Sadiq Khan: There are too many "white men" on Transport for London

The answer to this is improving social mobility from the ground though, not sticking people in jobs they aren't qualified to do just because they're part of a minority group.

I think that even if Mayor Khan chose to improve the welfare of women like you, you will still not like him.

Give him a chance to prove himself. I am sure that you will want other people to give you the chance to prove yourself.

Diversity for the sake of diversity infuriates me. People should be appointed based solely on whether they are best for the position and should have nothing to do with their race, genitalia, religion or sexual orientation!

I don't think women are his top priority at all. He doesn't need me to give him a chance - he won Mayor, and I didn't vote for him. I don't need to give him a chance, he's been forced on me democratically and I can't begrudge him that

Let us watch and see. Don't be in haste to judge him.

As a woman, I can't think of anything worse than being offered a job I'm not the best applicant for simply because I am a woman. If there is someone else who is a better applicant and they happen to be male, they deserve the job more than I do. Maybe not many women want to work for TFL? in my experience of getting TFL for work every day, it is an absolutely dire service and I can't think of anything worse than working for them. I think there is a danger to assuming that because there are not a lot of women working for TFL, that means we are stopping them from doing so. This assumption is made frequently where women or other minorities are not in certain fields or positions and never comes along with statistics about how many minorities actually apply for those jobs. In my view it's more outdated to say 'let's have a woman because we should' it's very patronising.

London's transport authority is far too dominated by white men, Labour's mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan said today.

There are currently 13 white men on the Transport for London board and just three women. Khan said he would ensure the board better reflected the "diversity" of Londoners if he becomes mayor.

"I will reshape TfL's board," he said during a speech in Brixton this morning."It needs to better reflect London's diversity in the interest of Londoners.

Did you know there are 16 people on the board of TfL?

Read More:
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2016/03/30/sadiq-khan-there-are-too-many-white-men-on-transport-for-lon

The answer to this is improving social mobility from the ground though, not sticking people in jobs they aren't qualified to do just because they're part of a minority group.

Surely, there are merits to quota filling. Having more women on the TFL board should help to improve women and their leadership profile. Regardless of race, for a board that has just 3 women, the TFL is basically telling women to "go back to the kitchen". This is because I am certain that there may be more qualified women to be on that board than those men.

To me, I think there are merits to quota filling in certain situations, where women and ethnic minorities are not represented. If not, we can all go back to 1836.

Why are you telling me not to judge him? I didn't vote for him, I don't agree with most of what he wants to do, I'm perfectly within my rights to criticise him.

That is the mistake. Many recruitment are not doing based on a meritocratic system. For example, here you see that almost 70% of jobs have been alleged to not be advertised.

At the top, many jobs are not advertised, so it will be near impossible for a woman (not in the know) or an ethnic minority to actually know that there is a job going to apply for in the first place.

I know what you're saying, but how to go about that? That's such a difficult task.

My initial response is to dislike quotas. And I don't think they provide a perfect answer for now, the present moment, in fact I think they may even create a little resentment. However I feel that they may be beneficial in the long term, when they'd allow the presence of minorities on such boards to become normalised, even expected, which would not be the case otherwise.

I used to work in recruitment and particularly for finance jobs, senior management or directors, I don't think I ever saw a woman apply. Some fields women or others may just not want to work in. For example, I'm fed up being told 'more women need to be in scientific fields' ok sure, if there are women who want to but feel they can't, that's a problem. If women just don't want to, why are we being told we 'need' to work in something else? I got good grades in science and maths at school but I don't like it, I'm not going to work in it just to add to women in science. I think it has the opposite effect to constantly be telling people what fields they should or shouldn't be working in just because there aren't 'enough' minorities in certain fields. I also don't know why you think jobs not being advertised means ONLY women and ethnic people wouldn't know about it, where do you think these jobs are being posted? White Men Only forums? Have you ever actually worked in recruitment? There could be lots of poorer white men being disadvantaged but nobody cares about them

Wheres your source for this statement

Quote There could be lots of poorer white men being disadvantaged but nobody cares about them UnQuote.

Everything under Sadiq is going to be about quota filling. Anyone who voted for him thinking otherwise is an idiot.

Why are you assuming ethnic minority and women candidates won't do a good job, they will be looking at qualifying criteria before they select the candidates. Good business decisions depend on making the right decisions on candidates, you don't do it out of ideology, competition would be fairer without white men dominating every single thing. What makes you think being white and male means you're going to be good at everything?

We all know white people are racists inside.

The fact that everyone talks about women and ethnic minorities but poor white men who have lived in socially disadvantaged areas their whole lives never seem to feature in these conversations. I don't know what source you're expecting me to provide for my own observation. I am obviously not biased as I am not a white man, but I have lived in very poor areas of London where white men are extremely poor and disadvantaged but nobody cares much about them, it's always women and ethnics people are concerned about

The fact that everyone talks about women and ethnic minorities but poor white men who have lived in socially disadvantaged areas their whole lives never seem to feature in these conversations. I don't know what source you're expecting me to provide for my own observation. I am obviously not biased as I am not a white man, but I have lived in very poor areas of London where white men are extremely poor and disadvantaged but nobody cares much about them, it's always women and ethnics people are concerned about