3 thoughts on “5050 Book Launch”

1. Hi,

   In response to your commentary: two reasons –

   1) Cohort effects. Incumbent politicians are more likely to win elections all things considered.

   2) Risk. The only appreciable difference between men and women from a v.v.v.large body of research is the male appetite for risk exceeds that of women’s (possibly to a stupid sense, but that’s another debate). Look at any riot and its more likely that you’ll find the demographics are heavily shifted towards men, mostly young. Beaer in mind, I’m not sugggesting that this is and aspirational characteristic. What I am saying is that by introducing quotas we are ignoring the underlying problems of politics as a career. A successful campaign costs roughly 25-30k (See Marsh and Benoit). The outlay is huge. The reward is relatively minor. Lose the election and the candidate is both down a lot of money AND suffered public humiliation. Politics is not attractive enough for sensible people and Iinclude women in this category. It takes a lunatic to get into politcs. Now unfortunately, by introducing quotas, we are not achieving anything other than reducing the standard of the average candidate.

   To solve this problem and the general problems relating to candidate quality we need to reduce the risks associated with becoming a candidate.

   KF

2. Hi Kevin,

   Thanks for your response. I would ask you this – why do you think the Dail is made up of 85% male/15% female TDs? If it was simply based on merit don’t you think that the ratio would be different? The absence of ‘women’ as a group is a problem. But is not just a problem for women – it is a problem for society. A truly representative democracy should be reflective of the population it seeks to represent. That is not the same as saying that ‘women’ all think the same or that a man can’t represent the views of some women. The politics of presence is important both for gender and ethnic representation. The political parties are the gate keepers to who goes on the ballot paper. This legislation simply asks them to pay attention to the dearth of female candidates.

   Colette

3. Just some thoughts on gender quotas. Women have the same rights under the law as men. They can run for office just the same as men do and the number of females entitled to vote in almost all European countries slightly outnumbers the male electorate.

   The feminists now demand that we scrap what little is left of our democracy by overriding the will of the people (more of whom are female than male) and imposing gender quotas. I know that many women will vote for a female candidate, her gender being prioritised over any policies she might have. Female politicians often use their gender to their advantage by trying to associate themselves with ‘women’s issues’ at election time. Mary Robinson was a classic example. I believe she was by far the best President we ever had but I don’t doubt that her gender helped to get her elected and she was quite open in her admission of that. I am sure there are also men who allow the gender of the candidate to influence their choices but they are far fewer in number. On balance I would say that if you wanted to make a career in politics, being female would probably give you a slight advantage over male candidates all other things being equal.

   I admired the feminist campaigners of Robinson’s generation. They were true civil rights crusaders who are owed a great debt by the people of this country of both sexes. I just wish that having won their equality, the feminists would have the maturity to embrace it and compete on an equal basis just like everyone else.

   Of course feminists have every right to try to encourage more women to choose politics as a career, but gender quotas are simply another form of discrimination. It’s almost as though feminists are actually suggesting that women are not capable of competing on a level playing field.

   As a man, I don’t believe that to be true, any more than I believe that women automatically make better nurses than men. Maybe we should have gender quotas in favour of men in our health service; or better still, why not introduce gender quotas in our housing authorities to ensure that as many women as men end up homeless on our streets. To believe that gender quotas are a good thing in one area, the logic must be taken to its conclusion. Furthermore, in the interest of fairness we would have to ensure that quotas were introduced to make certain that precisely the right percentage of people of African and Asian and European origin would be represented in every field. Let’s not forget gay people and disabled people and of course all of these groups would have to be further sub-divided by gender just to make sure everything is completely equal. We could someday envisage a situation where a lesbian of African extraction, applying for a job for which she is highly qualified being told – ‘sorry but we have already filled our quota of African lesbians. If you were straight, Asian or had a disability we could probably consider you though.’ If that all sounds ridiculously silly, not to mention ludicrously unfair to everyone involved; then that’s because it is.

   Quotas are always wrong. They are based on labelling people according to who they are rather than what they can do and that is patronising in the extreme. Quotas by definition, discriminate against people based on their race, or sex or health or orientation and that makes them negative and divisive and to be resisted at all costs.

   Kevin.