We agree that quotas, women-only shortlists and any other positive action (not to be confused with positive discrimination) will work in helping to counteract past discrimination and break unhelpful stereotyping. What are government and the business community afraid of?
They rename quotas and women-only shortlists as "positive action" as a way of avoiding the term positive discrimination. They don't want to think of themselves as discriminating, when that is exactly what they are doing by imposing quotas and shortlists.
The article itself is fairly stock standard. But I was interested that so many of the Guardian's readers argued against the idea of forcing equal numbers in business (the first eleven comments were unsupportive of the quotas idea). Maybe feminism really is faltering at ground level.
The first of the pro-feminist comments was also interesting:
Blaming emancipation for women to family break ups is so absurd that you can compare it with those who believe that the end of apartheid has brought more crime in South Africa. If family does break up because women want to be treated like equal human beings, then I say to hell with familiy harmony, where women are just like kettle. Human dignity is more important than anything else in this world.
This is evidence of how seriously a political world view is taken by some people. The commenter, "Shalone," is willing to sacrifice the family if it's thought to represent an advance in equality and human dignity.
That's why it's so important for a society to think through such morally charged concepts like equality and human dignity carefully. If they are wrongly defined, then they will be applied in destructive ways, as they are by Shalone.
"That's why it's so important for a society to think through such morally charged concepts like equality and human dignity carefully."
ReplyDeleteAre these not fundamentally Christian concepts? So a feminist has to be Christian to even begin to have any sort of a basis to her thought process. Unfortunately for the feminist, Christianity in its original unadulterated form respects and promotes the complementary nature of man and woman.
I read Christianity's message as 'men and women have equal worth because they are different and one sex appreciates and values the difference of the other.
In contrast, feminism has twisted the orthodox Christian message to say 'men and women are the same because they have equal worth'.
If family does break up because women want to be treated like equal human beings, then I say to hell with familiy harmony, where women are just like kettle.
ReplyDeleteSorry but community and society (especially the traditional family) over the individual and your crusade for democracy, 'progress' and freedom. If anything your version of women where they are 'human beings' actually leads directly to unhumanity and destruction. Right is wrong and wrong is right no? Its about God, not about me or at least not me first.
Aquinas on True Freedom:
ReplyDeleteThe servitude of sin consists in being inclined to evil by a habit of sin, and the servitude of justice consists in being inclined to good by a habit of justice. And in like manner freedom from sin means not being overcome by the inclination to sin, and freedom from justice means not being prevented, out of love for justice, from doing evil. Nevertheless, since man, by his natural reason, is inclined to justice, while sin is contrary to natural reason, it follows that freedom from sin is true freedom which is united to the servitude of justice, since they both incline man to that which is becoming to him.
Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 183, a. 4
""Blaming emancipation for women to family break ups is so absurd that you can compare it with those who believe that the end of apartheid has brought more crime in South Africa.""
ReplyDeleteThe most breathtakingly stupid comment ever.
So crime just went through the roof in SA for no reason at all?
Whatever your view of aparthied SA the police force they developed was one of the most terrifyingly efficient paramilitary organisations ever.
Then the ANC took over. And crime went through the roof, for no reason at all.
The problem with these types is that family involves responsibilities and the standard feminazi considers itself immune to accountability.
ReplyDeleteBlaming emancipation for women to family break ups is so absurd that you can compare it with those who believe that the end of apartheid has brought more crime in South Africa.
ReplyDeleteDing! Tell her what she's won.
""The problem with these types is that family involves responsibilities and the standard feminazi considers itself immune to accountability.""
ReplyDeleteyou could have been nastier here and replace "Standard Feminazi" with "Average Woman".
Sentence still works...