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A cross-party group of MPs are recommending that the banking industry should ensure that more women occupy senior positions. The report notes that only 9% of board members of FTSE 100 banks are women, compared with an average of 12.2% for the FTSE 100 as a whole. This in itself would be a good enough reason for a higher representation of women on the boards of leading banks (an indeed the other FTSE companies), but interestingly the MPs highlighted another factor that they considered equally important. (more…)

For most of us, all we know about public figures comes from what we hear and read in the media. There is no way of knowing if our opinion is correct. Which is why it will have come as a surprise to many of us to hear of the jailing of Commander Ali Dizaei who had been held up as a role model for ethnic policemen. (more…)

The Department for Work and Pensions have been testing employers’ adherence to the discrimination laws by sending out bogus job applications from fictitious people with foreign names. They have found that employers ”still discriminate against people solely on the basis of having an ethnic minority name.” Employers are up in arms about the DWP’s tactics but the DWP says it will use the research to help judge levels of discrimination in the jobs market.

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