BME women are held back by outdated public perceptions

New research published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has indicated that the barriers encountered by many black and minority ethnic (BME) women in employment are caused by outdated stereotypes, not by their own culture or religion.

Closing the gaps, a study commissioned jointly by the DWP and the Equal Opportunities Commission (part of the new EHRC since last month — see above), surveyed 1,031 British adults and found a wide gap between public perceptions and reality.

For example, more than half (53%) of respondents surveyed believed that white British women in work are more likely to have a degree than BME women, yet statistics from the 2001 census show that the opposite is true. Only 24% of white British women in work have a degree — less than half the proportion of black African women (52%) and well below the figures for Indian, Pakistani, black Caribbean and Bangladeshi women (about a third of whom are graduates).

Nearly four in ten (37%) survey respondents thought that unemployed Bangladeshi and Pakistani women faced cultural and religious barriers preventing them from getting a job — but this view is disproved by a second study undertaken for the DWP.

Pakistani and Bangladeshi women’s attitudes to work and the family is based on 60 in-depth interviews carried out by the Institute for Employment Studies. It found that the women’s greatest difficulties in finding employment were caused by a lack of suitable childcare and flexible working arrangements — a problem faced by working women generally.

Equality campaign group the Fawcett Society said the studies’ findings confirmed its own research into BME women.

“In reality, the ‘cultural barrier’ that ethnic minority women face is not their own, it’s that of organisations that maintain outdated stereotypes,” commented senior policy officer Zohra Moosa. Employers had to think about why they were not responding to “what the evidence shows is a highly ambitious, qualified and competent pool of talent”, she added.