I wish one day we can do away with this sort of 'reverse' sexism, and I think that next year 100% of executive board positions should be held by capable people, regardless of their sex.
On the one hand, I feel that positive discrimination is just as bad as the other kind and that its proponents are not thinking things through as clearly as they should.
On the other hand, board members are humans too. Given the choice, and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will typically elect people much like themselves, because that's the kind of person they can understand and relate to. It's an understandable human trait but it does perpetuate the status quo.
I do wish the focus was less on gender and more on diversity in general. We have sizable ethnic minorities in the Netherlands but they are quite underrepresented in upper management and I'm not sure it can be fully explained by the socioeconomic and education gap.
The issue is at what point does the need for diversity kick in? If I start a startup right now with a friend, a person who is much like myself, very few people will criticize us for diversity issues at 2 people. But if we continue to hire friends, when does it become a diversity issue that needs addressing?
It's an arbitrary threshold, but seems like a good point in the life of a company where it transitions from a small company to a larger one, where you need to start making various informal policies and company customs and values more formal.
[1] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondernemingsraad_%28Nederland%2...
So, in theory, 50% of capable people should be women, no?
edit: If your point is that we shouldn't be positively discriminating to artificially reach equidistribution of men and women in the workplace, then I agree, but your line of argumentation is often used to imply that women are less competent.
Surely the worst impact of taking time out to have kids should be a slight delay in the career trajectory of the most talented women, not disqualification from board positions because they've now inevitably and irretrievably fallen behind their male peers.
It's only since a few years that for example technical studies try to attract more women, as these were before considered 'a man's thing'.
It's going to take a few generations for all of this to 'even out' and then we might see 50/50, but it could also result in 70/30 or 30/70, if it turns out that in a gender-neutral unbringing, one gender might be more capable of leadership than another.
Let's say instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics handicaps, we wouldn't pretend there aren't handicaps, ache same time we would not steer people but rather provide them all with the same opportunities and not encourage or discourage because of a particular handicap. Let the people, children, figure out what works and doesn't work for them, given their abilities and handicaps.
The biggest problem I see is people steering or lowlighting certain paths because of some preconceptions --a deaf person can't sing well, instead let them prove they can't sing, or that they can sing, regardless of hearing.
That sounds rather sexist lol :p j/k
instead of gender differences, we had people with different physics [sic] handicaps
That might be considered rather insulting. Having a penis, vagina, or whatever linear combination of the above isn't really comparable to being handicapped.
According to Wikipedia the average size of a board is 9.2 members, and as low as 3 members[1]. It's easy to imagine a company where the 3 most competent people all happen to be either male or female.
No, it isn't implied at all. (emphasis mine)
Statement: The phone should have a glass back. Response: The phone should be durable.
The only reasonable interpretation of the response is that it calls into question the durability of phones with glass backs. Otherwise, it is a non sequitur.
Similarly, the only reasonable interpretation of the quoted statement is that it calls into question whether a board composed of 30% women can also be 100% composed of capable people. Otherwise it makes no sense as a response.