[macafee2]

Originally Posted by mss

topman above has it absolutely right.

There is a lot written about diversity and lowering of standards by ill-informed people.

In my own field, engineering, there has been much focus on diversity in relation to the lack of women in the field. The reason - as my wife explains very well - is that 35 years ago most females of school leaving age in relatively rural Suffolk and other similar areas were automatically expected to go into the traditional female jobs such as secretarial, administration etc.

A lot of work has been done to attract females into engineering and in my view for the better. All the female engineers that I have worked alongside or have mentored in engineering have been as good as their male counterparts. The end result is that the situation in relation to a minority group in this particular profession has seen a significant change in diversity whilst any change in standards has been upwards.

There is also the question of whether the tests are relevant to the job and if not, whether they unreasonably prevent one or more groups of the population from succeeding. An example would be questions on English history of the middle ages in a test for a train driver role. Whilst removing such a question may be perceived by some as a lowering of standards, the relevance of such a question to train driver performance would be questionable.

I would have thought businesses would have learnt from WW2 and know if woman were up to engineering roles. Who were manning our factories?

macafee2