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
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