought, but also on movement and feelings, the whole gamut of human experience. Intelligence in this sense is far broader than academic ability, and providing ways to develop all its aspects is critical to young people’s development. Enjoying a rich choice of activity, whilst in a relationship with other learners not only gives personal pleasure, but also insures long-term happiness and resilience.

Put differently, to the extent that the broaden-and-build effects of positive emotions accumulate and compound over time, positive emotions carry the capacity to transform individuals for the better, making them healthier and more socially integrated, knowledgeable, effective and resilient. In short, the theory suggests that positive emotions fuel human flourishing. Fredrickson (Huppert et al, 2005, page 231)


In this way happiness needs to be seen not as way of ‘making fun’ the acquisition of knowledge and skills but a more fundamental requirement to optimal learning. Being happy is not just pleasant, it has a greater function, it adds to the learning experience by increasing personal capacity and strength. Positive emotions give children energy and drive, a portfolio of physical, intellectual and social resources, that can be used again in the future.


Responding to learning – a personal experience

While changes in education policy continually affect teaching, it is still often understood in terms of curriculum delivery, and in many ways the learner is expected to fit the system, not the other way round. Children remain complex however, intricate organisms requiring attention for growth on many levels and an academically biased curriculum deliver to age-standardised ability denies personal preference or circumstance. Every child’s starting point differs, but due to different sensitivity and perception their personal preference will be highly diverse.

But our view of the world is not only affected by what we can perceive; it is deeply influenced by other factors, which affect what we actually do perceive: the ideas, the values and beliefs through which we frame our understanding of it.

(Ken Robinson, 2001, page 118)


Children have already had many experiences before getting to school and will already know a great deal about how they engage well, so background and family context will be essential to enable young people’s development.

“They should listen to children and young people more and use their ideas. They just listen to adults and ignore children.”

Young person - Online survey (Time to Talk DCFS 2008, page 74)


Responding to what children need is fundamental, as it creates responsibility for

learning. Enabling young people to understand their own learning needs to be clear. As learning is not simply about acquiring new information, it is about taking responsibility for seeking personal meaning. As schools are rarely free from institutional pressures, and expectations put on individuals to conform to the institution’s aim – as such delivery is still bound by professional needs. This pressure affects learner control, she rarely has a choice in what she enjoys learning, or which subjects or methods are used, or whom she learns with. The underlying direction lies in the administration, from teacher to learner, which takes responsibility away from the learner.


As each child is different and unique, the only way the system can deliver is to respond to individuality. To do this there needs to be a greater acknowledgement of the significance in developing the responsibility of the child in their learning, by addressing the inequality in the relationship between teacher and child.

The paucity of our understanding of learning is often reflected in the lack of any shared or common agreement between teachers, let alone learners, as to what the process actually involves. … [Learning] is usually judged as a product rather than a process- ‘I have learned this’.

(West-Burnham & Coates, 2005, page 34)


It is the ‘shared and common agreement’ that often is not developed between learners and teacher. All too often decisions are made without any thought as to who holds power in decision making. Without consideration to the power differential, teachers will not be able to affect change necessary to nurture responsibility for choice.

It is too easy for teachers to organise lessons in ways that suit delivery. More importantly, happiness is rarely acknowledged as the aim, it seen as peripheral to the task. Children will never be able to identify their preferences in this sense, because they are not always introduced to subjects through activities they enjoy. This means that some children end up feeling stupid, when in fact they have not found a way of engaging that suits them.


Identifying happiness as a clear aim allows for a more respectful approach to learning. If developing an understanding of happiness valued foremost, it necessitates it to be demonstrated in attitudes, knowledge and skills. Both practice and policy rarely recognise happiness as needing to be learnt, it is perceived as an emotional response not an attitude to be developed. So how can children be expected to know what makes them happy, in the absence of learning?


From an equality perspective, prioritising the development of happiness is easier than having to decide which children are more deserving learners. As according to Ainscow, trying to define ‘social exclusion’ or ‘inclusion’ is misleading, as some definitions imply that there are forms of exclusion that are not social and therefore acceptable (2006). If the purpose of education is to support young people in learning to be happy, by which criteria is exclusion then permissible – who deserves to be unhappy?


Inclusive Practice - Celebrating growth

Encouraging the conditions for happiness, schools help children develop on all levels, because positive emotions enable a greater personal resilience through the ability to consider wider perspectives and larger opportunities for diverse solutions to problems. Negative attitudes, not only create self-limiting belief, but inhibit the positive behaviours that promote knowledgeable, flexible, creative and clear thinking. The broaden-and-build approach can be applied to widening participation, which underpins the ideas in inclusive practice (Fredrickson 2005). Developing a ‘whole child’ approach rather than a ‘whole system’ approach is key to developing inclusive practice.

“To know that I live in a community that cares about each and every one of us. Better praise if you get something right.” Young person - Online survey (Time to Talk DCFS 2008, page 74)


Inclusive practice requires adding increasingly flexible delivery to existing practice, not simply adding to unsatisfactory options, but developing new strategies and transforming the system. Inclusive practice necessitates demonstrating the ‘broaden-and-build’ theory above, and requires a willingness make the changes to deliver to the needs of all young people personally. As Carol Tashie makes clear in her articulation of the double-duty now imposed on schools when seeking to implement inclusive practice:

Inclusion is: All children belonging to the schools they would attend if they were not disabled AND support provided to children, families, and colleagues so that all can be successful.

(Carol Tashie, The University of New Hampshire)



The key word here is ‘and’, inclusive practice is not about options, it is about a right to choose, and this requires effort and development. From a rights perspective inclusive practice acknowledges that all children have an entitlement to learn, which puts the onus on the delivery method to change. An inclusive perspective requires a capacity to welcome, celebrate and accommodate learner diversity irrespective of their economic, family background, level of disadvantage or ability.


Preventing failure - Positive and possible

By definition, inclusion cannot be at the expense of the needs of vulnerable children, but schools will continue to discriminate if targets and performance are overriding priorities. This does not mean that standards and achievement cease to matter; it simply means relationships, values and engagement need to come first. Evidence shows that every learner, regardless of difference or ability, can be accommodated within schools (Mason and Dearden, 2004). However, what seems to be lacking is an ability to make this atypical practice commonplace within system culture. Ultimately, inclusive practice will be different in every school, and services will respond be uniquely to every child – as standard.

Inclusive practice needs to be understood as the ongoing process of growth and review, in order to adjust and accommodate to a wider range of learners. Inclusive practice cannot happen in an organisation whose culture is static, compliant or tick box. Inclusive practice implies movement, both in terms of ideas and practice - it is about valuing the journey not the outcome. Inclusive practice recognises a need to get to know others, a call for dialogue to identify the barriers to participation. Belonging implies deeper connection; therefore effort is required to engage ever child in the group, with an eye on the family and the wider community. Crucially, belonging is owned, it cannot be given or imposed, so inclusive practice also requires a culture of shared leadership at every level of the organisation.

In Summary:

In an effort to rise to the challenge laid out in the principles of the Children’s Plan, educational practice needs to articulate more succinctly what it values, and define its purpose accordingly. If it values equality, then more needs to be done acknowledge its influence on learners’ life-chances. Learners will never feel happy in a culture that values their results over their wellbeing.


To find out more about our keynotes and programmes visit www.equalitytraining.co.uk

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Inclusive practice - Success Stories

Reaching the outcomes of Every Child Matters

Real Success Stories from Sandwell

Michelle - Improving Communication with Young Children

Here makaton cards are used when signalling tidy-up time / snack time etc, and are also used to make nursery rhyme boards. This greatly helped language development and facilitated the inclusion of children of different nationalities.

Improving Parental Involvement in Private Day Care Nursery

A week was set aside for parental activities, some parents took time off work in order to be involved. (Every Child Matters - government does not bring up children, parents do, so government needs to do more to back parents and families;)


Tina -Links with Special School

The setting has Inclusion Links with other settings. There is a regular exchange programme with a local Special School where groups of children and staff spend time in each other’s settings. The children meet and mix with no problems, and raise awareness with parents, who were previously unaware of the existence of the special school. Staff gain new ideas for their inclusive practice and for new activities. (Every Child Matters- children and young people need to enjoy their childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life;)

Kerri - Links with Special School

The holiday club regularly have shared outings with the local special school to go bowling and for pizza. The children were able to mix and all got on well. The impact of this will be long-term, but we can hazard a guess at the profound changes it will bring in our communities. The relationships that these links create will no doubt enable a world where our present discrimination is not tolerated. (Every Child Matters - it is always better to prevent failure than tackle a crisis later.)

Pauline - Celebrating Diversity

In a multilingual setting, parents were involved in translating labels to go around the setting in a variety of languages, they also were asked to suggest different menus. The children and parents experienced food from a wider variety of cultures and were surprised by how much they enjoyed it. The parents continued to be more involved in the setting and awareness and appreciation of other cultures was improved for both children and parents. (Every Child Matters - services need to be shaped by and responsive to children, young people and families, not designed around professional boundaries)

Sharon - Addressing Language Barriers

Through her post Sharon has completed a basic makaton course, 1hour per week over 10 weeks. She found the course very enjoyable and easy to learn. Sharon uses this learning with children who are very young and who speak a variety of languages other than English. The children have learned the makaton very easily and can now use it to communicate with her and each other. Sharon is keen to extend her learning in makaton.

Michelle - Diversity in Staffing

Michelle explained that the recruitment policy at her setting has changed to emphasise the need for an increase in diversity amongst the staff, and that this is now reflected in their interview procedures.

Involving Male Carers

The Setting runs DUG’s days (Dads, Uncles, Grandads). These specific days are to promote the involvement of men in the setting. (Every Child Matters- children and young people need to enjoy their childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life;)

Kerri - Improving Feedback from all Service Users

Tree leaves were given to all service users, on which comments could be written for improvements/suggestions. The leaves could be returned confidentially, staff met to look at the comments and to discuss ways that they could better meet the needs of all. This increased parent and carer participation in the Children’s Centre. (Every Child Matters - services need to be shaped by and responsive to children, young people and families, not designed around professional boundaries)

Michelle - Meeting the Needs of the Community

This setting has parent representatives for the community who are present at planning meetings. Their role is to address the needs of the community, to make suggestions for improvements, and their agreement is sought on all decisions. New practice is delivered in agreement with the representatives. (Every Child Matters - government does not bring up children, parents do, so government needs to do more to back parents and families;)

All staff are trained in Makaton and are able to use a variety of communication systems, signing, cards, etc, to ask children what they need. The key workers involve parents and have training specific for the needs of their child. This fine example of community leadership, by enabling users to decide on direction, the setting is able to raise engagement, aspiration and future success. (Every Child Matters- children and young people need to enjoy their childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life;)

Claire - Reducing Segregation

This setting removed an internal wall partition in order to allow all age groups within the nursery to mix. This was done following consultation with parents via questionnaire. Benefits were seen for all age groups. Younger children showed improvements in behaviour and language acquisition, older children played more and showed their caring sides. The development of acceptations is at the very heart of inclusive practice, this action has a direct effect on the way young children are received as they move up the school. The caring attitudes of older peers will no doubt translate into a culture of belonging in years to come. (Every Child Matters - it is always better to prevent failure than tackle a crisis later.)

Enjoy innovation with EQuality Training

More ideas will be posted soon……

Sunday 13 September 2009

A path to success - Equality & Diversity Update training

This advanced training session is a powerful day for people who have covered the Equality & Diversity basics but wish to go further in embedding inclusive practice within their roles. The second in a 3 day programme, Equality & Diversity Update training, looks at securing greater equity through strategies that support whole organisations. The wellbeing angle in this training provides a route to excellence, whilst minimising the damaging effects of a ‘target’ culture.

Understanding Equality & Diversity is the first step in securing the first 2 outcomes of Every Child Matters - Be healthy and Be safe. Improvement can help towards assimilation, and integration, but only some basic needs can be addressed within the constraints of present organisation. To flourish in a thriving community people need to understand the more challenging ideas linked to a profound shift in culture. Practice change needs to happen in a way that sees innovation and transformation take place at the heart of organisation.

Update training explores equality on a profound level, in way that helps whole groups achieve greater wellbeing for all participants. It looks at achieving the changes that make a difference in terms of the next 3 outcomes, Enjoy & Achieve, Make a Positive Contribution and Achieve Economic Wellbeing. Understanding the need to secure equity is pivotal in view of any proactive duty. Here participant will discover the need to develop strategies that increase expectation and raise aspiration, as these are key to increasing life chances.

Beginning with a review of the core ideas supporting inclusive practice from a wellbeing perspective. Participants are then invited to share the strategies they have implemented and explain the benefits these bring to children, parents and carers across whole communities (Published soon @ http://equalitytraining.blogspot.com/). Inequality is then defined, in terms of the negative factors affecting wellbeing, and participants are given the opportunity to explore these in depth from their own perspective. Wellbeing theory is then outlined, identifying the factors that promote wellbeing, with a summary of current research and findings. To draw it all together, happiness in defined because of its pivotal role in supporting young people’s learning and development, in order to support the development of community action.

Participants are invited to then attend the last in this 3 day programme – shared leadership and community participation.

Please do get in touch if you would like any more information regarding our training.

Saturday 22 August 2009

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Putting (French) values into practice

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the real secret of success turns out to be surprisingly simple, it hinges on in people’s life stories and particularly the culture they belong to. At the heart of recent educational dialogue is a need to value individual learning journeys by personalizing teaching methods through more inclusive practice. It was particularly pertinent to me, as a French woman, to look at how values translate into practice in the context of French teaching. I lived in France until I was 12, and have always believed that my culture has had a huge influence on my own ideas. To write a paper on teaching French in an inclusive way was an ideal opportunity to explore these issues, and in a very real way exemplified the tension between personal and public thought and action.

Loosely based on the themes of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, I developed my ideas to explore the links between the purpose and belief that underpin French culture and inclusion. Firstly, I defined inclusive practice to provide a background to educational change from a French perspective. This also helped to strengthen an argument for developing teaching methods that do more to reflect the cultural ideas expressed through language. It also meant I could address ‘social change’ throughout the document, a key idea underpinning the deeper understanding in the evolution of inclusive practice. From the language development perspective, being able to share ideas with others needs an awareness of social context, it needs more that the skills associated with the acquisition of words. Therefore, each section, Citoyenneté, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and Happiness are broad themes used to explore specific aspects of French culture that illustrate ideas behind a national search for equality and social change. Ending on happiness gave me a chance to look at social issues dealt with through addressing educational purpose: the need to continually re-evaluate practice in order to insure it delivers to learner’s contemporary requirements.

;-p

Friday 3 July 2009

Divisions within the whole

Division - a major cause of exclusion


In a rigid hierarchical system, such as education, organisation directly affects the wellbeing, and therefore learning, of all young people. Organising teaching in a way that is uniform and takes little account of personal uniqueness puts pressure on participants to conform. In the way they are run, schools often imposes an uniformity that does not exist, and create an order that impacts negatively on self image and self esteem. It is their perception of their relative place within the hierarchy that creates stress for many students.


If we keep pursuing standards that do not help achieve happiness in the long-term - we need to ask ourselves why on a deeper level. As Ken Robinson states, the ideological question here is whether our delivery of education is fit for purpose. If by aiming for results than do not ultimately contribute to personal growth we are harming young people, then bigger questions have to be asked. If successive and incremental changes only deepen inequality and add stress, then we are making the problem worse.


How can we make sure that every young person is equally valued as learner and ultimately given what they actually need for a fulfilling life. By introducing wholeness as a key, we get a representation of connection that will challenge the division imposed by the hierarchy discussed above. Wholeness has become a predominant theme across a wide number of areas, and there is little doubt that this is as a response to the fragmentation of human relationships imposed by an increasingly specialised workforce in a highly mobile world. Wholeness and the spirit of connection is also an easy way of conceptualising belonging.


Basically, we all belong and contribute to one world, and the imposed relative value and merit learnt at school has little place in a highly dynamic society. Our contribution to the community, our families and our jobs, are being redefined on a daily basis. The old social stratification no longer determines who will succeed or how they will do it. At the end of the day, pursuing what truly makes our close ones happy will have a much bigger bearing on how much we enjoy our lives.

;-p

Small thoughts on Inclusive Practice in Learning, Teaching and Assessment


In the Guardian a couple of weeks ago there was a piece - The Quest for equality - that usefully summarises many of the key ideas discussed in the workshops delivered to Bradford University recently on the topic of Inclusive Culture.


  • The first is the idea 'importance of directly involving disabled people in the development of policy and service provision' - something all marginalised groups feel strongly about - the ability of organinisations and their members to accept leadership from 'minority' groups on a variety of mainstream issues.
  • 'The benefit to society as a whole', Inclusion is fundamentally about improving community life for all, adressing discrimination leads to healthier societies.
  • Also, regarding the public sector duty: ' The duty is seen as key to a fairer world because of the size and influence of the sector'.
Which brings us back to the question around the personalisation agenda , and whether it will genuinely offer people more control?


There was also a piece about ofsted inspectors being asked to consider outcomes for disabled children, under new recomendations...

;-p

What do we want? Equity! When do we want it…

“What do you want?” Is an oppressive question that is often asked in a huffy tone by those who have benefited from the privilege and opportunity that enables powerful position. It often is implied that all effort is equally rewarded and opportunities are open to all. However, this is not the case, for some hard work is rewarded, while others need to work harder to reach the same position.

This week Stuart Rose was quoted on Simply Business:

Women in the workplace “have more equality than they can ever deal with” according to controversial Marks and Spencer chairman Stuart Rose. He asks: “What is it you haven’t got?” (http://ow.ly/alrM)

Answer: EQUITY

Mr Rose seems to have misunderstood equality entirely – it cannot be given. It is owned and threatened in a culture that systematically discriminates against certain groups. Women are equal! But they do not get treated equally, and often face limited opportunity – therefore their progress comes at a higher price. It is this lack of equity that is rarely understood. Stuart Rose - please acknowledge your privilege!

Women do and will achieve success in the workplace; unfortunately it is often at greater cost than their male peers. The effort needed to reach more senior positions involves working much harder. The time/effort required therefore often means having to make difficult decisions: giving up family time, leisure interests or personal growth opportunities.

Despite this heavy price women on average earn 17% less than men, and the gap is growing. While some argue that it is because of the career choice women make. Many would counter that choice is rare and ‘restricted option’ is a fairer description of the situation.

When addressing sexism specifically social stereotypes of women as carers and homemakers add to the problem. It is assumed that the full time work of running a home is the responsibility of women, who can somehow fit it around employment hours. This work is on occasion appreciated more when the roles are reversed - men then marvel at the hard work done by house-husbands! (I do wonder if such praise given to their own wives?)

The point is women deserve equity. We do not want what someone else has, we want the opportunity of fulfilling our own potential, to be successful on our terms.

Equal reward for equal effort!

When? ….. Now!

mole ;-p