Women make up slightly more than 50% of the population, therefore they should make up at least 50% of the seats on Company Boards, seats in the Parliaments & CEO positions in top ASX companies.
That's been the claim. It has some problems. So do some of the proposed solutions.
Firstly, 10% of the world's population is left handed. Therefore the workplace must represent this. Each board & every parliament must be 10% left handed and the rest right handed.
Secondly, 28% of the Australian population was born overseas, so for their unique qualities that they certanly bring, we need boards & parliaments to have 28% overseas born.
Thirdly, Indigenous Australians are roughly 18% of the population so Parliament & boards must have 18% Indigenous Australian. Surely?
Fourth, 63% of Australians are reported to be obese or overweight. We need that reflected in the boards & Parliaments. Health is a social issue so it makes sense to have stakeholders involved in the greatest health threat to the nation as captains of Industry & Legislation.
Fifth - 32% of the population live in rural or regional areas of Australian, therefore only 68% of all boards & parliaments should be city dwellers.
Sixth - I could go on forever with the angle of the silly thickened identity politics style assessment. This is part of the problem and the solution, so we must take the identity politics out of the equation and the answer.
Make it equal opportunity for all Australians, whether they're male, female, left or right handed Indigenous or not, born here or overseas, city or rural based, overweight smoker/non smoker, gay straight, atheist, devout faith follower...quit with the sub culture bracketry. Go with the facts, the requirements of the job and the best suited for the job. Is it so wrong to say "Sorry you weren't the best person for this job" or do you have to find a reason to carry your false offended back side? It is a sorry sad & pathetic clam to say " Its not me and my suitability its racist, ageist, sexist, elitist..."
You are not entitled to the job you have chosen. The job of your choice is not an option. If you fail to secure that job with that firm, guess what? That's life, go for another job and do what you can to make yourself the best person for the job. Compete for the job, not expect it to be allocated to you because of an accident of birth that designated your gender or some other divisive identity flag.
That's the problem part solved. Its not a matter of there's not enough of any particular identity, its a matter does the position have someone who is suitable, productive, effective irrespective of their clothes size, gender, sexual preference, hair colour, ethnic makeup, or any other minor & irrelevant grouping. The job criteria is about the job you have to suit it...not the other way around.
18% of the population is aged Zero to 15. Do we slide some of them onto boards? No we don't. So why use some other minor group splitting like age, gender, ethnicity or anything else over & beyond MERIT???
Here's the problems within some of the solutions.
Quotas.
Big problem. Why?
Quotas are a diabolical form of Social Engineering. Now I know with those that know (or perhaps don't realise) they have strong socialist/Marxist leanings, Social Engineering is terribly appealing because allowing the state to take control & engineer things in every day life seems like a short cut to equity. It just doesn't work well. When the state dictates a little, the state will want to dictate a lot. Quotas wont necessarily lead to a murderous communist regime but it doesn't help anyone and the possibility of it being amongst a suite of social engineering initiatives is pretty worrying. More worry when some genuinely good people with left leaning inclinations follow the harder line leftists and the minor & very wrong becomes law.
There's another issue. The advent of the term "Quota Queens". A derogatory term for those ushered in by "positive bias" because they possess that item of identity that the engineers decide needs favouring over & above others to reach a balanced goal. Now in this case some people were quite accurately quota queens, not really worthy of the role, but a person of a particular gender, race, religion etc was needed for the numbers. Some cop the term unfairly, some were legitimately qualified for the job & hopefully were actually employed solely on that basis and not because of the quota AND their identity group.
I can point to a mining company, a big well known mining company in WA's North West. It has a positive bias employment programme. It installed a number of women in middle management & supervisor roles. One specific one covering contractor project management despite a couple of them never having ever spent a day on the tools. A person I know managed a contract job where a car park was built. 18 months later another was required to be built on an adjacent space. These were not 3 bays, these were LARGE sealed parking lots. All was going swimmingly until the lady employed under their gender quota rolled up. She saw the completed 2nd car park area and said the whole lot would have to be re-sealed. No not one, both. She said the contractor had fouled up as the freshly laid asphalt was not the same colour as the other car park. It was explained to her that the colours would even out over time because ones fresh & one's 18 months old.
She ignored this and the company instead of paying for one new car parking lot actually paid for one & then for 2 new layers on top.
The morale there is improving as the supervisor gains experience and she's had to listen to advice from experienced workers. One of the men told me "She'll be ok in time, but its cost some big bucks in mistakes til she gets time & runs on the board. She'll be fine, but she shoulda have been on the tools for a few years to learn up". He went onto say a bloke would have been sacked or promoted sideways out of the way.
So there's problems ahead for unqualified women who leap frog into positions because they're female and there's problems for properly qualified, experienced women who get the job purely on merit. Both can be fairly or unfairly labelled quota queens and we keep the discrimination alive, well and still festering.
The right solution is simple. Set the job role out regardless of gender, race, religion or any other identity parameter. Allow anyone to apply and judge them solely on their ability, qualifications and suitability for the role. Set up penalties for those who deliberately discriminate. Allow merit, irrespective of identity parameters to rule the waves.
It is interesting, gender balance seems to only be aimed at very high paying white colour jobs. MPs, Senators, Company Directors, CEOs, higher executives, management layers. I haven't seen any initiatives in play to increase the number of women in brick laying, truck driving, shearing, roof tiling, drilling operators, diesel mechanics, plumbers, dozer operators, policing. Do they need to be 50:50 or do they have an exceptional case method?
I notice there's no shaken voice outcries for more men in nursing, child care, health or teaching. I know if I get sick there's not a 10% chance the nurse is left handed, 28% chance they're born overseas, not a 18% chance they're indigenous nor 63% they're overweight nor 50% chance they're male. I don't look at the gender of the doctor, sister, nurse or other health worker. I just look for good people doing their job well.
Did you know?
In 2011 there were 257,200 nurses, 90% of them are women. Is that fair, are we lacking a specific skill set men might bring? Why has the Identity Politics/Social Engineer's barge polling in this field of employment gone missing?
Are women better at it? Now if that question were aimed at a male dominated high paying white collar field there'd be a scary outcry of bigotry & intolerance, boys club, glass ceilings yada yada.
So what do we do with Nursing.
Well we can...
a) Socially engineer nursing so a workplace has to have 50% men.
b) We can force workplaces to reach the 50% target within a few years
c) We can accept that perhaps 90% of the people who apply happen to be women & this is reflected in the actual number employed and just go with that
d) We can ascertain if anyone (of either gender) has been employed unfairly, without proper training, experience or qualifications and either get them up to speed or get them out.
e) Accept that 50:50 is nice but if it means deterring women from applying because there's a quota in place & a large number of men will be accepted, some ahead of good women possibly some of those men not good enough but get the job because of the mere accident of gender at birth...
No. The solution is simple. Merit. Equal opportunity and Merit.
Going straight to equal outcomes (quotas, social engineering) actually reduces fairness, ignores merit and squashes equal opportunity.
Child birth - Oh man does this argument get messy. I point to Julie Bishop, Michaelia Cash, Julia Gillard. They sure did rise to the top, no quotas, just merit. None of them had kids. Its their choice I don't care but fact is child birth is going to set a career back. It does mean time out of the workforce.
Now the debate is whether women are unfairly disadvantaged career wise by having a child or whether men who do not give birth should be on the same footing career wise as a person who takes 12 months off work for child birth once or several times.
Pretty clear in brick laying I'd guess. Time off work due to these things does reduce productivity to the company over time. The debate will rage despite that.
One thing is for sure...
Equal Opportunity for all is the fairest way and it is based on merit, not identity.
Equal Outcomes goes straight to the desired outcome without any fairness, merit or equality & is counter productive.
The Socialists favour the latter and many good, well meaning people who lean to the left will get swept up in that Socialist distortion.
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