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Comment by mynameismon | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, the fact that we are celebrating (not that we shouldn't) the election of the first female majority parliament shows why gender equality is still not achieved

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You have a very broken idea (just like most equality supporters) about what gender equality is. It should be equal opportunity not equal outcome. The usual argument about having a parliament divided 50/50 is that the population is divided roughly 50/50. But everybody always somehow forgets that even women voters aren't voting for women...

There is a difference between "parliament should always be 50/50" and "parliament has always (until today) skewed in one direction, that suggests a problem".

So if women voters for the most part have thought that a man is the better candidate there is a problem? Maybe i am just misunderstanding and basing my opinion on how election system works in my country which i think is gender equal - anyone can make a party (obviously you have to be a citizen) as long as you get the minimum amount of party members, you can run in the election and the election itself is based on votes per party + votes for each candidate within that party (+/- system). So if a party gets 5 seats in the parliament, the top most "upvoted" candidates get those seats. There is nothing preventing women from creating a party which would appease to the women voters and running for election. That is equality. But nowadays it is easier to blame sexism and whatnot if the result is something you don't like (women not voting for the women centric party).

> So if women voters for the most part have thought that a man is the better candidate there is a problem?

Why even bring up women voters? Are you suggesting the 50/50 split is now because women voters have female candates to vote for?

The electorate chose a 50/50 parliament. We have no idea whether it was mostly men who voted for women or whatever it was.

If, in a vacuum, men and women are equally viable as members of parliament, then a 50/50 split in parliament should be about the average in a society without bias on the part of the system or the people.

Except the world does not operate in only black and white - not everybody goes to vote, not everybody becomes a politician, not everybody has the same political views etc. This can be seen in gender equality/feminist "success" countries where when people are more or less free to choose, the distribution is not 50/50 and some groups of people simply don't want to agree to the fact that men and women can be different and want different things in life.

Right, it should be "men and women were equally likely to seek political office and ..." to account for the sexes seeming to prefer different occupations.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my comment. In any case, I think there are many countries where the lower number of women in parliament is largely/partially due to systemic/social factors, as opposed to biological factors.

EDIT: To support my position, here are some non-biological factors which affect the proportion of female politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_government#Challenges...

But I don’t know if any broad studies that would indicate that being a politician is something that suits males on some biological level. If anything politics seems like a very female endeavor(stereotypically), since you’re organizing a community and highly communicating complex sociological ideals with peers of various education levels.

That’s extremely wishy washy. Women may be more socially oriented than men when it comes to work, for example, but the nature of this social disposition and inclination is different than the kind that is fruitful in politics. The motive and the end matter.

Are you assuming that women can’t participate in patriarchy? Or that people never vote against their own interest?

Neither of which is true. The implicit and explicit biases are common to both/all genders.

> So if women voters for the most part have thought that a man is the better candidate there is a problem?

I mean, that depends to some extent on the source of that thinking.

What I am missing is, that women do actually get pregnant at times. And when they do, they have rightfully other things on their mind. Now becoming a father is surely something that got my mind busy, too, but I was still able to give 100% the whole time, without vomitting on the toilet, or having to spend the day in bed. Meaning I could have done a political campaign in that time, but my female partner physically could have not.

So demanding 50/50 either requires even more effort from the women, meaning giving birth to children AND pursue 100% (political) career - or it means, lowering standards because of sex? Meaning voting for someone because of sex and not because of competence. (sounds like sexism, no?)

In other words, it is complicated and I try to for myself to just focus on the competence on the person and not their gender (or race,...).

Iceland's current parliament has an average age of 49. https://data.ipu.org/content/iceland?chamber_id=13425

The average age of childbirth in Iceland is 31. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00017/defa...

So I think there is plenty of time for women to get pregnant and then get elected.

There is something called "opportunity cost". Small kids demand more, than just physical inconvenience during pregnancy. And small kids usually require their mother. (I cannot breast feed for example and mother milk is still quite superior to the industrial milk, but it is about more than that)

So all of it is time and energy, that could not be invested into a political career.

Have a baby and be out of the game for some time and you will have to struggle to catch up to those, who did not have a baby.

So I find it not surprising, that we do not have 50/50 for leadership positions, as they usually require intense effort, before reaching that. (networking, building skills, reputation ...)

So should we find ways, to support women more, to not "just be mothers", but also going other ways? Absolutely. But maybe we can start with not degrading women who are "just mothers" - as being a good mum, can be a 24h job. So I think the idea that women should be mothers AND have successful careers (and preferable both at once), just creates uncecessary pressure and stress. And the 50/50 idea creates that, in my opinion.

At some point every well intentioned movement becomes a caricature of its former self, it seems.

I’m not sure we can separate the two so cleanly, equality of opportunity comes along with all of a child’s inputs and external forces as they’re growing. Equality of opportunity would absolutely mean not funneling them in one direction or another based on something like their sex, gender, or whatever.

A 50/50 outcome might be a flawed measurement of something like equality of opportunity if it were the only measurement we were using, but I don’t think it is the only thing we see.

When we consider the not too distant past, this ratio indicates we are probably doing something correctly to mitigate those external forces that used to funnel people into (or away from) certain professions purely because of something like which sex they were born.

We don’t yet have an agreed upon and accurate way to measure whether or not we are indeed offering equality of opportunity, and until we do, seeing something like this at least indicates we’re much closer than we were 20, 30, or 100 years ago.

> equality of opportunity comes along with all of a child’s inputs and external forces as they’re growing

This reminds me of the nature vs nurture debates.

"A child’s inputs and external forces" is a funny name to call their parents and teachers. Because it's mostly their parents and teachers that are going to have an influence in their education. And if they do spend more time, money and effort to boost the education of their children, then it's a family and teacher merit. It's not unfair when their children do better.

An even more important part which is not mentioned is that opportunity is in large part the result of hard work. A child makes her own opportunities by intelligence, passion and effort.

> "A child’s inputs and external forces" is a funny name to call their parents and teachers.

I used that phrase specifically because a person has far more influences in their life than just their parents or teachers. The things that limit or expand a person’s choices are far more than just teachers or family life. Are parents and teacher influences important? Sure. But they are absolutely not the only influences. And neither of those are what I mean when I say external forces.

I’m not sure I have a lot of disagreement with most of the other things you say. Of course a person should make their own opportunities from hard work, passion, and effort.

However (to tie this to the comment I initially replied to) if equality of opportunity is the goal, then we need to make sure we reward actual hard work, not only family multipliers. It’s not like we have to look far to see how many lazy rich kids have countless opportunities and how many hard working poor people struggle yet are incredibly limited in their choices.

Maximizing individual agency means we give everyone who wants to pursue an educational field or career a fair shot at it regardless of who their family is or regardless of what sex they’re born as or their race or whatever. Do they have to work hard? Of course.

Should a lazy rich kid whose family “…spend more time, money and effort to boost the education of their children…” have more opportunities because of “family merit” than the poor kid who worked their ass off and did well? Absolutely not. And the reverse is true as well.

We should be maximizing individual agency and maximizing individual choice and neither of those means we have to abandon hard work. But it does mean we have to knock down arbitrary barriers.

Equal opportunity would mean there would be a roughly 50/50 split. Unless one subscribes to some notion that biology would make women desire the positions (politics, management, ...) less.

Isn’t this what the evidence suggests though?

https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/23655

Which didn't stop men to dominate all positions of power for centuries. Women weren't even allowed to vote, something that changed very recently in some countries (looking at you, Swiss). So yeah, equality here means to have the same right to he overspreading that men have.

Its not the first female majority parliament in the world, its the first female majority parliament in europe.

Right now, there are five countries where there is a female majority: Rwanda(61%), Cuba(53%), Nicaragua(51%), Mexico(50%) and United Arabian Emirates(50%).

Cuba is an undemocratic authoritarian one-party state where elections are not free and no opposition is permitted - but hey, they have women in parliament so let's celebrate them?

> gender equality is still not achieved

What would that equality look like when there are more genders than just two? [0]

Not trying to be facetious here, I'm seriously interested how the "gender-fluid movement" sees the future on these kinds of issues?

[0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-gender-id...

Approximately equal representation of the populace, probably. Perhaps, rounding up to at least one representive.

It is the opposite, gender equality needs to have been achieved decades ago to get equal gender ratios in leadership positions since it takes so long to build a career and rise to the top. What we see today mirrors the social dynamics that existed in the 80's. What we will see in the coming decades will be the social dynamics of the 90's, then 00's to the 10's etc.

Super pleased about this. Has it ever happened before anywhere? Certainly not that I’ve seen. Less pleased with some of the comments on here.

“ The 33 women elected to Alþingi for the coming four years amount to 52 percent of members, making Iceland the first country in Europe to have a female majority in parliament. Five other countries in the world share this accolade: Rwanda (61 percent), Cuba (53 percent), Nicaragua (51 percent), and Mexico and the United Arab Emirates (50 percent).” https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/09/26/katrin-to-lead-female-ma...

Rwanda elects 30% of its parliament on a separate women-only list.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Rwanda

Isn’t it that there is a 30% minimum quota?

My random googling out of interest took me here: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/8/feature-rwand...

I doubt it makes much difference to how Rwanda is governed.

Google who their president is.

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