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Dutch Science Academy Plans A Women-Only Election (sciencemag.org)
greg65535 writes: In order to reduce its gender imbalance, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam will hold special election rounds, one in 2017 and one in 2018, for which only women can be nominated.
The plan "does not come at men's expense," argues the academy's president, Jose van Dijck, because all the regular election rounds for membership will also still continue as planned. Currently 13% of the academy's 556 members are women, a slightly higher percentage than the 10% at Germany's national science academy and the 6% in the U.K. The plan was proposed by two male board members and approved by a 73% majority, though ironically, the first female president of the U.S. National Academy of Science says "I don't think we would do that. Other people might feel that women elected this way somehow did not meet the same standards as their male counterparts, or even other women elected through the regular process."
The plan "does not come at men's expense," argues the academy's president, Jose van Dijck, because all the regular election rounds for membership will also still continue as planned. Currently 13% of the academy's 556 members are women, a slightly higher percentage than the 10% at Germany's national science academy and the 6% in the U.K. The plan was proposed by two male board members and approved by a 73% majority, though ironically, the first female president of the U.S. National Academy of Science says "I don't think we would do that. Other people might feel that women elected this way somehow did not meet the same standards as their male counterparts, or even other women elected through the regular process."
Rrrriight...
So, with the equality of opportunity achieved long ago, the inequality of results is telling us something... Instead of admitting, that maybe, just maybe, there is something inherently different about the genders, these people double and triple on their dogmas.
We already have Women Grandmasters in chess — because appallingly few ladies could rise to the real GM. The Dutch will now have Women Academics. Though they wouldn't be as good as the real Academics, their titles and privileges will, no doubt, be made equally acceptable (and, perhaps, financially-rewarding) as the real thing. Not at men's expense? Indeed. At the expense of all the Dutch...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Reality has never nor will ever be a meritocracy. Sorry buddy. You are where you are in part because of your merit, and in part because of things you have no control over. Join us in reality.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Mansplaining.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Because it prevents some A-group individuals from earning their selections on merit in order to select some members from B-group just because they're B-group, whether they've truly earned their selections or not. This demonizes A-group in the eyes of B-group and infantilizes B-group in the eyes of A-group, keeping the prejudice between them inflamed. This is hypocritical since the stated goal is to eliminate this prejudice. The best way to do this is to judge on relevant attributes, ie merit. Equal opportunity does not guarantee equal outcome, especially in diverse populations.
You got it backwards. It's the people who (consciously or not) realize they don't measure up, so they muddy the waters with appeals of oppression in order to cover it up and/or get a leg up on their betters. If you're holding back better employees in order to favor other less represented groups on the basis of supposedly irrelevant attributes (like race, sex etc), you're doing your organization a disservice. You're likely leaking talent out to your competitors and creating resentment among the ones who choose to remain.