It could be that the assumption that all things being fair and equal should lead to proportional representation is a fundamentally flawed one. Or it could be reasonable, I don't know.
But especially with gender the vast body of research suggests that the disproportionate gender balance in favour of men is down to a number of clear factors that include institutional sexism and structures/cultures that disadvantage women and also sexism and stereotypes in terms of attitudes that men and women hold about women. Ad astra per aspera
I was a physical chemist but left due to the sexism and poor attitudes towards disability. Discrimination has been a very real and detrimental thing for me, which drives my career direction now.
In terms of career choices ie to do the kind of thing you do, you need to have access to being educated to get qualified to do that. I wanted to do electronics at school and was not allowed to. The only ones who were able to get a qualification in electronics were all boys. It wasn't something I could take up as a hobby at home because I had no money to buy equipment with. Ad astra per aspera
I do sympathize, but do you think people can be made rational, tolerant, civil, nice! by passing laws? Need I explain how an immigrant feels when he realizes people behave nice and welcoming because of political correctness and laws? How the friendly wrappings soon looks more like a wall, when it dawns on him that he can rarely get to the "real" people behind the comfy smiles. I suspect the disabled have their share of this too.
As to work, I can only tell my own experience, where women were always amongst the best students and employees, cherished, wanted, but never more than one or two. The last example I witnessed was a girl of about 30 who was viewed for responsibility positions and instead took advantage of the first opportunity to pass over to the Quality department. Just before, the other girl left for the States - to study languages. Oh well. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Frankly, I would rather be patronised and have false niceness come my way because people know that the law will not allow them to overtly discriminate - than to be completely denied access in the first place. Which is what used to happen.
The more you see people like me going about and getting on with life and achieving things, the more the stereotypes get broken down and the more used to diversity that people get. You need legislation to set out what is totally unacceptable. After time that becomes a new norm, previously excluded groups have better access and they become visible around society. And that begins the process of changing attitudes. Ad astra per aspera
Personally I was never very interested in this and never knew any one disabled, so I guess my interrogations must have sounded pretty naive. Anyway. Pondering on this as I was reading you, I was thinking laws against discrimination are no doubt useful - what I'm actually uncomfortable with, is pointing to this or that category. I would be more for anti-discrimination laws, period - not gender, race, or any other category targeting law. Or even better, fairness laws.
For instance regarding work: job profiles precisely indicating what is expected of the person, and what competences are wanted, in a standardized form (maybe imposed by law). The kind of proof (diplomas, references, proof of knowledge) expected from the candidate for each point of competence. Resumes without any kind of unnecessary information (age, gender, address, photo - unless precisely required, with a reason for it). The final choice to be motivated, motivation sent to the last ring of candidates. Anyone feeling anything unfair (be it for the name, address, gender, race, disability, or anything else), will be able to compare his/her own profile with the chosen one, and complain to some kind of state employment agency office if he/she feels motivation is not satisfactory. An investigation can take place then. In short, a way to address unfair treatment in general, both upon hiring and firing, rather than activist laws and a favourable ear to woman- or skin colour- discrimination complaint.
I don't think it ok to give automatic assumption of truthfulness and righteousness to anyone managing to present himself in a vulnerable position (or frame someone else as oppressor) - be it immigrants against locals, women against men, poor against rich, children against adults and so on. We are all humans in the end, and the second categories rarely have as purpose in life to oppress the first ones. It should always go both ways, opposing and mounting categories against one another is never a solution, even if the concrete situation seems to justify it at a given moment.
Maybe the French did get it right about race vs citizenship, in the end :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The reason that the legislative framework has arisen in the way that it has with separate Acts and Regulations for race, gender, disability etc is because these are the groups in society who need that extra protection because there is a long history of them being persecuted, marginalised and discriminated against. This covers things like employment but also education and access to goods and services.
There are clear problems with the framework as it exists though. I don't know if I could really say that they are activist laws because they certainly aren't set out the way activists would want them. The UK has 50+ pieces of equality legislation including amendments etc etc and you need a team of lawyers to understand it. No individual could exercise their right to justice without the help of an expert.
The laws actually are hugely precise. You must have comparators to prove discrimination (ie a person who does not come from your 'group' but otherwise has similar circumstances to you and you have been treated unfavourably compared to them) and it is not easy to prove a case of discrimination. Far from it being an automatic assumption that someone claiming to be discriminated against, has. It is difficult to win a case.
To take your proposal, almost everybody who didn't get a job could attempt to exercise a right to complain they'd been treated unfairly on any ground they wished to choose. Messy! Ad astra per aspera
A point worth making is that for sexual orientation, age and religion, the UK legislation has been created to comply with European Directives, thus it's forced a particular kind of legal framework around equality.
What does the French legislation based on these same EU directives look like? Ad astra per aspera
They were alas supported and nearly imposed by activist groups which (and I say this with more sadness than anger) often acted ideologically rather than pragmatically, with an appalling lack of nuance (be it only for the many women who actually like to be mothers and devote to their house, instead of assumming an "anti-male" position), never politically representative, but always speaking for the silent majority.
In Wales: "No individual could exercise their right to justice without the help of an expert."
It's true. And, alas!, this is the case with all judicial matters. It became (and for a long time) a thing reserved to professionals, even as the right of the individual to represent himself is maintained....
As to the "automatic assumption", I see it day in day out in society, and I also see leftwing activist French judges. Maybe Britain is more pragmatic and less ideological about all this.
As for my proposal, the core is in the standardised job ad and CV, and written motivation - nothing empirical in advertising a job, accepting/rejecting a resume, making a final choice. The system can hardly be abused by candidates if they must explain on precisely which point were better yet excluded, and did not get satisfactory (ie, to the point) explanation. Those people here that fakely change their address out of the ill-famed neighbourhoods to get an interview. One could make such a complaint when his resume is again and again fitting, and he suspects the address is to blame for the rejection. Employers already, knowing written motivation is required, will hesitate to reject. They'll need to invent reasons, which is more difficult and an aggravating circumstance. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
There are some older brands of feminism that were anti-male and if you look at Helen's diary on Stonewall we've mentioned that kind of essentialist approach there, but that is not the current way of thinking. Feminists like myself want choice and fairness. So if women want to be able to stay at home and look after their family, they should be able to - many get forced back to work because they cannot afford to stay at home. Equally there are women who want to go back to work but can't because of sexism and appalling costs of childcare if they have no family support.
Of course activists supported anything that would bring new rights for groups that were discriminated against. Activists cannot impose any law if the Government really doesn't want to take something forward on it. It was activism that created the environment for new legislation to be seen as being needed. We are currently negotiating hard on the new Equality Act but no way will we get all the things we want from it - we might get some improvements though and that is as much as we can hope to do.
In the UK there are certain things that cannot be disclosed to the panel when they are assessing job applications - such as age, gender, race etc. I don't think that the issue around addresses is as big in the UK, there's no significant campaign around this, but in the same way that the UK anonymises many aspects of application forms, so too could the French.
What you are pointing out is a current gap in the legislation you have at the moment. So that could be extended to include particular things. But if you left it open to make a complaint on any ground, it would be tough to ever win a case - as it is already employers can provide any 'reason' they like for not giving a person a job and as I said before, making a case for direct discrimination is immensely difficult unless you can show a pattern of the employer not hiring from that particular group.
I'm not really getting what your gripe is with 'activists' - these are the people and groups who push for social change, and true not everyone will agree with their agenda but were it not for them and the change they've created around attitudes to gender and disability, I wouldn't have had an education, I wouldn't have a job and I'd probably have been institutionalised. It isn't about making people be one thing as defined by activist groups, it's about giving people the choice to be and do anything they want to. Ad astra per aspera
Also, when you mention the appalling cost of childcare, I'd say this isn't unfair unfairness, if you like, but life that is sometimes unfair. Men also sometimes make the choice of a warmy job in order to focus on their family life. (let alone that after what I hear from my married-with-children friends, I lean to be more and more against having children and leaving them to outside childcare).
My 'gripe' as you call it is not so much with activists (who are certainly useful and must be a bit extreme and noisy by definition, or else no one pays attention - which is quite sad per se, society-wise) - but with activist laws. Governments may like to appear progressist and modern when a thin layer of bourgeois intelligentsia promotes activist laws while having no idea of principles of law or terrain situations, but are thinking with their heart - at best (if not with an ideological agenda in mind). And even activist groups must remain on their on level I think, and not view themselves as apostles of the new progressive society; keep a bit of distance from politics and political philosophy, which is quite a different thing. I support people fighting poverty and exclusion, but much less so when they get political, culpabilize the entire society and do so continuously and insistently whenever media exposure. I can be sensible to inequality matters, I can ask myself questions when everything becomes a matter of 'civil rights' (and that's a big issue regarding citizenship, if we were to return to the original topic of this thread : ), and I can resent being told what to think, feel or do, and even call that political correctness
(I can quote the case of the virgin muslim bride in France, a classical matter of civil rights conflicting with cultural rights, and where political correctness dictated that the annulment of the marriage be, well, annulled, even if agreeing with the law and with both spouses' will, because it could have been interpreted as favouring supposedly backwarded traditions (the muslim ones) against 'civil rights' (we still don't know which ones exactly).
So well. To sum it up, I guess I can say I'm all for choice and fairness, as long as it stays that and nothing more. :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Also, when you mention the appalling cost of childcare, I'd say this isn't unfair unfairness, if you like, but life that is sometimes unfair.
Proportionally women bear the brunt of caring responsibilities (be that by choice or not). Lone parent households are more likely to be headed by women. So who is more likely to be affected by the high costs of childcare? Women.
This isn't just a case of 'that's life' but an example of the way that the structure of society discriminates against women and reduces their access to participating in wider society. It also limits the jobs they can take and thus the amount they can earn and their ability to exercise the choice and control they wish to have over their own lives. If the state offered free childcare and if organisations were more willing to allow job shares and part time hours (not just for low skilled, low-paid jobs) to support women with working if they want to and also bringing up children, then many barriers that women face would be hugely reduced.
ValentinD:
I support people fighting poverty and exclusion, but much less so when they get political
But you have to get political to raise awareness of the issues and to create change. You have to target the people who have the power to create change - the politicians. It is not equivalent to culpabilizing all society but it points out that the way that society is structured is the root of a number of social problems and inequality.
Quota laws in some cases have proved to be a necessary evil because otherwise women continue to be marginalized. I'd far rather we didn't need quotas but experience shows that when we don't have them, nobody is trying to get women involved or they are actively sidelining the ones that do try to get involved. It is so important for society that we have a good gender balance at the senior decision making levels.
This isn't about bringing down the ones who are not part of the disadvantaged groups, but it is about addressing the huge inequalities that prevent certain groups from having full access and participating in society. It's about trying to get a balance back. Not every method or intervention has worked but the principle is there of trying to make things fair for the people who are historically at a disadvantage. Ad astra per aspera
As I said before, it is not ok to establish policies function of who is "more likely" or "proportionally" this or that. What about the others, the minority who don't fit in, we ignore them for the sake of our little social engineering seance? I'm not mocking, I'm speaking in principle: this can be ok for an academic debate - certainly not when we speak policies and laws. Second, your analysis should continue: why is it that women are more likely to be lonely parents? More likely to divorce; or remain with their out-of-wedlock child; or the father doesn't take responsibility; divorce judges almost always decide the child should stay with the mother. The basic reason, in the end, is that women are the mothers and often the best fit to care about children. This is not about society structure, but about built-in to the woman structure - you can call it biologic determinism, although I think it's more than that.
You could say nature (or God) discriminated against women. Men have their share of particularities to deal with btw, even though not as visible as motherhood.
And here we get to the basic confusion about civil rights: people are supposed to be equal in rights, but they're never equal in qualities. We're different - in race, gender, intellectual capacity, skills and talents, family and environment and so on. Each of these qualities amounts in the end to certain "discriminations". Blacks are considered less beautiful (by blacks too, btw - esthetical sense is absolute, not relative), men less sensitive, the intellectually-challenged (practically a disability) will "suffer" all their life - lower level jobs, lower income, less opportunities. It's normal, and it's life. We can't and shouldn't try to smooth out such differences - just take care about life-threatening ones. Laws and policies should not deal with discrepancies inherent to the person, but consider the person neutrally.
Women having a children are aware of the consequences (or should be educated to be): a lot of time and energy to be spent with them (they'll be most likely to be the better at that) and a lot of satsifaction, of a different kind than a career though. And believe me I know men who put their career on hold for their family. Childcare replacing parents is not ok. Parenthood is a choice, a natural one too, and it should never be regarded as a weight, ever. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
This means you're left with a broad-brush politics of generalities which ignores individuality, almost by definition, and it also a similarly absolute notion of 'equality' to the table.
I think the only way to untangle the knot is to split things differently - into a politics of relationship, where relationship tone defines the experience.
Both political and personal relationships live on a spectrum with exploitation and authoritarian abuse at one extreme and mutually beneficial consideration and symbiosis at the other.
The dynamics of authoritarian abuse are well understood - they rely on dogma more than reality, on strict power hierarchies maintained by psychological coercion and physical and emotional violence, and on the creation of a 'good' in-group and a 'bad' out-group.
What's not so understood is that just being 'progressive' doesn't make authoritarianism impossible. Altermeyer found that after fundamenalists, feminists were the next most authoritarian group in his study.
What's also not so understood, because it happens so rarely, is what consideration and symbiosis would look like if they were considered the most important core political value in every area of life.
We don't have any historical experience of a society which works like that, so it's difficult to imagine. And while it would be naive to pretend that aggression and dominance fights are going to disappear altogether, having symbiosis as a core moral foundation might go some way to making them less influential and destructive than they are today.
Considering relationships instead sounds interesting, but I don't see how it can lead to policies without playing the big brother (or the central commitee). I tend to think the society of individuals is already split between politics of symbiosis (amounting sometimes to political correctness) and sheer individualism (in reality egocentrism). Again, sociologically, this sounds quite interesting. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Organizations are not willing because it's not good for their business - which isn't greed or insensitivity, but their very purpose of existence. Businesses are not there (and are not competent) to do social work for the society - and it often happens that most jobs except low level ones aren't fit to a part-time execution.
"that society is structured is the root of a number of social problems and inequality."
Society is quite a complicate thing... that's how social engineering begins. I think we should be very careful about assertions that we would see the society from high enough to be able to make this kind of diagnosis.
Quota laws in some cases have proved to be a necessary evil because otherwise women continue to be marginalized. I know, and I know it's good to have the right balance. But I told you before, we can't know whether there is discrimination, lack of competence, lack of interest, biological determination or some other factor. It's quite easy to blame it on discrimination (as someone pointed before, CEO jobs often go on a club basis)
"This isn't about bringing down the ones who are not part of the disadvantaged groups"
This will however be a collateral effect. Say I'm an MP and someone in my county comes to complain that he was by far the most competent and best prepared, yet he lost the job to someone else because she was a woman (or an indian). This put him for 6 more months on jobsearch (that he did not deserve), his family in serious geopardy, ànd costed the state unemployment money. All this, to implement the little social engineering called positive-discrimination. Well you go explain that to him. If even ten people like this exist, it means you made a law for a minority, that serves some and destroys others. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
