The Feminist Grievance Lobby Vs. Male Politicians

This column by Heather Harrison, which appeared in Canada’s Vancouver Sun, actually advocates — well, just take a look…

Should political parties impose quotas in the nomination process to increase female representation?

The answer is an emphatic “Yes.”

Not only has gender equity not been achieved in Canada, but in the past 20 years the proportion of women in public office has slipped.

Today, while women constitute 52 per cent of the population, they represent less than 21 per cent of our elected officials. Canada now falls behind Iraq in the proportion of women elected.

This lack of representation ought to disturb us. According to the United Nations, a threshold of at least 30 per cent female legislators is required to ensure that public policy reflects the needs of women.

…Contrary to what is often argued, the current nomination processes do not produce the best candidates possible. Since talent, intelligence, ability and education are equally distributed between the genders, the best way to guarantee that we are not wasting our human resources is to achieve gender parity.

…Election results in Canada demonstrate that voters are more willing to elect a woman to government than political parties are to nominate them. For example, in the 2006 federal election, only 35 per cent of NDP candidates were women, yet 41 per cent of NDP candidates elected were women.

…Without targets and quotas, political parties take the path of least resistance, which virtually guarantees that men will be nominated.

Political parties in Canada, however, are unwilling to enforce quotas out of concerns about reverse discrimination. It is true that willing men may be denied the right to run for elected positions, and in a democratic society we do not want to take away any individual’s choice to run for office. However, it is important to recognize that society sometimes must choose between conflicting principles.

…So only when there is a critical mass of women elected to government, and the needs of women are being addressed by public policy, can we expect to have true equal access to the electoral process for women.

You’ve got to love the Left’s extraordinarily shallow thinking — wait, that’s not quite right — the Left’s extraordinarily shallow FEELING about diversity.

To them, diversity means that men can’t represent women, whites can’t represent blacks, etc. Only another member of whatever group that they’ve segmented you into can properly represent you.

But, what about thought? Why, that’s irrelevant compared to things like skin color and gender. To liberals, a group featuring 3 black liberal women, 3 black conservative women, and 4 black moderate women is monolithic, but a group featuring 10 women from different ethnic groups who all have the exact same liberal views is extremely diverse.

Moreover, another staggeringly ignorant facet of the liberal view on diversity is that they don’t accept that there can be any actual “diversity” that produces differences unfavorable to the groups they want to cater to (whereas differences unfavorable to groups they tend to be hostile to, white males, Christians, conservatives, etc., are ignored). For example, in her piece, Harrison notes that,

“Contrary to what is often argued, the current nomination processes do not produce the best candidates possible. Since talent, intelligence, ability and education are equally distributed between the genders, the best way to guarantee that we are not wasting our human resources is to achieve gender parity.”

Ehr…wait, we need more women in government to promote “diversity,” but apparently there are no meaningful differences between men and women that might lead to more men being elected to office? Does that really make sense? If men and women are identical in every way that matters, why do we need gender quotas? Moreover, couldn’t the differences between men and women explain why less women are in office? For example, isn’t it possible that women just aren’t, on the whole, as interested as men in politics and therefore, fewer women are interested in running for office?

Also, along those same lines, does the conclusion really make sense?

“So only when there is a critical mass of women elected to government, and the needs of women are being addressed by public policy, can we expect to have true equal access to the electoral process for women.”

If the needs of women aren’t being addressed by public policy, and women, just by virtue of being female, can better represent their own sex, how is it that men keep getting elected in a nation where women make up 50.49% of the population? Obviously, a lot of women in Canada must feel that men are adequately addressing their needs or else, they wouldn’t be voting for them.

PS: Just give ’em a few years and the Left will not only be demanding that we have gender quotas like this in America, they’ll be claiming that the Constitution requires that there be quotas and anybody who opposes them obviously hates women.

Hat tip to Small Dead Animals.

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