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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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).

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.

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

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