Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Holyrood, the Scottish Government, GENDER BALANCED her cabinet.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/21/nicola-sturgeon-scottish-cabinet-equal-gender-balance#commentsAnnouncing the full lineup at Bute House in Edinburgh on Friday lunchtime, Sturgeon said her cabinet was “a clear demonstration that this government will work hard in all areas to promote women, to create gender equality and it sends out a strong message that the business of redressing the gender balance in public life starts right here in government”. Of Sturgeon’s cabinet of nine secretaries as well as herself, five are women.
Sturgeon began her reshuffle by tweeting a selfie with John Swinney, her new deputy first minister. Swinney, who had been widely tipped for the role, is one of Holyrood’s most experienced frontbenchers and has previously served as finance minister for seven years, a position he will continue to hold.
I think this is a good idea.
(I don't know whether or not you guys knew this. It's from November, so I'm sorry if you already knew).
Anyway. I didn't know whether or not to post this as it seems likely to draw the obvious arguments.... but I thought it would be a good idea to show that this kind of thing can in fact be done.
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I mean, it's simply not possible that the women in the cabinet might actually be as good as the men.
She got loads of e-mails from people saying "how are we making sure these women got there on merit?"
She said she didn't receive ANY e-mails asking whether any of the MEN got into the cabinet on merit.
Having seen how politics works in my country, it's clear that there are cliques in all departments of the machinery of state, and I think that's just the way it works in politics in general. Alex Salmond was a fantastic guy to take us as close as he did towards independence, but he had gone as far as he could go. The SNP now needs to establish itself as a well-oiled governing machine, and, to be charitable, there was a bit of an old boys club in the way. They were called the "79" group and included Alex Salmond himself and numerous pals and their job is done now, damned good job they did, too. I think Alex himself would be more than happy to say he'd done his work and it was someone else's turn.
And IF there's going to be a new sheriff and posse in town, well.
My belief is that a nation that has a population spread like this:
....REALLY ought to have as many women as men at the top.
After all, if there wasn't something in the way of that gender balance happening naturally, how come it always seems to be us guys at the top? If there's no sexism and no difference in capacity to do the job, why isn't it in balance already, EVERYWHERE?
Having worked in an NHS territorial board at the actual Board level that was also gender balanced (though not deliberately) I can make this ANECDOTAL observation: once the balance is acheived, it has this mysterious tendency to stay roughly that way allllll by itself. This leads me to suspect that groups that have a gendered bias tend to stay that way simply because it's easier to form cliques with members of one's own gender. Once the clique is formed of both genders, the clique seems to actively dislike returning to to gendered imbalance.
I don't know if she'll adopt the policies you describe. I'd think it unlikely.
Also, she's not talking about private employers at all. If you read the article, you'll see that her focus is on public life. I don't know why you ask whether she'd be OK with private companies advertising for candidates of a specific gender. These things are already covered here:
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1814
I think what this boils down to is "what's more important, the quota or the quality of the person".
I think we need to remember that cabinet ministers are shuffled in and out of place with less of a focus on how good they are at the specifics of the area they're assigned to (John Swinney (SNP) is now deputy first minister, he used to be finance, but he could have come from any area). Nicola herself was originally Health minister and it's not common in British politics for someone to move from Health to the top spot. She got Health after Alex Salmond got the top spot ahead of her at the last round.
When you reach the top tier in politics, talent and qualification starts to come secondary to personal qualities. Leadership in that area is about taking responsibility for a vision for the whole country and this is best served by people with strong principles.
Once you get to being considered for the cabinet the whole "lesser" or "more" thing starts to make less sense, because there's no boss other than First Minister. It's not so much about "how good" but "good at doing WHAT", you'll be looking for people with their own ideas and their own style. I mean, you're talking about people who will have been in charge of entire areas of the public good like defense or social care, these are huuuuuuge projects, and any sense of an overall measurement of how well qualified they are for a cabinet position is going to be overshadowed by WHAT they bring to the cabinet in terms of their own vision, which is necessarily a quantifiable thing you can measure easily.
Say you've got a cabinet position coming up - Minister for Education. Once you've got to the stage where's recruiting at that level it's not necessarily going to be the person most experience in education who gets it. "Qualification" will also include a good instinct for managing human systems in general, and you'll also be factoring in the current lay of the land, maybe your nation's education strategy is currently good at schools but bad at universities, if that's the case you'd be less interested in somebody good at social infrastructure management and more interested in someone who's good at the internal investment angle. Or maybe you find someone with a completely new vision all of their own about how the education system as a whole could be changed for the better.
How would you decide who's "qualified" until they've actually gotten themselves in harness?
My point is... the successful candidate will be changing the landscape themselves. It's not like hiring someone to fit into a machine like a cog in a wheel, which is when qualification is important, in that case you need someone to do a specific job well. At the top tier, you need someone with self-management and self-knowledge that changes the machine, and it's very difficult to say who is or isn't qualified for that. You don't need someone who is good at the job, you need someone who is good at finding out and telling everyone what the job is actually supposed to be.
So, in the specific case of ministerial cabinet positions, I'm very much in favour of gender quotas because I think that that whole layer of human systems is generally vulnerable to cliques, particularly Old Boys Clubs.
I think if I were Nicola and one of her gals left and there was a guy who was OBVIOUSLY the only possible choice through a combination of circumstances and personal qualities then I suppose I probably would go for the guy, it's just that I don't think that obviousness is ever going to actually rear it's head. There are so many factors to take into consideration in such appointments that you could say an approach of maintaining gender balance IS a factor in managing the machine, in other words, being female is a qualification in itself as in there is such a thing as a female perspective and if there's an overall direction to be taken into account in your policy development and that policy direction includes equality then that should include equality at the highest level.
In short, I don't think there's really enough to distinguish between qualification at that level of candidacy.
I think women should be allowed in at the top to make the whole thing more girl-friendly, basically.
You know. The entire country.
I do not know that I would make the same claim about other kinds of work.
As for Barack, I don't think I would say he is sexist for not adopting such a quota but I also don't think there are as many women in American politics anyway.
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That chart above details the number of Scottish MPs who are female in 2010 and 2015.
If you check out the Centre for American Women in Politics...
http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/levels_of_office/Current_Numbers.php
Most of the percentages are in the low 20s.
In Congress, which has 535 seats, 104 are held by women. 76 of those are Dems. Barack might have to push fairly hard to get a 50/50 set of appointments, and I'm sure the pushback in the US would be...noticeable.
But I'm sure there are other committees he could start doing this with.
