A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

On news.BBC.com today, this headline and blurb caught my attention:

Harman pushes discrimination plan

Harriet Harman sets out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority candidates.

Um, isn’t this what we call affirmative action?

I clicked to read more, and was stopped quickly by the second paragraph:

She said firms should be able to choose a woman over a man of equal ability if they wanted to - or vice versa.

Again I stumble. Why wouldn’t they be able to do this already? Is there currently something in the UK that says they have to choose a man over a woman? So why is it a big deal to tell firms that they’re allowed to choose women?

On to the next line:

The new Equalities Bill will also force employers to disclose salary structures in a bid to close the gender pay gap.

Disclose salary structures to whom? Unless that third party has the authority to make companies “close the gender pay gap,” this has no purpose — except for letting everyone look at the salaries and shake their heads while doing nothing.

The plans, which will be adopted first across England then Wales and Scotland, will also ban all age discrimination.

Finally, something that makes sense to me.

Although if you really think about it, making it illegal to discriminate based on age - old or young - is incongruant with the first part of this bill, which would encourage firms to discriminate based on gender.

Is legislation really the answer to “the ol’ boy network?” Has is really worked in the U.S.? And are the governments which set these bills in place prepared to revise them in 50 years when the make up of the population is much different?