Political correctness runs amok as Irish Govt insists 30 per cent of political candidates be women

Posted on Friday, May 27, 2011 at 10:14 PM

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In Ireland political correctness has just run amok.

The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has announced he will institute a rule that 30 per cent of all election candidates must be women.

Parties who refuse to follow that edict will lose half of their state funding.

If you had a prize for the stupidest idea from Ireland this would win.

What next that 30 per cent of midwives must be men?

Or perhaps 30 per cent of miners must be women?

Gender gaps cannot be solved by edicts.

The notion that perfectly capable men must stand aside while a token woman must be chosen goes against the very essence of democracy,

Imagine the outrage if a similar law was introduced into teaching where the vast majority are women?

It would be wrong there, and it is wrong in any professions.

Women themselves should reject this. It means their accomplishments will be devalued rather than appreciated.

Two of the best politicians of the modern era were Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese who were both elected president.

Mary Harney was elected Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health.

She was a very talented and tough politician too who got nothing handed to her.

That's is the way it should be in life. There are no shortcuts and attempts to create them inevitably fail.

The incompetent men who ran Ireland into the ground in the past decade should be replaced,

But not by token women who will fail to earn any respect if they have not come up the hard and fair way.

In America, women like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin take their share of abuse and condescension.

But imagine what that abuse would be like if they had gotten into power because of a quota system?

This is really a very stupid idea by this new Irish government showing its first signs of badly over-reaching.

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plebis01 | May 28, 2011, 12:05 PM EDT

I actually laughed when I read the headline!! I thought it was a spoof, not realizing the land of my ancestors could seriously consider this sort of stupidity. This sort of pathetic feel-good nonsense MUST have been imported from California. Absolutely hilarious!! Thanks for the chuckle!! And I thought we were silly here in the U.S.....this takes the cake! LOL! Take my obama - please!

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adrienrain | May 28, 2011, 11:45 AM EDT

Those who resent the inclusion of women to the modest measure of just 30% of candidates (not elected official, but candidates!) really should press for a new sort of political leadership, based entirely on such skills as boxing and/or weightlifting. I assure you that if you can create a method of choosing leadership through a series of boxing matches, without respect for weight categories or gender, the percentage of women at the leadership level will diminish greatly, even from its currently very small numbers. It would also create a very vigorous, masculine style of government, for those who worry about such things................

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adrienrain | May 28, 2011, 11:37 AM EDT

Good idea. But deciding the gender designation of CANDIDATES will not ensure equal representation for women, which is what we need. For most of recorded human history, women had no legally mandated representation. In other words, we had whatever we could get through whatever means we were in a position to use - and I believe that fact was a major contributor to all the perceived character faults of the female sex. The laws prevailing during those long, male-dominated millennia reflect the absence of a woman's point of view; we were infantilized, demonized, stripped of most "human" rights. We did what we could to manipulate the situation to get what we could from it for ourselves and for our daughters. Too often we regarded other women not as fellow victims of suppression, but as rivals for the crumbs of worldly goods and power we might obtain. Respect was not a given; any woman who achieved artistic or intellectual excellence was easily dismissed as, well, masculine, unfeminine, unnatural, and probably too ugly to matter to men. The evidence of that history indicates that women are not, and possibly can't be, adequately represented by the opposite sex. When Western women, after heroic efforts, achieved the vote, we essentially reshaped ourselves to fit into the established male model. Consequently we have moral monsters like Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Maggie Thatcher, who seem to have gotten where they are by proving themselves as ready to use heartless violence as men. What if, women had their own 'house' in parliament, equal to the male house? As with the US bicameral system, cooperation and harmonization of the legislation produced by both houses would be achieved through negotiation. I believe that the priorities of the women legislators would be slightly different. And this is a voice that is still suppressed. After all men don't like being called - ummm, sorry but there's no ladylike way to say this - pussies, do they?

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colkelley | May 28, 2011, 11:03 AM EDT

Political correctness and "diversity" have not connection to logic or reality and to expect it means that Patrick Roberts will always be astounded.

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Searlit | May 28, 2011, 10:51 AM EDT

eiriamach is right. Mr. Roberts should consider the fact that many of these male politicians are in their positions, simply due to their belonging to the good old boys club - not their qualifications, moral or reasoning abilities.

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ellenfromcork | May 28, 2011, 10:32 AM EDT

Ah, Cillowen,you've seen the light. We couldn't do any worse than the men.

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cillowen | May 28, 2011, 10:24 AM EDT

why not settle 100% and see what a kock-up will ensue.

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ellenfromcork | May 28, 2011, 10:06 AM EDT

It's absolutely wrong that 30% of political candidates should be women, it should be 50%!

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eiriamach | May 28, 2011, 07:08 AM EDT

You can call it "political correctness," but we know that it is a struggle only for equal treatment. As Martin Luther King wrote, "Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." And in economic hard times, there's often a resurgence of the "my group only" mentality, an immoral form of selfishness and exclusion. Wresting control from male parties that are determined to keep it for themselves will not be easy, and women are entitled to the assistance of law in the task because equality of esteem is of value to the entire state, not only to the victims of discrimination. Roberts writes about winning respect, "But not by token women who will fail to earn any respect if they have not come up the hard and fair way." "Hard and fair" too often means "when we're ready to allow you." The examples cited in the article show that exclusion is not about lack of qualifications: Hanley, McAleese, etc. are more than qualified for their positions. It's discrimination, whether deliberate or the result of unthinking identification of males with males. In the US, we apply affirmative action--no quotas--only an insistence that wherever qualified women and minorities exist, the pool of candidates must include them. In politics, we must let the voters should decide, not the 'ole boys' club!

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