RE: The Irish just went full retard - Legalizing gender discrimination
January 16, 2017 at 12:09 pm
(January 16, 2017 at 11:52 am)TheRealJoeFish Wrote: First off... yes. Yes you are. And that's why they say only after a merit analysis has determined the candidates are of equal merit will priority be given to the female candidate.
Let's suppose, as an example, that there's a 10-person management board, and that they're trying to fill a vacancy. 8 of the 9 people on the board already are men. If the best candidate is a man, they'll hire him and 9 of the 10 will be men. If the best candidate is a woman, they'll hire her and 8 of the 10 will be men. If there are two candidates that are deemed to be equal, then being underrepresented breaks the tie, and they hire the woman.
So, what they're really saying is "we want to be fair to all of the candidates, and evaluate them on their merits. If that doesn't get us a clear winner, then we'll also factor in the value of having a diverse committee, and that will favor the underrepresented candidate." Sounds all right to me.
Not only that, but this is for the Irish Civil Service, and it's not "legalizing" anything, it's a new departmental policy. Nothing in the article states that this is a new law, or that companies are suddenly required to do this. If it were, I'd be against it.
Also, while I'm fine with the idea behind this policy, the wording of it comes across as pro-female rather than pro-equality. One would hope that the policy also applies to men who are applying for positions that are dominated by females, if that situation ever came up.
