Gender Quota
Dec 28, 2003
Starting on January 1st, public and private companies in Sweden (with more than ten employees) are obliged to include numbers on the gender division of their board of directors, in their annual report. That's no big deal, in my humble opinion.
What is a big deal though, is that there are feminist sentiments among Sweden's biggest political party which, in my opinion, aren't particularly "feminist" per se, and might just be more harmful to the feminist movement than they are benign.
Feminism, is, of course, the strive to make the woman equal to the man in society, in all respects. Everybody I've ever met and/or talked to agrees that this is self-evident and obvious; women have the right to not be discriminated against, and they have the right to equal salary and equal rights. However, more and more people, both women and men, are increasingly hesitant to call themselves "feminists", due to aggressive sentiments which are being propagated as part of the feminist movement.
One of these aggressive sentiments, which I think does feminism more harm than good, is the proposition that the Swedish paid maternity leave should be compulsorily split down the middle for the mother and the father, meaning that the couple may not divide the maternity leave for themselves. Half of it should be the father's, half of it the mother's. If the father, or the mother, can't or won't use the period he or she is entitled to, for whatever reasons, the period, and the monetary subsidy that comes with it, is null and void and cannot be used by the other parent.
Many men, and even more women, are against this proposition. They think, as do I, that the couple in question should be able to decide for themselves how to divide the paid maternity leave.
Another proposition is, as I was hinting at, the idea that corporate boards of directors should compulsorily be comprised of equal amounts of women, and equal amounts of men.
With ideas this aggressive being propagated as part of the feminist movement, it's no wonder that more and more men, and women, are hesitant to call themselves "feminists". Due to these aggressive sentiments, as far as I can tell, it's becoming more and more common in Sweden that people write off what feminism has become as a literal pipe dream, propagated by feminists who have become high on the acceptance of their ideology.
Personally, I'm more of a humanist than a feminist.
Comments
Having equal numbers of each gender has potential to work, and also potential to be very bad.
What happens if you run out of people on each side with the right skills, what do you do then?
I believe that it should just be that the person with the right skills gets the job, gender is irrelevent unless for some reason it hinders the way you work =]
Comment by cyberhill at 09:11, 29 Dec, 2003 #
I think the employer shouldn't think about what gender the person is of, just like the employer shouldn't think about what race or religion the person belongs to, either.
Comment by Tomas at 15:10, 29 Dec, 2003 #
Germaine Greer (staunch feminist) made a fool of herself on Celebrity Mastermind last night. She is so aggressive in her stance, and so blinkered by her beliefs, that she doesn't even see that she has become obsolete.
One remark that she totally failed to respond intelligently to: "When will you cease to be known as Germaine Greer the feminist, and instead be simply Germaine Greer the writer?" Her answer: "Probably never." (Or words to those effect).
The most hilarious part though was when she got a simple question wrong about her own country, oh, and when she pretended that she'd never heard of "The Great Gatsby."
Comment by Chris at 08:50, 01 Jan, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.