Idiocy on stilts. The Guardian article cites three blithering idiots:
- Jess Phillips MP
- Clare McNeil, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)
- Marianne Overton, vice-chair of the Local Government Association
Extracts:
A gender imbalance across local government has been exposed in a damning report that suggests councils – especially the new mayoral authorities – are lagging behind even Westminster in taking steps to improve equality.
The study, published on Sunday by the Institute for Public Policy Research, reveals that only 33% of councillors and 17% of council leaders in England are women, something the thinktank suggests is causing a “democratic deficit”.
In the new mayoral combined authority boards, only 4% of constituent members – those with full voting rights – are women and all six bodies are led by men. The West Midlands, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the Liverpool City Region and the West of England authorities are all without any female constituent members…
Women make up only 38% of Labour party members and only 36% of Conservative party members.
“It cannot be right in 2017 that there are barely any women represented in the leadership of our newest democratic institutions, the combined authorities,” said Clare McNeil, IPPR associate director. [J4MB: What imperious sexist nonsense. If on the basis of merit barely any women (or none) are represented, so be it.] “Efforts made to address this in Greater Manchester and elsewhere are to be welcomed, but radical change is needed if devolution is to be about bringing power to the people, rather than consolidating it among white middle-aged men.” [J4MB emphasis: ‘white middle-aged men’ – racist, ageist, sexist.]…
The IPPR wants leaders of political parties to commit to achieving a 50:50 balance in male-female party membership. [J4MB: Even though far more men than women have a strong interest in politics. Yes, that makes sense.] And it wants authorities to make a commitment that at least 45% of those on combined authority boards are women. [J4MB: An increase from the current 4%.] If significant progress towards greater gender balance in local government and combined authorities cannot be achieved through these changes, then it says legislation should be introduced requiring elected positions to be filled equally by genders, or with a split of 60:40 or better.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Freud said women lack social interests (yes, he did get some things right). Imposing quotas by fiat will lead to the same problems imposed by quotas everywhere: mediocrities will be elected/appointed, leading to resentment, poor governance (in this case) or reduced economic performance (in the case of companies).
The fundamental notion behind this is that men and women are the same, and there is a ton of evidence that that is false.
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Let’s understand that the destruction of basic education for boys, and higher education for young men is no accident.
It is deliberate and planned
And for what purpose one may ask?
For the purpose of gathering power by means other than those of election and democracy.
The technique is to identify a weakness and exploit it.
What IS a weakness of democracy?
That any person or group of persons may freely campaign for something else, ideally hiding behind a shield of misrepresentation as another thing.
Who is the weakest and most vulnerable of society’s groups to target?
Women, by virtue of their susceptibility to emotion and hysteria, and evolved selection by desire for resources.
Hysteria btw, means “ungovernable emotional excess”, from the Greek word ‘hysterika’ meaning (to have a) womb, or uterus.
My point being that this alleged and manufactured ‘imbalance’ referred to in the item I am responding to will be put ‘right’ soon enough anyway by means of this very device, sould it be sucessful.
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Spare me.
The position is totally reversed among the staff where there is a very high proportion of women due to the requirement to allow flexible and part time working, and all the other family friendly/work-life balance nonsense these uncommitted “workers” require.
They might also like to look at the age pattern as well – most councillors are elderly if only because of the time commitment. In the authority I work for the most committed members are retired professional men, and that tends to be the norm.
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Precisely for the vast majority of Councillors it is a voluntary job done “part time” . So unlike MPs its not a paid “career”. In a way this actually helps democracy as it means there can be a lot of councillors with all sorts of backgrounds. 80 for my city for instance. But the diversity fundamentally relies on who wants to be one and if they can get a vote.
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‘If significant progress … cannot be achieved … legislation should be introduced requiring elected positions to be filled equally by genders, or with a split of 60:40 or better.‘
The more we learn of the thinking of women in positions of power and influence the more we can see why women have hitherto been excluded from them. What lunacy will they propose should voters not return the desired proportion of correctly genitally equipped top-jobbers?
I have made it a point not to vote for anyone who is not a middle-aged ‘white’ male for some time past. A spoiled ballot paper is often my only option.
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I live in Ireland where political parties are expected to have a minimum of 30% (which will be raised to 40% in due course) of their candidates female when general elections are being held.
This quota system came into effect with last year’s Irish General Election in which, in similar fashion to you, I deliberately didn’t vote for any female candidates representing those parties operating the quota (which means all the main political parties).
It has to be said that the Irish electoral system makes it easier to avoid voting for a particular candidate without the need to spoil one’s ballot paper than is possible in the UK.
With reference to the question you ask in the second paragraph of your post, an interesting point re last year’s Irish General Election is that while approximately 30% of the candidates were female, as required under the quota, 22% of those elected to the national parliament were.
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It’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that Jess Phillips’s ideal would be a House of Commons and local authorities that would be not only 50% (or, preferably, 50%+) female, but bodies in which all these female members would share her own feminist views regardless of their nominal party affiliations and would willingly vote across party lines for all feminist-style measures favoured by Ms Phillips and her kind.
As for the “damning” report quoted in the ‘Guardian’, an interesting aspect of it is its copious use of the term “only”, ranging from “only” 4% (an admittedly low-sounding figure) to “only” 38% (which definitely isn’t – except to the likes of Ms Phillips).
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4% might be a low figure, but it’s still not indicative of a problem, so no ‘solution’ is required. Maybe there’s something about those (voluntary) roles which disincline women from applying.
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