Secretary of State For Trade and Industry
Hewitt became a member of the Privy Council in 2001 and was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from June 2001 until May 2005. In September 2005, a Judicial Review found Hewitt "guilty of unlawful sex discrimination" when she employed a female applicant for a DTI position ahead of a significantly stronger male candidate. The judge ruled that Malcolm Hanney had lost out to a candidate ranked third by the interview panel and that the failure to appoint him was "in breach of the code of practice for ministerial appointments to public bodies". Hewitt had quoted the Code of Practice on Public Appointments, which said: "Ministers will wish to balance boards in terms of diversity as well as skills and experience.", though the panel had clearly stated that Mr Hanney was "much the strongest candidate". The DTI apologised and Hanney was awarded £17,967.17 costs. The appointment was not overturned however and Hewitt herself did not apologise and claimed not to have realised she was in breach of the law. Rod Little of The Times juxtaposed Hewitt's claim with the fact that Hewitt's department was itself responsible for the Sex Discrimination Act, suggesting she believed the purpose of sex discrimination legislation "was intended to be of benefit only to women" rather than "maltreated job applicants...foolish enough to be born with a penis".
Sociologist Geoff Dench has stated that Hewitt discourages male involvement in child rearing by questioning "whether we can trust men with children" and she concluded that it would be necessary to adopt the practice of "not leaving men on their own with groups of children". Dench also criticised Hewitt for suggesting that it requires less intelligence and education to raise children than to be employed. Erin Pizzey similarly criticised the views expressed by Hewitt and her co-authors in the 1990 IPPR report "The Family Way". Writing in the Daily Mail, Pizzey claimed the report was a "staggering attack on men and their role in modern life" as a result of its stating, "it cannot be assumed that men are bound to be an asset to family life or that the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social cohesion".
Hewitt was criticised for a 2003 report by the Women and Equality unit which was run by Hewitt, in which it was stated that there was a "real problem" with mothers who stayed at home to bring up their children. It was described as '"bullying and intolerant" by The Institute of Directors with criticism also coming from mothers groups.
Read more about this topic: Patricia Hewitt
Famous quotes containing the words secretary of state, secretary of, secretary, state, trade and/or industry:
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)