It seems every job now requires some form of "equal opportunities and diversity questionnaire" to be completed (sometimes called "employment information forms"). Typical questions ask gender, race, and disability status, some ask sexuality and other criteria.
Obviously employers state that this does not affect employment results, but if this was truly the case wouldn't they be redundant? For example if the questionnaires show a lack of a certain race or minority, surely the company would "do something about this" (increase advertising to that community with the hopes to employ more of these people), in a sense positively discriminating to meet "quotas"?
For example say with the disability question, lets say a company had no disabled workers and wanted to gain an image of an equal opportunities employer, would you be more likely to gain a job if you stated you were disabled?
My main concern is that these forms are often compulsory and in some cases identifiable (have the candidate name, numbers etc at the top). Surely a more sensible option to avoid any appearance of bias would be to have these forms completed ONCE a person gains the job, and not during the application process.