Gender quotas and other other positive discriminations

oscarBravo · 20-12-2016 03:04PM

blackwhite wrote: »

It's been proposed in the thread already - maternity leave needs to be addressed. Why you seem to believe that quotas are needed before that can be addressed is a strange one though.

Because there's no incentive to address it. If the Dáil is composed of men (and women who aren't held back by lack of maternity leave), then the question of whether or not they can get maternity leave is an externality for them.

But if you have gender quotas, and the party grassroot organisations are having trouble filling the quotas because of a lack of maternity leave for TDs, then those grassroots will exert pressure on their elected members.

As for the other barriers - has there been any studies done into it? Very hard to address a problem if the cause hasn't been established (other of course than "men are keeping women down - somehow....").

I know it's frowned upon to tell people to use Google, but I think that's generally when making a claim that isn't widely accepted to be true - I'll let the moderators pull me up on it if not.

So: google "systemic barriers to women in politics", and have a look through the results.

I look at the issue of female numbers in politics as very similar to the issue of male teacher numbers. The solution is in first understanding why the respective careers don't appeal to the respective genders, and then addressing those reasons.
Both are jobs that are too important to push inferior candidates purely to hit a notional target percentage.

The point of quotas isn't to "push inferior candidates"; it's to force political parties to address systemic barriers in order to facilitate superior candidates.

Zubeneschamali · 20-12-2016 03:15PM

oscarBravo wrote: »

The point of quotas isn't to "push inferior candidates"; it's to force political parties to address systemic barriers in order to facilitate superior candidates.

To emphasize this - if there were no barriers and the best candidates won, half of them would be women. But in fact, only 22% of TDs are women.

That says that roughly 28% of our TDs are inferior candidates, men who would not have beaten the best candidates if there were no barriers.

K-9 · 20-12-2016 03:26PM

If everything was equal, but it's hard to know if it would be 50/50 or close to it. Maybe there are areas that women generally prefer not to go into, like men with teaching and nursing.

So we can try and remove ingrained societal prejudices that women aren't suited to politics or men to nursing, but I do think trying to force 50/50 situations is artificially engineering a solution!

The current gender quotas seem a good balance. Parties have to put women forward as 30% of their candidates, then the electorate decides on who they think are the best candidates.

Zubeneschamali · 20-12-2016 03:46PM

K-9 wrote: »

Maybe there are areas that women generally prefer not to go into, like men with teaching and nursing.

Yes, because of the barriers.

There are barriers for men entering nursing and teaching, too.

Professor Moriarty · 20-12-2016 03:48PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Yes, because of the barriers.

There are barriers for men entering nursing and teaching, too.

What are these barriers?

Zubeneschamali · 20-12-2016 03:57PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

What are these barriers?

Cultural stuff mostly: traditionally men became doctors and women became nurses - kids were raised knowing that. The gender balance in Doctors has swung the other way, but Nursing is still mostly female. Guys who enter nursing are often pushed towards psychiatric, where the perception is that some extra muscle is needed, re-enforcing that regular ward nurses are female.

All of which means that men who would make good nurses do not take it up.

K-9 · 20-12-2016 03:59PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Yes, because of the barriers.

There are barriers for men entering nursing and teaching, too.

Yes, but you seem to be assuming if we remove all barriers and prejudices we'll automatically find a 50/50 equilibrium. Say it works out at 65/35 after all that, and it works out most woman don't want to go into politics or men into nursing, that's just the way it is.

Professor Moriarty · 20-12-2016 04:05PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Cultural stuff mostly: traditionally men became doctors and women became nurses - kids were raised knowing that. The gender balance in Doctors has swung the other way, but Nursing is still mostly female. Guys who enter nursing are often pushed towards psychiatric, where the perception is that some extra muscle is needed, re-enforcing that regular ward nurses are female.

All of which means that men who would make good nurses do not take it up.

I do know that, especially in primary, male teachers have a much better chance of getting a job than females, as there are so few and as they tend to take on extra-curricular sports duties.

Not sure about men being pushed towards psych these days. I think the bias is actually the man's own bias towards a career in nursing as against there being discrimination by female nurses or hospital management.

Zubeneschamali · 20-12-2016 04:19PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

I think the bias is actually the man's own bias towards a career in nursing as against there being discrimination by female nurses or hospital management.

I agree, the barriers are mainly cultural. In my own field of software engineering, I did the same course as my brother, 6 years after him. The number of women in the course tripled in those 6 years. But it stalled way, way short of 50% since then, and now, 30 years later, the workforce is still very skewed.

Dragging this back to politics, there is a reason why we should address the gender issue there - with equality there, there is more chance it can be addressed everywhere.

Professor Moriarty · 20-12-2016 04:30PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I agree, the barriers are mainly cultural. In my own field of software engineering, I did the same course as my brother, 6 years after him. The number of women in the course tripled in those 6 years. But it stalled way, way short of 50% since then, and now, 30 years later, the workforce is still very skewed.

Dragging this back to politics, there is a reason why we should address the gender issue there - with equality there, there is more chance it can be addressed everywhere.

Exactly. If the decision makers are increasingly female then it should trickle down in general.

In all of this debate, it has to be acknowledged that different genders tend to have different traits. For example, nursing tends to be more hands on and more interactive with patients than other areas of medicine and so maybe women might be more attracted to that kind of work than men given that they are inherently or conditioned to be more 'caring'. Ditto, perhaps, with teaching, especially primary. Likewise, I have met very few female stonemasons.

The important thing is that there are no barriers, the chips can then fall as they wish.

Count Dooku · 20-12-2016 06:07PM

oscarBravo wrote: »

So: google "systemic barriers to women in politics", and have a look through the results. The point of quotas isn't to "push inferior candidates"; it's to force political parties to address systemic barriers in order to facilitate superior candidates.

If you want to force parties, then abolish constituencies and introduce the party-list proportional representation. Instead of local parish pump populists, people will vote for the parties and parties can make as many female candidates as they want in their lists. If some voters will decide that some parties has too few women in their list, they can always vote against.

Zulu · 20-12-2016 06:18PM

Seeking to understand the problem better, can we ask WHY having fewer women in politics is a bad thing?

What, if any, is the problem with male politicians?

oscarBravo · 20-12-2016 06:33PM

Count Dooku wrote: »

If you want to force parties, then abolish constituencies and introduce the party-list proportional representation. Instead of local parish pump populists, people will vote for the parties and parties can make as many female candidates as they want in their lists. If some voters will decide that some parties has too few women in their list, they can always vote against.

That's a whole nother reform that can be debated on its own merits, but it doesn't do anything to address systemic barriers.

There's not a lot of point arguing against quotas by proposing alternatives that won't work.

Zulu wrote: »

Seeking to understand the problem better, can we ask WHY having fewer women in politics is a bad thing?

You can ask, but I'm a bit nonplussed that anyone would want to ask that other than as a thought experiment.

Let's try a reductio ad absurdum approach to your question: would you be in favour of banning women from standing for election? If so, why? If not, why not?

Count Dooku · 20-12-2016 06:57PM

oscarBravo wrote: »

There's not a lot of point arguing against quotas by proposing alternatives that won't work.

Then what the point to demand quotas which nobody asks for? Women are not sexual minority and if they really wanted equal presentation, then they could easily achieve it and none of systematic barriers would stop them

oscarBravo · 20-12-2016 07:23PM

Count Dooku wrote: »

Then what the point to demand quotas which nobody asks for?

There's a rather fundamental error of logic in that question.

Women are not sexual minority and if they really wanted equal presentation, then they could easily achieve it and none of systematic barriers would stop them

Just like if someone really wanted to get out of prison, none of the locked doors would stop them.

You do understand that a barrier, by definition, stops things?

Count Dooku · 20-12-2016 08:02PM

oscarBravo wrote: »

There's a rather fundamental error of logic in that question. Just like if someone really wanted to get out of prison, none of the locked doors would stop them.

if it truly gifted person, then I don't see anything wrong in this statement
But because there is a huge demand for escaping from prisons, there are huge barriers around them, which I havent seen on kildare street
While for women in politics as we learned the only artificial barrier is an absence of maternity leave

oscarBravo · 20-12-2016 09:00PM

Count Dooku wrote: »

if it truly gifted person, then I don't see anything wrong in this statement

I'm not entirely sure what that's in reply to, but: we don't set "truly gifted" as the required standard for men in politics, so why should we set it for women?

While for women in politics as we learned the only artificial barrier is an absence of maternity leave

Someone didn't bother googling "systemic barriers to women in politics", then.

Count Dooku · 20-12-2016 09:35PM

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm not entirely sure what that's in reply to, but: we don't set "truly gifted" as the required standard for men in politics, so why should we set it for women? Someone didn't bother googling "systemic barriers to women in politics", then.

I already seen whining about 5C and only childcare I can consider as artificial, the rest is natural and cannot be fixed by law

hognef · 20-12-2016 09:46PM

Zulu wrote: »

Seeking to understand the problem better, can we ask WHY having fewer women in politics is a bad thing?

What, if any, is the problem with male politicians?

Having mostly men in politics means the political agenda consists mostly of male and macho interests.

One of them being a desire to keep the number of men high. Clearly, that seems to be working quite well for them.

I can only assume this is why we have relatively short and largely unpaid maternity leave entitlements, why we have next to no paternity leave entitlements, why minimum annual leave entitlements are so low, why child care isn't subsidised, why there's no real solution to schools finishing up at lunch, etc.

Practically every family-oriented policy or lack of policy is less family-friendly (and hence, less female-friendly) than in other comparable European countries, to such an extent that, indeed, it conflicts with women's ability to make a career for themselves (in politics, but also in other areas).

Yourself isit · 20-12-2016 09:50PM

The whole point of the Democratic process is for the people to elect a government not for the government to decide whom the people can elect.

hognef · 20-12-2016 09:56PM

Yourself isit wrote: »

The whole point of the Democratic process is for the people to elect a government not for the government to decide whom the people can elect.

Unfortunately, the people can only pick from those that are put up for election.

K-9 · 20-12-2016 10:55PM

Zulu wrote: »

Seeking to understand the problem better, can we ask WHY having fewer women in politics is a bad thing?

What, if any, is the problem with male politicians?

Well I don't think male politicians are inherently biased or inconsiderate of issues relating to women, but seeing as you've begged the question:

If less women in politics isn't necessarily a bad thing, then more women isn't a bad thing either!

A huge issue that has faced Ireland for years is childcare costs which effects both males and females. Would more have been done in the last 20 years if we had more female representation at the cabinet? Possibly not, but I suspect the issue would have come up more if more women had been involved.

It kind of reminds me of people who supported majority Government and discipline and the whip system. Just because that was the way it was done, we couldn't operate efficiently in any other way. Minority Government has shown we can work another way, it might be slower, but differing opinions get taken account of now and Government doesn't ram stuff through just because.

Yourself isit · 20-12-2016 11:30PM

hognef wrote: »

Unfortunately, the people can only pick from those that are put up for election.

There's not much restriction on getting on the ballot. And in the STV you can vote for more than one candidate.

Sand · 21-12-2016 01:28AM

K-9 wrote: »

If less women in politics isn't necessarily a bad thing, then more women isn't a bad thing either!

It depends on the woman though. We certainly don't need any insights from Mary bloody Coughlan.

I don't think gender is necessarily the primary problem in politics today. I think the main challenge we face is the poor quality of person in the Dail, especially the establishment parties which are rife with nepotism. On top of that they are given near total unaccountable power. In your example of child care costs over the past 20 years, when it comes to the budget the only things that matter in our system are the priorities of the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the MoF. Unless they are women with that priority you would see no impact no matter who else was sitting the in the Dail or at the cabinet table. If we're talking about positive discrimination, I'd first implement a requirement that 100% of party candidates must not be related to any sitting or any TD that held a seat in the past 10 years.

The idea (expressed by others, not you) that adding more poor quality candidates with different genitalia will lead to an improvement under the current system is unproven at best. Worse it seems to be rooted in putting women on a pedestal - they don't lie, they are more collaborative, they think more in the long term etc etc. The evidence for female politicians so far doesn't support that. Thatcher wasn't exactly maternal or gentle. May isnt either. Arlene Foster is up to her neck in trouble. South Koreas PM isnt a shining beacon. Merkel's dubious halo has taken a serious dent in recent years - too slow and cautious in the Eurozone crisis, too reckless in the migrant crisis. Gender quotes seem to a solution in search of a problem.

Fully agreed on the whip/minority comments as well, though that's a different topic.

Professor Moriarty · 21-12-2016 02:07AM

Sand wrote: »

It depends on the woman though. We certainly don't need any insights from Mary bloody Coughlan.

I don't think gender is necessarily the primary problem in politics today. I think the main challenge we face is the poor quality of person in the Dail, especially the establishment parties which are rife with nepotism. On top of that they are given near total unaccountable power. In your example of child care costs over the past 20 years, when it comes to the budget the only things that matter in our system are the priorities of the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the MoF. Unless they are women with that priority you would see no impact no matter who else was sitting the in the Dail or at the cabinet table. If we're talking about positive discrimination, I'd first implement a requirement that 100% of party candidates must not be related to any sitting or any TD that held a seat in the past 10 years.

The idea (expressed by others, not you) that adding more poor quality candidates with different genitalia will lead to an improvement under the current system is unproven at best. Worse it seems to be rooted in putting women on a pedestal - they don't lie, they are more collaborative, they think more in the long term etc etc. The evidence for female politicians so far doesn't support that. Thatcher wasn't exactly maternal or gentle. May isnt either. Arlene Foster is up to her neck in trouble. South Koreas PM isnt a shining beacon. Merkel's dubious halo has taken a serious dent in recent years - too slow and cautious in the Eurozone crisis, too reckless in the migrant crisis. Gender quotes seem to a solution in search of a problem.

Fully agreed on the whip/minority comments as well, though that's a different topic.

Could you think of any male politicians with whom you disapprove?

Zubeneschamali · 21-12-2016 07:29AM

Sand wrote: »

I think the main challenge we face is the poor quality of person in the Dail, especially the establishment parties which are rife with nepotism.

Perhaps, then, we should try to remove barriers which currently discourage half the population from running, thereby losing perhaps 30% of the best candidates.

Lu Tze · 21-12-2016 07:43AM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Perhaps, then, we should try to remove barriers which currently discourage half the population from running, thereby losing perhaps 30% of the best candidates.

I think you will find that far more than half the population didn't run for election.

I have no problem with encouraging more women into politics, but the blunt instrument used to implement this is an issue, when there were far better options available.

Perhaps a quota system which had to reflect within 5-10% the gender breakdown of the party membership? This would still allow a gender issues party for either gender, which admittedly wont be winning a majority anytime, but the voice of small parties can influence the public policy of the larger ones (we have seen this with the greens before they went into government).
This might also encourage more participation at a grassroots level, hopefully leading to a larger pool of candidates (men and women) for the parties to choose better candidates from for local and general elections.

Yourself isit · 21-12-2016 10:33AM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Perhaps, then, we should try to remove barriers which currently discourage half the population from running, thereby losing perhaps 30% of the best candidates.

90% plus of people don't run for election. In fact representatives from the people paying for it all - the PAYE private sector tax payer - have few represtatives.

Maybe none.

21-12-2016 10:51AM

If the parties are meant to be a source of barriers then why do women make up a greater proportion of party candidates than of independent candidates? This was true before any quotas were brought in too.

Zulu · 21-12-2016 10:54AM

oscarBravo wrote: »

You can ask, but I'm a bit nonplussed that anyone would want to ask that other than as a thought experiment.

Nonplussed??? The point, surely, of debate is to cover the topic at hand concisely. Isn't it only right to address the fundamental assumption made from the outset?

Let's try a reductio ad absurdum approach to your question: would you be in favour of banning women from standing for election? If so, why? If not, why not?

No. Banning women is a completely different matter. I wouldn't be in favour of banning anyone from the democratic process, except perhaps those that don't contribute to the society (but that's a different conversation).

I note you didn't bother answering the actual question put to you.

hognef wrote: »

Having mostly men in politics means the political agenda consists mostly of male and macho interests.

Thats just a little bit sexist, isnt it?

One of them being a desire to keep the number of men high. Clearly, that seems to be working quite well for them.

I take it you don't believe this is a conscious thing? Do you really think that our politicians only want to have male colleagues in their workplace?

I can only assume this is why we have relatively short and largely unpaid maternity leave entitlements, why we have next to no paternity leave entitlements, why minimum annual leave entitlements are so low, why child care isn't subsidised, why there's no real solution to schools finishing up at lunch, etc.

Aren't these inherited problems from previous generations? Much like the pension problem we are facing, unbroken tenure in the civil service, etc.?

Practically every family-oriented policy or lack of policy is less family-friendly (and hence, less female-friendly) than in other comparable European countries, to such an extent that, indeed, it conflicts with women's ability to make a career for themselves (in politics, but also in other areas).

I don't understand you point here tbh.

K-9 wrote: »

Well I don't think male politicians are inherently biased or inconsiderate of issues relating to women, but seeing as you've begged the question:

If less women in politics isn't necessarily a bad thing, then more women isn't a bad thing either!

Absolutely not! More women wouldn't be a bad thing! Creating a law to shoehorn more women however, is is a very very bad thing.

A huge issue that has faced Ireland for years is childcare costs which effects both males and females. Would more have been done in the last 20 years if we had more female representation at the cabinet? Possibly not, but I suspect the issue would have come up more if more women had been involved.

You see this is just speculation really. There is no grounds for this. If this was such an issue previously, then politicians would have addressed it. Life is becoming much harder for families as the cost of living is increasing. This isn't because men can't represent women, or because male politicians don't consider issues that affect us all.
Politicians are populist. Irish water didn't happen because of the gender of our TD's, it happened because the primary motivation of every politician is to be (re)elected.

Minority Government has shown we can work another way, it might be slower, but differing opinions get taken account of now and Government doesn't ram stuff through just because.

I wholeheartedly disagree. This government is crippled and paralyzed from doing anything. And I'd be amazed if it survives 2017.

Gender quotas and other other positive discriminations

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