Diversity Figurama

[andrewducker]

Standard Life carried out a massive diversity survey of their staff - the results of which are online here.

Interesting points to note:
The workforce skews more and more male as you move up the heirarchy, although 43% of managers/specialists are female.
Nearly 1% are transgender, but only 2.8% are bi/gay. Which sounds about right for stats on homosexuality, but higher than I'd expect for trans.
57% Christian - but I assume that most of those aren't very. 34% with no religion, which is nice to hear.
The vast majority of the part-timers are women - which isn't at all surprising, as I suspect most of those are women with young children.

Personally, I'm always fascinated by these snapshots of society.

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

At the Prudential, about 85% of the Finance department was female. All but two of the accountants were female, as it happens. There were no women at director level, however, in Finance.

Stats like that can be interestingly skewed.

A few of the companies within the Financial Services/Investment/Banking industry have a reputation for being particularly diverse, or at least very accepting and welcoming of those who are "diverse" (that just sounds silly). I would presume that in these companies, you get interested blips in the demographics.

[andrewducker]

I believe that Brodies (the law firm) has that reputation in Edinburgh.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

RBS, State Street and Morgan Stanley are -supposed- to be, but I have no idea if they actually are.

Of course, a company being that way is very different from the people you work with being diversity-friendly, as it were.

[johanna-alice.livejournal.com]

The figures for Trans could be higher than you might expect if two things are true. First the survey needed to be anonymous. Then TG (as opposed to TV and TS) covers a whole spectrum of different people who perhaps felt secure enough to tick the box, knowing they'd just be a statistic rather than singled out.

I saw one bit of research that suggested 50% of males crossdress at some point in their lives - which seems way high once you take Rocky Horror away. Nevertheless I'd expect around about maybe 3% to identify as trans.

TS's like me are about 1 in 100,000. FTM's are far rarer...

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I might very well tick trans as in transgender in that situation. Note to all bureaucrats - 'gender' is not, not, not a polite way to ask someone their 'sex'.

[andrewducker]

The differentiation between "sex" and "gender" is terribly modern, has switched from one to the other in living memory, not agreed upon between different countries, and in no way official. I went away and read about this one last time someone brought it up and discovered that whichever one you used people were going to be upset you hadn't used the other. (You get the same thing with geek/nerd too)

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Well, I can imagine that the concept of social gender as distinct from biological (phenotypical) sex was less clearly recognised in days gone by. I'd be interested to learn more of the etymology. But my understanding is that 'gender' has long been a grammatical term, and 'sex' a biological one. People in recent decades got muddled about 'sex' as short for 'sexual intercourse' and chaos ensues.

My phenotypical sex is very clear. I've not had my genotypical sex determined, but of course it's not a binary decision - many combinations of human sex chromosomes exist in nature beyond XX and XY. My social gender is pretty complex, apparently - another non-binary variable, anyhow.

[andrewducker]

My point was more than in the 70s gender and sex were used the other way round (gender was your physical gender, sex was your social sex), and that even now the usage is used in different ways in different social groupings.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Well, then people are going to get very confused. But there are some usefully stable meanings of the word 'gender' in grammar, and 'sex' in biology. The concepts of social gender and biological sex are distinct, and therefore it's very useful to keep distinct words for the concepts.

[andrewducker]

It was, indeed, anonymous.

And yeah - I figured actual transgender was incredibly rare.

I've worn a dress once. A rather nice blue summery thing. To a fancy dress party. And very comfortable it was too.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Er... what do you mean by "actual transgender"?

Do you mean "those who are transgender and have transitioned" as opposed to "those who are transgender and have not transitioned" or "those who are transgender and live as the gender they belong to (as opposed to the one they were born with)" as opposed to "those who are transgender and are not living as the gender they beong to (as opposed to the one they were born into)"

Because, it's kinda fuzzy right now. And implies that there *is* some kind of "actual" status, as opposed to ..what, faking it? Could you avoid "true scotsman" type statements, please?

[andrewducker]

Cross-dressing was brought up, which is transvestitism and while it is associated with transgender can be entirely separate.

Pre/post-op would still be as transgender as each other.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I think you mean, 'transexual'.

[andrewducker]

Yup - you're right.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Surely the gay stats refer to openly bi/gay rather than the reality?

[andrewducker]

The survey was anonymous and computerised - so I suspect it was somewhere between the two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#Modern_survey_results
indicates that 1% and 4% wouldn't be unreasonable figures.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I work for a company that encourages other organisations to improve diversity etc etc and I'd still say it was none of their business if anyone asked.

[andrewducker]

Even if it was anonymous?

I mean, I can understand - it is none of anyone's business.

But then I generally figure it's none of anyone's business what I do when they aren't there, and very little of their business what I do when I am there, so long as my work is also getting done.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Even if it was anonymous?

Absolutely. The only time my personal life should ever be brought up in work is in the context of a discussion regarding work life balance.

[andrewducker]

As a counter-argument, I've been recently reading how this kind of survey was used during the 80s in London to force various parts of local government (and the Firefighters) to admit that they had built-in racism/sexism/homophobia - so there can be a point to them.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Well yes, certainly in the case of larger organisations, however surveys like that aren't always going to be suitable for a 10 person office.

A significant factor is that the person running the survey in a company is quite often not qualified to do so, doesn't respect why they're doing it and does not respect the subtleties of anonymity.

[andrewducker]

Oh, absolutely. Not suitable for all occasions.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

you're not takin into account the stupid factor! people who object to being asked so tick the box to skew the results. 9 years ago a colleague made the full transition and occupational health handled it with great respect and open-ness. at the time they said this was new to them as they'd never had it happen before. She no longer works for SL but it makes me doubt that in nine years there's been that much of an intake of post-ops however I suppose like mentioned previously it depends on interpretation. I declined the invitation to complete the survey.

[andrewducker]

I doubt it as well - it seemed far too high to be an accurate representation.