The BBC reports:
Former minister Jo Swinson has spoken of the “delicious” moment she was mistaken for a secretary by a senior government official.
The ex-Lib Dem MP, an equalities minister in the coalition government, was speaking about the difficulties faced by women in the workplace.
She said the official was mortified when he realised his mistake.
She also revealed that her then boss Vince Cable skipped a diversity training seminar she had set up.Ms Swinson said she had set up a session for business department ministers and senior civil servants on avoiding “unconscious bias” in the workplace but that she was “the only minister that turned up”.
The former MP, who lost her seat at May’s general election, pushed through reforms allowing shared parental leave, seen as one of the biggest changes in employment law under the coalition.She spoke out against all-women shortlists at a Liberal Reform fringe meeting at the party’s conference in Bournemouth.But she argued that some state intervention and positive discrimination was needed to shift ingrained cultural attitudes, offering an insight into her own experience at the heart of government.
“I remember as a minister, when I was making a public appointment, the officer for public appointments was coming along to discuss who we were going to appoint to this position and the interview process,” she said.
“And basically came into my office and talked to me with the clear assumption that he thought I was the secretary to the minister.
“It was wonderful – the look on his face when he realised his mistake.”
You can listen to the whole of the fringe on Liberal Reform’s website here.
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3 Comments
‘ he thought I was the secretary to the minister.’
When my wife was a young research scientist and occasionally answered the phone for a male colleague when he was out of the lab, she had this problem too. She usually put the caller right quite sharply.
Or a single female family member, a civil servant did a diplomatic stint at First Secretary level in a British Embassy in a European capital; she was allotted to an embassy flat according to her grade, with three reception rooms, two bathrooms, an office, a kitchen and enough bedrooms, all in a rather nice quarter of the city. She kept her push-bike in the hall of the flat and cycled to work most days. The block of flats had a summer party in the nice gardenand she went along. She found that some of the other occupants assumed she was the au-pair.
At least, with Jo Swinson, the guilty party had the grace to be embarassed.
Someone I know very well often accompanies his wife when she goes to Intergovernmental conferences, in which she plays an important role.
He is sometimes invited to the “entertainments” such as shopping trips which are put on by the conference organisers for the “wives” of those taking part in the conference.
I have often been my wife’s consort, when she has been taking part in sporting events or academic conferences. It’s usually explained that I am there to carry her bag. When the children were young, I was there to look after and entertain them too. So I’ve got included in quite a few receptions and dinners. No shopping trips though.