40% of board member posts should be reserved for women
Discussion
Mermaid said:
ewenm said:
Discrimination enshrined in law and equality be damned.
Says it all 
But will women be complaining?
Edited by Mermaid on Tuesday 23 October 15:16
Equal should equal best person for the job regardless of any category.
gtdc said:
Mermaid said:
ewenm said:
Discrimination enshrined in law and equality be damned.
Says it all But will women be complaining?
Edited by Mermaid on Tuesday 23 October 15:16
Equal should equal best person for the job regardless of any category.
gtdc said:
Doubt we'd be complaining. Get to the top because you're the best, not because you have a pair of norks. If we start getting discriminated for then it makes every woman who's done well suddenly look like she might be there as a token.
Equal should equal best person for the job regardless of any category.
Something women should be complaining about is the insufficient number of toilets at public venues esp motorsport Equal should equal best person for the job regardless of any category.
markcoznottz said:
julian64 said:
Gutted.
Alternatively, you could gather up all of that male intelligence you have and try and put the word 'hyperbole' in a sentence where it actually makes any grammatical sense.
No the biggest problem is with equality in its own right. It seeks to dumb down, there is certainly nothing 'equal' about it unless you are a communist. Why no quotas for male primary school teachers?. Funny that. Your personal attack is typical of your ideological standpoint, please do elaborate, how are men and women equal in any real sense?. Alternatively, you could gather up all of that male intelligence you have and try and put the word 'hyperbole' in a sentence where it actually makes any grammatical sense.
There have been no convincing studies showing that childrens brains differentiate. If you look in industries that hold intelligence in higher regard than sex, you get a more even spread.
In my own field its pretty much women greater than men.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8077083.stm
They don't get there by being inferior intellectually. They get there because they are better than the equivalent man. The competition for medical student places is fierce, and creams off probably the most able in the country, and that’s an even split between men and women. If its an even split there, it could be an even split anywhere.
Men and women are equal in every real sense until you give one, or other of them the impression they aren't able, or aren't wanted.
julian64 said:
I have no ideological standpoint. Just a logical one. There is no discernable difference between the male and female brain until society puts a stamp on it.
what rubbishhttp://www.livescience.com/20011-brain-cognition-g...
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems...
we are different from each other... not better or worse as a species, but different.
jbi said:
julian64 said:
I have no ideological standpoint. Just a logical one. There is no discernable difference between the male and female brain until society puts a stamp on it.
what rubbishhttp://www.livescience.com/20011-brain-cognition-g...
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems...
we are different from each other... not better or worse as a species, but different.
Oh I give up.
This is a tricky one in many ways. The majority of people in the United Kingdom are female (something like 51% I think) so the fact they make up a minority of the workforce, minority of top positions, minority of the House of Commons and very stark minority of directorship roles is odd, from a purely statistical point of view. You can't even say men drastically outnumber working age women because it's near enough the same, not as big a difference as all the examples mentioned above.
I think part of the problem - if there is a problem - is much of the executive world is something of a boys club. People hire the people they know, people network with each other and more often than not those people happen to be men. I'm not sure quotas would change that and I'm also not sure British women would like being in a job purely because a bureaucrat said the company had to give it to them. It's a bit like the Sports Personality thing a couple of years ago where the list was entirely men. What woman would want to be a on a list because a suit said they had to be?
I think part of the problem - if there is a problem - is much of the executive world is something of a boys club. People hire the people they know, people network with each other and more often than not those people happen to be men. I'm not sure quotas would change that and I'm also not sure British women would like being in a job purely because a bureaucrat said the company had to give it to them. It's a bit like the Sports Personality thing a couple of years ago where the list was entirely men. What woman would want to be a on a list because a suit said they had to be?
julian64 said:
You really ought to read your own articles. We differ less than you differ from the next man in the queue. There are no barriers in the female brain, and I really can't beleieve I'm having to say this again.
Oh I give up.
Those articles state very clearly that we are different and speculate that the biological differences may be further amplified by society.Oh I give up.
Are you now saying science is wrong?
anonymous said:
[redacted]
One last comment cos this is doing my head in. I think you've hit at least one of the nails on the head. There is no difference between men and women in ability, but there is a big difference in society about what they are expected to do and the roles there are expected to carry out.But I don't think that should be laid 100% at the door of the woman.
Take the surgeon comments above .You are effectively saying if the surgeon doesn't work full time at operations she can't be a surgeon. Why?
They go to General Practice possibly because its set up is more compatible with motherhood. But so could surgery be. So could industry for that matter. Its not ability, its the way society is currently set up.
On-call comittments used to put almost all women off hospital work. But now shift work makes that more attainable. Its not rocket science.
If you don't accept women as your equal then there will always be reasons to discriminate. If do accept them as equal then there will always be ways of sorting that out. Trouble is discriminating is almost always easier because its culturally within us to do so.
Do we know how many women want to be surgeons? Or politicians? Company directors?
Perhaps most women aren't stupid enough to want to be an MP, for example. To give us a better idea of the scale of the 'problem' it'd help to have stats on the gender ratio of people attending medical school and then becoming a doctor, for example.
Perhaps most women aren't stupid enough to want to be an MP, for example. To give us a better idea of the scale of the 'problem' it'd help to have stats on the gender ratio of people attending medical school and then becoming a doctor, for example.
julian64 said:
If you don't accept women as your equal then there will always be reasons to discriminate. If do accept them as equal then there will always be ways of sorting that out. Trouble is discriminating is almost always easier because its culturally within us to do so.
Setting a quota doesn't help reduce discrimination in any way though. It may help reduce the appearance of discrimination but if people unsuited or less-suited to a job are given that job to fill a quota, will that reinforce discriminatory views ("see I told you all women/men were rubbish, just look at XYZ") or help to abolish them?All a quota does is legalise discrimination and put yet another hurdle in the way of a meritocratic society.
julian64 said:
One last comment cos this is doing my head in. I think you've hit at least one of the nails on the head. There is no difference between men and women in ability, but there is a big difference in society about what they are expected to do and the roles there are expected to carry out.
But I don't think that should be laid 100% at the door of the woman.
Take the surgeon comments above .You are effectively saying if the surgeon doesn't work full time at operations she can't be a surgeon. Why?
They go to General Practice possibly because its set up is more compatible with motherhood. But so could surgery be. So could industry for that matter. Its not ability, its the way society is currently set up.
On-call comittments used to put almost all women off hospital work. But now shift work makes that more attainable. Its not rocket science.
If you don't accept women as your equal then there will always be reasons to discriminate. If do accept them as equal then there will always be ways of sorting that out. Trouble is discriminating is almost always easier because its culturally within us to do so.
In essence you're saying that women can do these things just as well as long as it doesn't require the same amount of effort and commitment? I believe there is a direct correlation to the number of times a particular surgeon performs a procedure and it's success / failure rate. This is supported by the move to put specialities in one place so expertise and experience is gathered together which will improve outcomes. If I wanted a surgeon to perform a potentially life threatening / tricky operation on me do you believe I'd pick the one with a record of hundreds of previous performances of that procedure and a high success rate or the one who is doing it part time and therefore has less experience, less practice and less success?But I don't think that should be laid 100% at the door of the woman.
Take the surgeon comments above .You are effectively saying if the surgeon doesn't work full time at operations she can't be a surgeon. Why?
They go to General Practice possibly because its set up is more compatible with motherhood. But so could surgery be. So could industry for that matter. Its not ability, its the way society is currently set up.
On-call comittments used to put almost all women off hospital work. But now shift work makes that more attainable. Its not rocket science.
If you don't accept women as your equal then there will always be reasons to discriminate. If do accept them as equal then there will always be ways of sorting that out. Trouble is discriminating is almost always easier because its culturally within us to do so.
I do wonder why if women are generally so good at business the business world is not full of successful female business owners? Of course it could be that in time it will be that we are now seeing a the progress of highly educated, committed, ambitious women setting up and succeeding in business. Forcing the issue with quotas will only cloud that progress and diminish their achievements.
Any woman appointed to a Board role to fulfil a quota is there by privilege, the privilege being due to not having a Y chromosome. Any woman appointed to a Board role in open competition is there on merit not on the basis of privilege. Surely equality is about ensuring fair access, and not by introducing a politically correct form of privilege.
What I'm not getting here is why any high performing woman would want a position based on privilege not on merit. It seems to be a case of others wanting it on her behalf, but without bothering to ask.
Even if a number of women apply for such a quota slot, it's not an open competition because men would be barred from applying. This seems patronising more than anything else, and will leave businesses with the knowledge that they couldn't appoint the best person for the job, merely the best woman, and any woman so appointed will know that too.
This is nothing but a sham, a fake and forced equality of outcome tactic that actually results in an unequal outcome where meritorious postholders of both genders find themselves alongside a privileged female or two. Pure tokenism which in my view is bad for women in terms of real equality and bad for business too.
What I'm not getting here is why any high performing woman would want a position based on privilege not on merit. It seems to be a case of others wanting it on her behalf, but without bothering to ask.
Even if a number of women apply for such a quota slot, it's not an open competition because men would be barred from applying. This seems patronising more than anything else, and will leave businesses with the knowledge that they couldn't appoint the best person for the job, merely the best woman, and any woman so appointed will know that too.
This is nothing but a sham, a fake and forced equality of outcome tactic that actually results in an unequal outcome where meritorious postholders of both genders find themselves alongside a privileged female or two. Pure tokenism which in my view is bad for women in terms of real equality and bad for business too.
Well as this discussion has descended in to typical caricature stereo types I was reminded of this story of old.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-457914/Man...
I know it's not really related in any way but as we're all talking misinformed b
ks we might aswell address the gay mafia and public school bum boys who run most of the FTSE 100 companies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-457914/Man...
I know it's not really related in any way but as we're all talking misinformed b
ks we might aswell address the gay mafia and public school bum boys who run most of the FTSE 100 companies.Serendipity72 said:
Good.
Women have structural and socially embedded impediments to getting onto company boards. .
Such as?Women have structural and socially embedded impediments to getting onto company boards. .
And even if we accepted that (I don't), where is the number plucked from? Given that boards tend to be the older and more experienced people in a company, this suggests that it is selecting from a working population that is not 50:50, and so 40% may be more than "fair".
Then you have the fact that women, academically, have a narrower spread than men (fewer firsts and fails at University). If you pick the top of the range for your board, then that's going to mean fewer women. It could explain why they are also underrepresented on the bins (a fact about which they are strangely quiet).
And before you accuse me of not wanting women to get ahead, Mrs NB is a high flying woman in finance, and I'm immensely proud of her. I'm glad that she's making it on merit, not through tokenism.
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