Diversity management – Gay policemen are wanted

Posted: November 21st, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Career, LGBT rights, UK | No Comments »

Homosexuals are not only valuable and loyal customers, they have also become treasured workforce during the last years. Diversity is a hot topic in human resource departments in the most companies. But diversity is not only popular among private companies, also public authorities are focusing on recruiting LGBT people. This differs a lot from country to country. The most negative example is the discriminating “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy of the US army. The situation in Britain is totally different, like this double spread in the British gay magazine “Proud” shows.

The first page is an advertorial-like interview with two testimonials, who are talking about the work as a police woman or man. Only the last questions is a about how they feel about their sexuality in respect to their job. This is supposed to emphasize, that being homosexual is not a big topic in police departments anymore. That incidents of homophobia are mentioned, is something I especially like. It is just honest and makes the whole ad authentic.
The second page is a pure recruiting ad. The words “gay” or “homosexual” are not mentioned anymore. Only the main visual of a ladder spoke with rainbow colors shows who is the target group. This image symbolizes, that homosexuality is everything else than an obstacle to make career at the “Hertfordshire Constabulary”. The whole ad is rounded off by the information, that the constabulary is among the top 100 Stonewall employers. Stonewall is a British LGBT- lobby and charity group, which annually awards employers for their achievements in the field of equality.

Lesbians as target group

The following ad of the London Fire Brigade sets completely aside any use homosexual symbols or special wording. However, the main visual of a woman with very short hair in addition to the release of this ad in the British lesbian magazine G3, makes the target group obvious. On the one hand is it a understandable aim to create a an ad without any LGBT symbols. On the other hand is the the use of a woman with stereotypical lesbian appearance questionable.

It would be great to see more recruiting ads in gay magazines. They are offering career chances and – which is much more important- recruiting ads promote, that it is an advantage to be out in the job, for both: employee and employer.

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Hand in hand – LGBT rights movement and commerce

Posted: May 2nd, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: International, LGBT rights | 1 Comment »

There is always a lot of criticism and concerns, when the LGBT rights movement and commerce meet. Especially in queer and gender study essays, you find a fear of a sell-out of the movement. But if we look back in current gay history, we can see, that the LGBT movement and commercialization walked hand in hand. In two simple formulas: more gay rights = more gay commerce and more gay commerce = more gay rights. But why is this so? This could be answered with “visibility” and “acceptance”. Before the gay rights movement came up, homosexuals were simply not visible as a target group for businesses, because they had to hide due to backward legislation. The gay rights movement lead to a change of this laws, which lead also to more acceptance in the public. This acceptance is also important for businesses. Even nowadays some companies are afraid of being identified LGBT-friendly, mainly because this could scare of conservative customer groups. Fortunately, many companies are open to gay customers today. In my opinion, this is also a benefit for the community, since advertisements for LGBT lead to more visibility in public and, again to more acceptance.
In the best case, a company does not only try to make new gay customers, but also support the causes of the LGBT movement itself. Yes, I mean with money. Let´s face the truth, this movement needs money. An example was the whole anti-gay propaganda around Prop 8. We can only fight this media-dirt-campaigns with own campaigns and constitutional lawsuits. Both are very expensive.
One example, where commercial interests and support of gay rights meet, is parship. Parship is Europe’s leading dating service for people in search for a serious relationship. There is a straight version of parship, but also gay-parship. Below you find their latest advertisement for gay-parship. The main difference of this dating service is, that the members are aiming for a serious, long-term relationship. For many gay and lesbian couples, the last step, an equal marriage is still missing. This is also the topic of the head line “In love, engaged and now?”. To make an equal marriage finally possible and not only some second class civil partnership, parship supports “The Whit Knot”, a non-profit organization, which was founded in response to Prop 8 in November 2008.