Gender discrimination in the workplace is counterproductive

Re: Police hold women-only recruitment night — March 21

More women are showing an interest in areas of work which have traditionally been predominantly done by men (and vice versa, to some extent). There is no defensible reason for one’s gender to be a disqualifying factor for work in any vocation, be it in health care, construction, education, law enforcement, or you name it. Gender bias or barriers have no place anywhere, and certainly not in the world of employment.

However, is reverse discrimination on the basis of gender justified in attempting to interest more women in policing, for example? I think not. Must there be a balance in the comparative gender numbers in any line of work? I think not. Should employers be permitted to set gender quotas for their workforce? Of course not.

When either women or men are more or less interested in pursuing a certain kind of work, then so be it, even if that results in a gender imbalance in that occupation. Artificially striving to get more males or females working in a particular occupation, inevitably involves the disqualification of some persons only because of their gender. That is not just discrimination, it also smacks of social engineering, neither of which ought to exist in a free and democratic society.

If we want to rid employment practices of gender bias, then the use of gender discrimination is counterproductive. The objective must be unbiased access to employment, irrespective of the applicant’s gender. Beyond that, there should be no quotas, and the comparative numbers between the genders in a workforce will be what they will be, in relation to the available qualified applicants.

Ed Grootenboer

Waterloo