Workplace bias: Different strokes for different genders

An award made by the Caribbean Court of Justice last month gave the entire region cause to wonder why, when we have a superior court of record – of a calibre far above many courts in the UK – we still opt to stick with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England for our court of final appeal. I really do not understand it.

There are some longstanding primitive and pre-colonial prejudices buried within our brains in this community.

I used to blame them on the rigid principles and protocols of the series of colonial rulers we have waded through, but when I began to study anthropology and came face-to-face with the deep-seated patriarchal attitudes of the inferiority of women, that predated the Spanish, Portuguese, French and British periods of rule based on gender bias and the resultant lack of opportunities for leadership allowed most women, I began to wonder why and how my mind had been conditioned to accept that as normal.

Thinking back to my own childhood, I started to remember that teachers were mostly female, except, occasionally, science teachers, but school principals or headmasters were always male.

As the decades passed, schools became divided by gender, with scarce resources (including science teachers ) going to boys’ schools.

More decades passed, I was teaching at UWI when I began to notice there were equal numbers of male and female graduates, and then the balance shifted. Suddenly, except in engineering and law, in the late 90s, more women were graduating, and women predominated in law as well.

Sitting next to one vice principal at a post-graduation dinner, I commented on this, and he looked at me cynically. "So you didn’t know?" he asked. "Until five years ago, just before this class of grads started at UWI, there was a formal policy admitting only women with marks ten per cent higher than the male average. This lot of women are just rising to their own level." His exact words. I stood in my shoes and wondered.

Before then, I was unaware that discrimination against women was a formal policy written into institutional systems. I honestly thought that racism was the only discriminatory evil.

As the decades passed, more women became heads of state and one little boy at Eton, during Margaret Thatcher’s time at the helm, when asked if he wanted to be prime minister when he grew up, scoffed in reply: "Don’t be crazy. Boys can’t be prime ministers!"

A statement that went viral.

Then, when Trevor MacDonald left TT for England to teach British media announcers how to speak English properly and got knighted for it, a survey on the new proliferation of women news announcers revealed two things: women tend to be more articulate and enunciate better, and networks can get them cheaper.

Talking to one financial company in Trinidad and Tobago about their staff gender difference, they explained why women were so rarely being made partners. Although the women applying to work for them were better qualified than the men, you could pay them less and promote them more slowly. The directors were traditionally all male. I remember a client asking me to recruit an accountant with the qualifications – they must be male and Chinese. That put me in a quandary, although we always tried to satisfy clients' needs, by policy our firm didn’t recruit by race or gender, but by qualifications, behaviour and attitude. They explained their reasoning – women spent too much time talking to co-workers and Chinese were better at numbers. I smiled. That company was very satisfied with the Afro-female who we sent to them and is still with their firm after 15 years. She is a partner now. That taught me a lot about stereotypes.

So, about recruiting police officers based on their height. Napoleon was very short and Winston Churchill was even shorter.

Apparently, Adolph Hitler was even shorter. Even the current prime minister of England would not qualify for the TTPS, nor would the famous leader David Ben Gurion, founder of Israel.

The founder of our police force, Commissioner Arthur Stephen Mavrogordato, who made the Star of David the symbol the TTPS still carry on their badges, was also Jewish by birth. But Ben Gurion would not have qualified to join the TTPS based on his height. He was 5ft 2in.

No qualification limitations on the height of women recruits has been mentioned in the press throughout this controversy. But if it is the same as for men, "so officers can be seen," by Minister Hinds’ rationale for keeping the distinction, Angela Merkel, esteemed EU leader, would not make the cut either. And, since her admirable record of lowering, if only marginally, the murder and gang crime rates during her tenure are being ignored as well would our current CoP? Just asking.

The bias prejudice against women leaders in Trinidad and Tobago, despite two successive female presidents known for their ethics, strangely appear to be alive and well.

Check the gender of recent business leaders terminated for dubious reasons: Lisa Agard, Angelique Parisot-Potter, Kendra Thomas-Long, Jearlean John (the previous two for talking back to the chairman at a board meeting! How dare they?). I remember the chairman of the board of NPMC years ago complaining when he first took over as chairman, that the all-male board members always agreed with him. He valued disagreement as it brought in innovative ideas. Different strokes for different genders.