Votes for women!

Campaigners have called on the Government to mark the 90th anniversary of universal women’s suffrage by requiring all political parties to publish data on the proportion of women among their parliamentary and local government candidates. Will they also demand that half of all primary teachers and social workers be male?

Aberdeenshire OK. Now force nurses and hairdressers to publish data on how many men and women there are in their workforce and demand they end this inequality now!

The Balvenie I work in software development and have been lambasted for inequality because there are a lot more developers who are male. There is a simple reason for this, not many females apply for development roles compared to males. Last time I was recruiting about 3 females applied against 50+ males. When interviewing etc, I do not take gender into account, I recruit and offer salaries based on experience, skills and attitude. Gender is irrelevant, but because there are more males that apply for the roles, there are more males in the roles.

British and in Scotland The House of Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee has recommended fining political parties who fail to ensure that 45% of their general election candidates are female. This comes from a committee that comprises 8 female members and 3 male members. Political candidates should always be selected on their ability and experience, not because of which gender they are.

Not a Lemming “Early progress in boosting gender equality in politics has stalled” No it hasn’t, there’s been a backlash more like, brought about by such undemocratic absurdities as all-women shortlists and the like.

Jock Tamson As far as I know far fewer women are interested in going into politics, therefore if you have quotas etc then all things being equal you’ll have less able candidates and politicans elected, as you’re selecting from an arbitrary (talent ignored) smaller pool. The problem here is surely how to get more able women interested in politics.

Common Sensei and emotional struggle with success.