̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - equality and diversity

Give more people with learning disabilities the chance to work, historian argues

ta385 — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

A new study by historian Professor Lucy Delap (Murray Edwards College) argues that loud voices in the 20th-century eugenics movement have hidden a much bigger picture of inclusion in British workplaces that puts today’s low rates to shame.

Professor Delap found that in some parts of Britain, up to 70% of people variously labelled ‘defective’, ‘slow’ and ‘odd’ at the time had paid jobs when demand for labour was high, including during and after the First World War. This proportion fell during recessions, but even then, 30% remained in work. By contrast, in the UK today less than 5% of adults with intellectual disabilities are employed.

“A recession now couldn’t make levels of employment of people with learning disabilities much worse, they are on the floor already,” Professor Delap says. Her study, published in the journal Social History of Medicine follows a decade of painstakingly piecing together evidence of people with learning disabilities in the British workforce in the first half of the 20th century.

Delap found no trace in employers’ records or in state archives which focused on segregation and detaining people. But she struck gold in ̽��ֱ��National Archives in Kew with a survey of ‘employment exchanges’ undertaken in 1955 to investigate how people then termed ‘subnormal’ or ‘mentally handicapped’ were being employed. She found further evidence in the inspection records of Trade Boards now held at Warwick ̽��ֱ��’s Modern Records Centre. In 1909, a complex system of rates and inspection emerged as part of an effort to set minimum wages. This led to the development of ‘exemption permits’ for a range of employees not considered to be worth ‘full’ payment.

Delap says: “Once I found these workers, they appeared everywhere and not just in stereotypical trades like shoe repair and basket-weaving. They were working in domestic service, all kinds of manufacturing, shops, coal mining, agriculture, and local authority jobs.”

Delap’s research goes against most previous writing about people with intellectual disabilities which has focused on eugenics and the idea that preindustrial community inclusion gave way to segregation and asylums in the nineteenth century. “We've been too ready to accept that narrative and haven’t gone looking for people in the archive,” Delap says. “Many weren’t swept up into institutions, they lived relatively independent lives, precarious lives, but often with the support of families, friends and co-workers.”

‘Wage age’ versus IQ

Previous studies have focused on the rise of IQ testing in this period, but the employment records that Delap studied showed something very different: a more positive sense of ability couched in terms of the wages someone was worth. This involved imagining a person’s ‘wage age’, meaning that an adult worker could begin with a starting age of 14 and advance in wage age through their working life. Not everyone did advance though.

Delap says “ ̽��ֱ��idea of ‘wage age’ was harsh in many ways but it was far less stigmatising than IQ which emphasised divisions between ‘normal’ and ‘defective’ and suggested people couldn’t advance beyond a certain point. By contrast, ideas of fairness, productivity and ‘the going rate’ were deployed to evaluate workers. When labour was in demand, workers had leverage to negotiate their wage age up. IQ didn't give people that power.”

Appeal to employers

Under the exemption system, employers saw the business case for employing – usually at a significantly lower rate of pay – loyal workers who could be trusted to carry out routine tasks.

Tailoring Trade Board application for permit of exemption relating to a 19-year-old 'unintelligent' woman employed to do various errands in Peterborough (1915). Courtesy of Modern Records Centre, Warwick ̽��ֱ��.

Delap says: “If anything, governments gave signals that these people shouldn't be employed, that they were better off under the care and control of the mental deficiency boards. But employers understood that they could be good workers.”

In 1918, an ‘odd job’ worker employed for 20 years at a London tin works was described as suffering from ‘mental deficiency’ and didn’t know the time of the year or who Britain was fighting. Nevertheless, in the inspector’s opinion, he was ‘little if at all inferior to an ordinary worker of full capacity’ on the hand press and ‘His speed at cutting out on an unguarded fly machine was noticeable.’ His employer agreed to a raise from 18 to 24 shillings a week, just below what a carter could earn.

Employer calculations, Delap emphasises, fluctuated with the state of the labour market. When workers were in short supply, those with learning disabilities became more attractive. When demand for labour fell these workers might be the first to lose their jobs.

Were employers just exploiting vulnerable workers?

Delap found clear evidence of some workers being exploited, being stuck on the same very low wage and the same monotonous task for years.

“We shouldn’t feel nostalgic, this wasn’t a ‘golden age’ of disability-friendly employment,” Delap says. And yet, the archive reveals a strong reciprocal sense of real work being done and wages being paid in exchange. “Many of these people would have considered themselves valued workers and not charity cases. Some were able to negotiate better conditions and many resisted being told to do boring, repetitive work.”

Delap repeatedly encountered families policing the treatment of their relative. In 1922, the owner of a laundry in Lincolnshire considered sacking a 25-year-old ‘mentally deficient’ woman who starched collars because ‘trade is so bad’ but kept her on ‘at request of her parents’. “Workers who had families looking out for them were more able to ask for wage rises, refuse to do certain jobs and limit exploitation,” Delap says. “I found lots of evidence of love and you don't often see that in archives of intellectual disability.”

Parents or siblings sometimes worked on the same premises which, Delap argues, strengthened the bonds of moral obligation that existed between employers and families. In 1918, for instance, a 16-year-old who attached the bottoms of tin cans in Glamorgan was hired ‘for the sake of her sisters who are employed by the firm and are satisfactory workers’.

Lessons for today

Delap sees concerning similarities between the 1920s and the 2020s in terms of how British institutions manage, care for and educate people with learning disabilities.

Historically, Delap argues, institutions were just stop-gaps, places where people could be kept without onward pathways. People were often not trained at all or trained to do work that didn't really exist like basket-weaving. “This remains a problem today,” Delap says. “We have a fast-changing labour market and our special schools and other institutions aren’t equipping people well enough for viable paid opportunities.”

Delap argues that evidence of people with learning disabilities successfully working in many different roles and environments in the past undermines today’s focus on a very narrow range of job types and sectors. She highlights the fact that many workers with learning disabilities used to be involved in the service sector, including public facing roles, and not just working in factories. “They were doing roles which brought them into contact with the general public and being a service sector economy today, we have lots of those jobs.”

Delap also believes that structural factors continue to prevent people from accessing jobs. “Credentialism has made it very difficult for people don’t have qualifications to get jobs which they might actually be very good at,” she says. “We need to think much harder about how we make the system work for people with a range of abilities. I also think the rise of IT is a factor, we haven’t been training people with learning disabilities well enough in computer skills so it has become an obstacle.”

Delap believes that Britain’s ageing population and struggle to fill unskilled jobs means there is a growing economic as well as a moral case for employing more people with learning disabilities.

She points out that many people with intellectual disabilities used to work in agriculture, a sector now facing chronic labour shortages. Delap acknowledges that exploitation remains a problem in agriculture, so safeguarding would be paramount, as it would be in every sector.

“I think employers are recognising that they need active inclusion strategies to fill vacancies and that they need to cultivate loyalty,” Delap says. “Work remains a place where we find meaning in our lives and where we make social connections and that's why so many people with disabilities really want to work and why it deprives them of so much when they are excluded. We need to have more bold ambition and stop being content with really marginal forms of inclusion.”

Reference

L Delap, ‘Slow Workers: Labelling and Labouring in Britain, c. 1909–1955’, Social History of Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkad043

Employment levels for people with learning disabilities in the UK are 5 to 10 times lower than they were a hundred years ago. And the experiences of workers from the 1910s–50s offer inspiration as well as lessons about safeguarding.

We need to have more bold ambition and stop being content with really marginal forms of inclusion

Lucy Delap

Andrew Tanglao via Unsplash

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Taking pride in our researchers

cjb250 — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 07:04:58 +0000

To mark LGBTSTEM Day, celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer scientists, engineers and mathematicians around the world, our researchers tell us why celebrating diversity is important – and why identities really do matter.

Black researchers shaping the future

ta385 — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 09:32:12 +0000

Read the full story here

As the UK marks Black History Month, researchers from across the ̽��ֱ�� talk about their route to Cambridge, their inspiration and their motivation.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Celebrating Cambridge’s LGBT+ scientists and engineers

cjb250 — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 23:00:09 +0000

To mark the event, the ̽��ֱ�� has released a film in which staff and researchers from the ̽��ֱ��, AstraZeneca and the Wellcome Genome Campus discuss their experiences of being LGBT+ in Cambridge – and why it is important to be who you are.

"While we have witnessed an increase in inclusion and equality efforts in STEM organisations and companies, we have to recognise the many challenges individuals continue to face, especially members of the LGBT+ community," said Dr Alfredo Carpineti, founder of Pride in STEM and one of the organisers of the initiative. “That's why we launched LGBTSTEM Day. We hope for this to be a day of celebration, of reflection, and of engagement. LGBTSTEM Day is part of the global push to increase the visibility of minorities in STEM fields.”

̽��ֱ��celebrations highlight the need for more role models to help enable LGBT+ scientists and engineers to be able to express themselves and to encourage others to consider a career in STEM. As Dr Sara El-Gebali, Scientific Database Curator at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) says in the film: “Sadly there are very few [LGBT role models in science]. It’s not because we’re not here, it’s because we’re not seen. We’re not officially here.”

Anna Langley, Computer Officer at Cambridge’s ̽��ֱ�� Information Services, was one of the founding members of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s LGBT+ Staff Network. She works in an environment where diversity is a problem, but says that things that are changing.

“Working in IT is still a very straight, white, male, cis environment,” she says. “But generally, I think that the university is trying to do the right thing in terms of diversity. It’s trying to ensure that people are treated fairly regardless of their background, their gender identity, their sexuality.”

Having a supportive work environment is essential in helping staff both personally and professionally, says Christopher Fox, Associate Scientist at AstraZeneca/MedImmune: “I don’t think I’d be as confident as I am at work if I didn’t have people around me who were openly gay or openly lesbian, people who are happy to be themselves. It made me feel that I can be myself.”

Elizabeth Wynn, Advanced Research Assistant at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, adds: “I think it’s important to be who you are, to be able to live as your authentic self, because you’re never going to be truly happy or productive or complete if you’re trying to silence or hide some part of yourself.”

For Langley, being ‘out’ at work is important not just for oneself, but to support others. “If you’re not visible as someone who’s LGB or T, intersexual, queer, non-binary, whatever, then you’re making it that little bit harder for other people to be open about their experience too, […] to be comfortable in their skin in the working environment.”

̽��ֱ��film’s contributors all describe Cambridge as being a very positive, open city in which to live and work.

“There’s a real emphasis on ‘it’s what you can bring to the table in STEM rather than who you are’,” says Fox. “It’s about what you can achieve, not what your sexuality is.”

Michael Rivera, a PhD student in the Department of Biological Anthropology, agrees: “With such a diverse, knowledgeable population in Cambridge, I think it’s very likely that you will find many friends to make here with common interests to you. You will find lots of allies who are open to different backgrounds and different sexualities – and maybe you’ll even find someone very special to spend time with!”

For Dr El-Gebali, her move to Cambridge has made a huge difference to her life. “Being in Cambridge has helped me to come out, not just to my friends and family, but also to work,” she says. “It’s the first time in my long career when I can officially say ‘Yeah, here I am and I’m not the only one’. Cambridge has been really, really good to me.”

This year, staff and students from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press, marched together as they joined thousands of others in the parade at Pride London on Saturday 7 July. AstraZeneca and scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute also marched together as part of the Proud Science Alliance group.

Cambridge celebrated the first ever LGBTSTEM Day on 5 July – recognising all those who work in science, technology, engineering and medicine and who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other minority gender identities and sexual orientations.

I think that the university is trying to do the right thing in terms of diversity. It’s trying to ensure that people are treated fairly regardless of their background, their gender identity, their sexuality

Anna Langley

Celebrating Cambridge’s LGBT+ scientists and engineers

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Let’s celebrate Pride – and let our young people be proud, too

cjb250 — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 07:49:51 +0000

Tomorrow, tens of thousands of people will descend on London to celebrate Pride, the annual march through the streets of the city to celebrate lesbians, gays, people who are bisexual and transgender and those who belong to other sexual minorities – the LGBT+ community.

Where last year’s parade was swelled by people marching in solidarity with those tragically killed in the terrible shooting at Orlando earlier that month, this year’s may well be boosted by a positive celebration: fifty years since the decriminalisation of gay sex.

Anyone old enough to remember this point in history, or even the eighties, when the spectre of AIDS hung over the gay community and the Thatcher government introduced Section 28 to prohibit local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality, will realise how far we have come since then. In 2017 the rights of our LGBT friends in our community are protected in law, and same sex marriage is broadly accepted.

But while I don’t want to rain on everyone’s parade, we – LGBT and straight alike – shouldn’t be too complacent. There is still a lot of work to be done.

Last week, the charity Stonewall, which campaigns for equality for LGBT people in all walks of life, published a report looking at the experiences of LGBT pupils at our schools. ̽��ֱ��research behind this report was led by Dr Vasanti Jadva from Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research and was a follow up to its two previous studies, published in 2007 and 2012.

̽��ֱ��findings of the study give us cautious optimism – but I want to stress that word, cautious. Compared to the previous studies, it found that pupils at our schools encounter less bullying based on their sexual or gender identity, are less likely to hear casual homophobic language such as “faggot” or “lezza” and are more likely to be taught about LGBT issues at school. But that does not mean that these problems have gone away. And for one group in particular – those pupils who define themselves as transgender – their experiences are far from positive.

More than 3,700 LGBT young people aged 11-19 across Britain took part in the study, completing an online questionnaire asking about their experiences at school, online and at home.

̽��ֱ��top line finding of this important report is very positive: homophobic and biphobic bullying has fallen by a third over ten years. But this masks the fact that 45% of our pupils are still bullied because they are LGBT. And if you are trans, more likely than not you will have been bullied – 64% of trans pupils report being bullied. Even more horrifying, nearly one in ten trans pupils have been subjected to death threats at school.

Half of LGBT pupils frequently hear homophobic language at school. ̽��ֱ��phrase “that’s so gay” – used infamously by DJ Chris Moyles during his spell on Radio 1 – is still used very commonly, with 86% of pupils regularly hearing this or similar phrases at school.

What happens when teachers witness the bullying or hear such offensive language at school? Not enough, it seems. Fewer than a third of LGBT pupils say their teachers intervened when they were present during the bullying, and seven in ten say teachers only ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ challenge homophobic, biphobic or transphobic language when they hear it.

There have been improvements, though: the number of schools that tell their pupils homophobic bullying is wrong is up from a shameful 25% when our researchers first did their study to 68% this time round. Faith schools are most likely to let their pupils down – just 57% tell their pupils that homophobic bullying is wrong, and only 29% tell them transphobic bullying is wrong.

Schools are more likely to teach their pupils about LGBT issues now, too. In 2007, 70% of pupils had never been taught about such matters, but this is down to 40% now. But again, if you’re trans, your experience is much worse – three in four LGBT pupils have never learnt about gender identity and what ‘trans’ means at schools (and in fact, this is a similar figure for bisexuality).

We know that positive role models can help pupils as they grow up, and it’s perhaps a reflection of the changing environment in which gays and lesbians can marry and are more visible that means that 27% of LGBT pupils known of an openly gay member of staff and 22% of an openly lesbian member of staff. But the stigma surrounding bisexuality and transgender is reflected in that only a tiny minority know staff in these groups (4% and 3% respectively).

So what does all this mean for a pupil’s development? We know that mental health issues among young people are becoming an increasing concern, and this is particularly reflected among LGBT pupils. An alarming 61% of LGBT pupils have deliberately harmed themselves, and more than one in five (22%) have attempted to take their own lives, a figure barely changed since 2012. This is just not acceptable.

Stonewall has rightly used the findings of the report to make a number of recommendations to improve the experiences of LGBT pupils across the country. Ruth Hunt, chief executive of Stonewall, described the report as “a wake-up call for schools, government and politicians on just how far we still have to go."

While some of the recommendations are aimed at ensuring that staff are empowered to offer appropriate support to their LGBT pupils, many are aimed at showing their pupils that it’s okay to be LGBT. If this report tells us one thing, it’s the importance of allowing people to celebrate who they are, no matter their sexuality or gender identity. It’s what we strive for at Cambridge, to be a university to which any student can aspire to come and not only engage in great scholarship, but to also be free, happy, and proud of their individuality and sexuality.

̽��ֱ��Stonewall report encourages us to celebrate difference and make the diversity of LGBT people visible. This is what Pride is all about – and you can see the impact it can have by listening to those who have been fortunate enough to attend. Lauren, a 16 year old pupil in the East Midlands, who contributed to the study put it so clearly when saying that: “After I went to Pride, I felt much more confident and able to come out because of how well bisexuality was accepted there. Going to Pride helped me to gain confidence in myself and to come out.”

So go out there tomorrow, enjoy yourself. Be proud. And let our children and teenagers see that they, too, have so much to be proud about.

If you are an LGBT+ young person in or around looking for help and support, you can contact ̽��ֱ��Kite Trust, which offers free support for LGBT+ people under the age of 25.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author.

At the end of June, the charity Stonewall produced a report along with Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research into the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pupils at our schools. On the eve of Pride London, Dr Nick Bampos, one of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Equality and Diversity Champions looks at the findings.

We – LGBT and straight alike – shouldn’t be too complacent. There is still a lot of work to be done

Nick Bampos

Nicky Rowbottom

Pride London Parade, July 2011

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Poetry please

fpjl2 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:33:49 +0000

Aspiring poets from Cambridge and surrounding area are invited to submit their work for the second annual Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Competition with the prize giving, and readings of winning submissions, taking place at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on Thursday, 1 November.

̽��ֱ��competition – which in its inaugural year saw the winning poets perform their entries to a packed house at St Edmund’s College in the company of Zephaniah himself – is now open to a greater range of local writers who need to submit their work by Saturday 17, October 2012.

Last year’s competition was open to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� students only. It was won by Isabella Shaw, a student of English Literature at Clare College whose lyrical Variations on the Western Wind, a poem inspired by a song from the early 16^th century, captivated the judges and held the audience spellbound when she read it at the prize giving.

This year, there are four different categories for submissions from people living or studying in Cambridge and surrounding area: local university student, local college student, local school student and local resident. There are no limits to the age of entrants.

In tune with the spirit of the competition, which aims to find new voices, only work that has not been previously published can be entered.

“We’ve widened the criteria for entrants because we believe the competition is the ideal platform to bring out diverse voices and celebrate the richness of the entire Cambridge community,” said Mohammad Razai of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Political Forum, organisers of the competition.

“Last year’s event was a bit of an experiment because we had no idea what response we would have. We were thrilled with the number of entries and the judges were hugely impressed by the standard of the submissions.”

̽��ֱ��aim of the competition is to encourage new work that propels social change and the project is being facilitated by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Equality & Diversity team. Entrants are asked to submit one poem each with a length of between 15 and 80 lines. Competition winners will be invited to read their submissions at the prize-giving event.

̽��ֱ��prize giving will be held at Emmanuel College at 5.30pm on Thursday, 1 November as part of the Vibrant Visions event held by the Equality and Diversity team to celebrate Black History Month 2012. ̽��ֱ��event is open to the public and the organisers are keen to encourage as many people as possible to attend. For free tickets go to https://vibrantvisions.eventbrite.co.uk/

Full details of the Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Competition and how to enter can be found at https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/equality/events/.

̽��ֱ��Benjamin Zephaniah Poetry Competition, set up last year to encourage new work propelling social change, is now open to a wider range of aspiring poets. Entrants are asked to submit their work by 17 October 2012.

We believe the competition is the ideal platform to bring out the diverse voices of the entire Cambridge community.

Mohammad Razai, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Political Forum

Yvonne Bent-Elliott

Benjamin Zephaniah and Mohammad Razai at last year's event

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