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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

It depends on what you mean. About 25 years ago in Sweden the leading party the Social Democrats instituted a policy championed by feminists that meant that every other elected position should be occupied by a woman. Research has shown that that policy has led to more qualified candidates across the political spectrum.

There is also evidence from Sweden that attitudes towards rape and sexual assault has changed due to government policies. E.g questions such as "Is it ok to have sex with a girl who is too drunk to speak?" are answered differently today than 20 years ago.

Edit: The research is here: https://wwwsnsse.cdn.triggerfish.cloud/uploads/2017/05/sns-a... More qualified means higher level of education and more years of experience. Same metrics as used in most workplaces.

Also, I wonder why it only took someone five minutes to ask me for a source, but no one has yet to ask tenpies for a source... Some facts are easier to believe than others?

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If affirmative action has such clear evidence that it works, why do not the Swedish government implement it as a general rule for all their employees? Sweden has a very high gender segregation rate, around 85% of people that has a full time employment do so in a gender segregated profession, and government work places tend to rank at the very top as the most gender segregated work places.

If it leads to more qualified employees, which I assume would correlates with their suitability, it would save money and reduce mistakes in key areas like healthcare which then would result in saved lives. A national policy would be a win-win for everyone.

A while back I looked if any municipality had a general hireing policy in order to combat gender segregation. So far I have yet to find one that even mention gender segregation as something to consider when hiring new people. There does not even seem to be one that something as vague as a goal to reduce gender segregation.

An internal policy for the list of candidates on their ballot, stating that every other candidate must be a woman.

This is not the same as the list of who eventually gets elected of course, as the probability of getting elected decreases the further down the list you go. Also the policy appears to apply per ballot, and since there are something like 30 regions with (possibly) independent ballots, there is still some room to stack one way or the other. In the event, last election they got a pretty even split: 48 vs 52.

Party list are one of the reasons that PR is not the silver bullet for democracy

For ballots for municipal elections, the candidate's order rarely changes due to person voting. Effectively, the order set by the party is the order people are elected in, barring exceptional circumstances (someone being very popular or unpopular).

It wasn't until 2018 that nonconsensual sex was classed as rape in Sweden (1). Which is somewhat surprising that it took that long given the political climate you outline.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden

>Research has shown...more qualified candidates...

First, can you link a source? Second, what does "more qualified" mean in the context of politicians? They are selected by popularity in the majority; capabilities are downstream from likeability. This, one could argue that "more qualified" could be construed as "excellent hair" or "large breasts." This is not to say that the job of political official does not have constraints or optimums, but the method of job placement is the issue in terms of my question.

The actual term used is "kompetent", and they talk about the general competency of the individual, and assume this correlates with their suitability as politicians. They then show that their measure of competency correlates positively with municipalities having better economy and better perceived service by the citizens. They also get more votes and things like that. The measure is basically if the person makes more than average within their peer group.

Report is here: https://www.sns.se/aktuellt/sns-analys-nr-41-konskvotering-k...

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