As a woman once told she couldn’t be considered to manage a factory (probably no bigger than a Nandos) because the Director didn’t want me to get “hurt” or “upset” it grinds my gears to hear of people not being able to reach their potential due to someone else being unable to step outside of their comfort zone.
Someone recently sent me the 2023 census statistics for employment amongst those with a disability, which is really where this LFTWednesdays Blog originated, and it was a surprising (and painful) read. Read it here: Disability pay gaps in the UK – Office for National Statistics
As you’ll know from Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion training at work, there are a set of ‘protected characteristics’ within the Equality Act which help to protect us all at work and in our day-to-day lives. All of us have or will come up against something in this list at some point, even if it’s only feeling (or being considered) too old to do a particular job. The protected characteristics, in case you don’t know them are: age, gender reassignment, being married or in a civil partnership, being pregnant or on maternity leave, race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.
We’re all protected by law from being harassed, judged, excluded, overlooked, stereotyped, bullied… based on these characteristics. We’re all in there and all expect to be treated nicely; do as you would be done by and all that.
Why is it then, and excuse a rant here, that those with any kind of disability, on average, get paid less? If they have parity of skills and abilities it makes the situation worse. What makes Person A better than Person B who maybe can’t hear as well or might need things explaining a bit differently? I’ve worked with plenty of people without disabilities that need things explaining repeatedly and still don’t get it right. Why do they get paid better?
The 2023 census data shows that disabled employees with autism experienced one of the widest pay gaps (27.9%), along with disabled employees with epilepsy (26.9%) and severe or specific learning difficulties (20.3%). That just seems wrong. If we’ve got equitable ways of working in place (and so what if “it’s always been done like that”, let’s change it this time) then everyone can get done what they need to. That’s all anyone wants, to go to work and get stuff done.
We’ve come so far over the past few decades, we have women in the workplace and everything, but we still stumble over some of the protected characteristics. It feels like we need to make a massive national effort to tackle them each at a time, when in reality, we’re just talking about regular people, the same as you and me, that need you to make a couple of adjustments. Maybe I’m asking for too much for us all to change our habits, but we can start to question ourselves more and wonder what it is that we consider so hard about recruiting and working with someone with a disability.