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MaikuTachibana t1_itoxkcp wrote

Reply to comment by LordSevolox in Women will have equal share of seats in [New Zealand] Parliament with Soraya Peke-Mason's swearing-in by giblefog

In a completely equal and meritocratic society, for sure, but we don't live in either so we use affirmative action to combat it. By all definitions it's discriminatory but I'd argue it's a necessary evil, once we've dispelled the myth about women in the workplace being someway inferior to men based on nothing but their sexual organs or gender, there will be no more need for quotas and affirmative action, but until then it's necessary to manually match the numbers because if we didn't then they'd forever be skewed

Honestly the best way to dispel prejudice is exposure and normality, so it's 100% necessary for now to have affirmative action

As a side note, if you personally believe that meritocracy exists in the UK/NZ then I suppose my argument doesn't hold much weight but I honestly believe that it doesn't for a multitude of reasons which I'd be happy to elaborate on if you're interested to hear my thoughts

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sfurbo t1_itpi3h3 wrote

> By all definitions it's discriminatory but I'd argue it's a necessary evil, once we've dispelled the myth about women in the workplace being someway inferior to men based on nothing but their sexual organs or gender, there will be no more need for quotas and affirmative action, but until then it's necessary to manually match the numbers because if we didn't then they'd forever be skewed > > Honestly the best way to dispel prejudice is exposure and normality, so it's 100% necessary for now to have affirmative action

That only works if the quotas are applied on the level where the prejudice works. If there are fewer women in a particular role because prejudice keeps women from getting the qualifications for that role, quotas will ensure that the women who get the role will, on average, be less competent than the men - simply because selecting the same number from a smaller pool necessitates selecting less competent people. This will only reinforce the prejudice.

So careful analysis of the cause of the skewedness is needed before quotas are a good idea.

I don't know whether they have done that analysis here, so this isn't directly a criticism of this policy, but it seems like the necessary analysis is rarely done before quotas are enacted.

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anto2554 t1_itpfbt5 wrote

Do you also want race quotas or only gender quotas?

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