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Comment by prower | Hacker News Reader

Is the "Minister for women" a charge common in other countries too? It's the first time I've heard of it and, quite honestly, it sounds pretty weird (albeit I undertand why it's there).

I guess some push is needed for this kind of change, as the system is somehow natually fit for status quo.

In a perfect world, gender in these matters wouldn't even be part of the discussion at all. These are intellectual, not physical demanding jobs, so the only discriminination should be for one's preparations and ideas anyway.

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In my opinion it is against our basic law even if the BVG disagreed. The lesson here is just that you can discriminate, you just need to have the correct reason.

I expected more from my country, honestly.

They evaded the rules by making it a gender quota, so it would also apply to males if the situation would be reversed, the guardian produced fake news again. But to me these rules are still discrimination and arbitrary and could be applied to any intrinsic property or even belief systems.

Still, it also implicates that there is a fundamental difference between men and women.

> These are intellectual, not physical demanding jobs

The women in question faked her PhD and consequentially lost it, although I agree that it isn't a measurement of competence. Suggesting quotas is though. You cannot get authority by suing for your position, on the contrary.

I always find this problem very hard to parse.

You're right that it's an arbitrary change, but on the other hand, every change is arbitrary whem you want to modify an established system.

Of course the question here is if this is the morally correct way of doing things.

Personally, this all sounds weird to me: it's like enforcing a rule where, from now on, at least 25% of your workforce must be muslim. Why should one's religion be of any concern in all this?

Same thing for gender.

If the problem is that the positions are being filled in a shady or non-meritocratic way, that's the problem to address. But I'm not sure this is what it's been talked about here.

Giffey is not _just_ the "Minister for women", she is in charge of the "Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth".

Thanks for clarification :) It indeed sounded strange in the article

now we just need to find all intellectual jobs and legislate them similarly.

at least i think there's too few female network engineers.

On the other hand, this rises the usual (but still interesting) questions like: what happens if you don't have the right female talent at the moment, but still need to fill quotas? Is it ethical to have a spot reserved regardless of merit? Why is gender equality pushed mostly (only?) for pleasant managerial roles?

Why only "intellectual jobs"?

Because equality only goes one way!

Having mandatory quotas is a terrible idea, as they undermine them people they are aimed to help.

It's interesting how people always claim there are too few women in high paying intellectual jobs, rather than low paying manual jobs. When have you ever heard that there are too few female miners, highway maintenance workers etc?

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