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Rightly so, I'm all for equality but this isn't equality, it's a very misguided attempt at equality that actually does more harm than good by becoming the very thing that it's trying not to be. i.e. biased and excluding. You can't on the one hand complain about something then on the other apply the same behaviour no matter how noble your intentions are.

Best person for the job and all that.

It's wholly counterproductive too and it winds up my wife way more than me. She's done pretty well in her career and it's been through hard work and intelligence (Posting anonymously so she can't quote me on those :-) )

Yet there are always going to be those who will think she got where she is through "positive discrimination".

Interestingly both the best and worst managers I have had have been female. I expect it's coincidence.

My best managers also have been female and the worst have also been female.

The great female managers were great leaders and also had real empathy when any family crisis arouse (death of family and child issues). They brought the best out of the team and made sure we all got the training we needed to do our jobs well, took all our holidays, always defended the team from unwarranted criticism and always communicated well with the team.

One instant of the worst was when my original manager who built the whole UK operation from scratch was replaced for being a man by a US company (who replaced all men at that particular position with women worldwide) when they took over the company.

The new manager got the job due to who they knew in the US and was completely useless as well as being paid twice as much as the previous manager.

They often turned up in the afternoon, after going out for a massive bender the night before on expenses claiming it was part of building up business with prospective clients (usually their friends), Within three months the whole sales funnel had fallen apart and they were charging more on expenses than the company was actually making in the UK..

Needless to say within 6 months the whole UK operation was shutdown due to mounting losses everyone was sacked but they were retained for another year :o

Within a year of the UK shutdown the whole company was gone after burning through tens of millions of investors dollars, I've never seen a good company destroyed so quickly before or after :(

Agreed , Jordan Peterson various discussions on equality bring to light the impossibility of creating a truly equitable solution. How does one determine where the "divisions" end. Do we create equal divisions by colour, height, weight, sex, intellect, number of children, birth sex, identified sex, hair colour, number of missing teeth etc..

Agreed with the OP, a job should simply be given to whoever has the correct qualifications and is actually capable of doing the job. Anything else will simply lead to a general decline for the employer. Equality would run the business into the ground.... How can we advance if jobs based on criteria other than merit..

Not a bad post, but have a downvote for Jordan Peterson. There are far, far better avenues to understanding the modern world.

Ooh the Peterson clones are going to downvote me! Sort of proving what a noxious arsehole the man is.

Not really. Kindergarten logic might get you far in some fields, but it won't get you far in El Reg's comments section.

Jordan Peterson is toxic and so is anyone who likes him

See? Thumbs down but nobody is prepared to explain why he's worthwhile.

Peterson doesn't describe the contemporary world, he simply describes mankind has it has been for hundreds if not thoudans of years of years. This is why he so often cites the great philosophers, as their wisdom has stood the trials of time.

Read a little bit of Neitzsche and you will understand that what you call modern is not modern at all. You are simply repeating the past.

The main problem with Peterson is that he opines with equally self assured authority about subjects that are both within and without his expertise. He's nearly always wrong (or at least grossly oversimplifying) about biology, for instance, but he talks about it as if he is just as much an expert as he is in psychology.

I'm not sure we can take the writings of Nietsche as "wisdom that has stood the test of time" - many of his philosophical positions are nowhere near uncontroversial enough to be the subject of consensus, as far as I can see. But I am much less sure of my ground here, as my expertise is rather more in biology than in philosophy.

Good point, but you were slightly negative about Peterson - expect downvotes!

for being an idiot

I agree with this. Speaking to my wife (who is a university senior lecturer herself), she is proud that she has her current job purely on merit, not just "because she's female". If companies want to improve their gender balance - and they should, the solution is to provide more opportunities for women so that you have more women able to take up these roles and to compete. Simply excluding men from the application process is not the solution.

In my own role, I've hired a number of people over the years. Given that this is for IT technician stuff, applicants are often quite heavily male dominated, however I've hired a number of women over the past few years. Thing is, they were all hired because they were the best candidates at the time. That means they can hold their own in the role and do just as good a job as everyone else in my team, that means that the team works well together and the female engineers aren't seen to be there just as a box-ticking exercise.

Exactly. When the university says "Our overall aim is unaltered: we want to reach thirty percent female faculty within five years.", how many of the women hired are now going to wonder if they were hired for their ability, of just because of their sex?

Being told that exclusion based on gender is discriminatory. Next thing they'll be told is that basing it on race is also discriminatory. You'd think a uni would know better.

How to do it the right way :D

There was an effort to teach more men how to cook at Foothill Jr. College in Los Altos, California about three and a half decades ago. The feminists went berserk. Their theme was "men already have all the opportunities!" It was funny, in a sad kind of way.

I'm sure this sounded a lot more interesting in your head.

Then again, Mr IR35, everything you post probably does

Is there also positive discrimination to achieve an even men/women balance in:

* janitors, gardeners

* security staff

* porters

* buildings/site maintenance

No doubt the uni will drop the wording that says women only can apply from the adverts, but that doesn't mean that any of the men who now apply are going to get the job, as its easy enough to just cherry pick female applicants to offer the job to, no matter how many males apply.

I know because i have been on interview panels before where the management were wanting to hire a female or minority to tick boxes. So lots of good candidates were just never going to get the position because of their gender or skin colour didn't fit in what they needed to meet their 'equal opportunities' quota.

But you can still support them in these totally non-discriminatory ways

"More and better internal career development and coaching programs for women

Putting in place resources and opportunities specifically for women, such as reserving training and research money for female scientists, as a way to make jobs more attractive to women. "

Internal career and development programs can have just as much gender bias as recruitment programs though? Development programs are not a unique object inside an organisation either, you can have male focused programs and female focused programs simultaneously, and use the one specific to the gender identity of the person you are dealing with.

I appreciate the point you believe you are making, but it is not a bad thing to have resources tailored for specific members of the workforce, whose needs differ from other members of the workforce. Whether that difference is gender based, cultural, or physical (people with mobility issues for instance) any diverse workforce will have employees with differing needs or requirements, and the employer should be willing to meet those needs and requirements with tailored solutions where possible. At least in my opinion, anyway.

Disclaimer: I work for an employer whose workforce is dominantly (>75%) female and as a male, I do not feel misrepresented or a minority in the workforce. This is often not the case in the reversed situation, where it should absolutely be possible to have the "minority" gender feel included and represented.

Not really - you are still a minority, just a reasonably sizable one...

Discrimination follows

AI triple blind recruiting??

If the only way to ensure women get employed is to cheat, then they are saying women are not good enough to get the position any other way. Which is also saying "it doesn't matter if you can't really do the job, we will employ you anyway". This is not fair on the women who do get their positions on merit, since it calls into doubt the selection processes used by every organisation and not just the ones dumb enough to advertise the fact they are fixing the results.

And what are they going to do if I decide that I want to "identify as a woman"? Where will that leave them, and how many pieces of "equality" legislation is that going to fall foul of??