More women on corporate boards needed - just fire men until it's 50-50

[Metaphor]

That's the idea of the chairman of Transfield group

Men will have to be sacked from high-profile roles in business and government to make way for women to move in, according to the chairman of Transfield, Diane Smith-Gander.

A bill proposed by a group of Senate crossbenchers would make it compulsory for federal government boards to be at least 40 per cent female.

Ms Smith-Gander, who is also president of the Chief Executive Women group, said to reach that target, and an eventual bigger target of 50-50 representation of women on business boards and in senior roles, capable men would have to make way for capable women.

"When it comes to senior jobs and political appointments I think 50-50 representation is where we're heading," she said at an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch in Melbourne on Tuesday.


The Prime Minister's business advisory council had only two women and 10 men.

"If we're going to get six and six it means that four of those 10 men who are inevitably qualified and well-intentioned are going to lose their gig," she said.

"They are not going to want to lose their gig and that's a sad and sorry thing, but that's just the way it is. This is the problem we're actually dealing with. Some men are going to have to give up their hard won roles to allow equality."

...

 

[Derec]

Quotas are always a bad idea. Sweden went with the the parliament quota and the result was a lot of radical feminist nonsense.

 

[Trausti]

Couldn't the offending men just change their gender? We're told by our betters that gender is just a social construct anyway. It should be an acceptable remedy for a company called Transfield.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Couldn't the offending men just change their gender? We're told by our betters that gender is just a social construct anyway. It should be an acceptable remedy for a company called Transfield.

Or they could just say that they're transsexual. If the company asks them to prove it, they sue it into bankruptcy for discrimination.

 

[Axulus]

How many men are on the board of Chief Executive Women Group? Does the proposal require the organization to fire people like her if it's not 50/50?

 

[Trausti]

How many men are on the board of Chief Executive Women Group? Does the proposal require the organization to fire people like her if it's not 50/50?

To be fair, this is not about fairness.

 

[Metaphor]

Couldn't the offending men just change their gender? We're told by our betters that gender is just a social construct anyway. It should be an acceptable remedy for a company called Transfield.

It depends on whether you're a transphobic feminist (like Germaine 'big, smelly vagina' Greer and the 'womyn-born-womyn' movement) or you're a pro-trans feminist (but it would really help if you're a trans woman of colour).

 

[bigfield]

What a fucktard The chairman of Transfield has a very unbalanced sense of justice.

 

[Toni]

That's the idea of the chairman of Transfield group

Men will have to be sacked from high-profile roles in business and government to make way for women to move in, according to the chairman of Transfield, Diane Smith-Gander.

A bill proposed by a group of Senate crossbenchers would make it compulsory for federal government boards to be at least 40 per cent female.

Ms Smith-Gander, who is also president of the Chief Executive Women group, said to reach that target, and an eventual bigger target of 50-50 representation of women on business boards and in senior roles, capable men would have to make way for capable women.

"When it comes to senior jobs and political appointments I think 50-50 representation is where we're heading," she said at an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch in Melbourne on Tuesday.


The Prime Minister's business advisory council had only two women and 10 men.

"If we're going to get six and six it means that four of those 10 men who are inevitably qualified and well-intentioned are going to lose their gig," she said.

"They are not going to want to lose their gig and that's a sad and sorry thing, but that's just the way it is. This is the problem we're actually dealing with. Some men are going to have to give up their hard won roles to allow equality."

...

Shouldn't it be 51% female?

Seems totally fair to me.

 

[ksen]

That's the idea of the chairman of Transfield group

Men will have to be sacked from high-profile roles in business and government to make way for women to move in, according to the chairman of Transfield, Diane Smith-Gander.

A bill proposed by a group of Senate crossbenchers would make it compulsory for federal government boards to be at least 40 per cent female.

Ms Smith-Gander, who is also president of the Chief Executive Women group, said to reach that target, and an eventual bigger target of 50-50 representation of women on business boards and in senior roles, capable men would have to make way for capable women.

"When it comes to senior jobs and political appointments I think 50-50 representation is where we're heading," she said at an Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch in Melbourne on Tuesday.


The Prime Minister's business advisory council had only two women and 10 men.

"If we're going to get six and six it means that four of those 10 men who are inevitably qualified and well-intentioned are going to lose their gig," she said.

"They are not going to want to lose their gig and that's a sad and sorry thing, but that's just the way it is. This is the problem we're actually dealing with. Some men are going to have to give up their hard won roles to allow equality."

...

good

 

[Metaphor]

That's the idea of the chairman of Transfield group

Shouldn't it be 51% female?

Seems totally fair to me.

Why not 100%? After all, there was a time in the early 20th century when 100% of people on 100% of boards were men. The scorecard isn't even remotely even yet, amiright?

 

[Toni]

Shouldn't it be 51% female?

Seems totally fair to me.

Why not 100%? After all, there was a time in the early 20th century when 100% of people on 100% of boards were men. The scorecard isn't even remotely even yet, amiright?

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

 

[Metaphor]

Why not 100%? After all, there was a time in the early 20th century when 100% of people on 100% of boards were men. The scorecard isn't even remotely even yet, amiright?

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

Oh, I see.

Can you explain to me how 51% of corporate board membership is a 'fair share'? I have an open mind.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why not 100%? After all, there was a time in the early 20th century when 100% of people on 100% of boards were men. The scorecard isn't even remotely even yet, amiright?

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

Fair share of rights, not of responsibilities.

The "wage gap" is because of mommy track. You don't fix that by punishing business for supposed discrimination, you fix that by working towards equality in child rearing.

 

[bigfield]

Shouldn't it be 51% female?

Seems totally fair to me.

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

'Fair share' does not equate to 51% (or 50%) representation in an occupation.

If 80% of the people qualified to work in an occupation were women then their 'fair share' would be 80% (or even higher if women within the occupation were on average more qualified than men).

Since it is obvious that different occupations attract/admit different types of people, the onus is on you to show that women's fair share in an occupation is 51% and not 80%, 20% or any other figure.

 

[Toni]

I believe that the population is more accurately expressed as 51% female, 49% male*, which was the basis for my joke. I could be wrong about the proportions but it's not 50/50 exactly. I certainly was wrong about how obvious the joke was.


*I just did what I should have done in the first place: I looked it up. In Australia, the total portion of males to females is 0.95.* So, you will need at some multiple of 20 to make that work out right, with 11 of the 20 being women and the remaining 9 can be male.

Oh, bollocks. I was looking at Austria and not Australia. In Australia, it's 1.0. So she was right: 50:50, then.


- - - Updated - - -

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

Fair share of rights, not of responsibilities.

The "wage gap" is because of mommy track. You don't fix that by punishing business for supposed discrimination, you fix that by working towards equality in child rearing.

Tell that to Jennifer Lawrence.

That last sentence wasn't actually a joke. Not totally anyways. I think I'd pay some money to see that. And her response.

 

[bigfield]

I believe that the population is more accurately expressed as 51% female, 49% male, which was the basis for my joke. I could be wrong about the proportions but it's not 50/50 exactly. I certainly was wrong about how obvious the joke was.

I knew that you were referring to population stats.

However I didn't realise you were joking about 'fair' and 'fair share'.

Poe's Law strikes again.

 

[thebeave]

Why not 100%? After all, there was a time in the early 20th century when 100% of people on 100% of boards were men. The scorecard isn't even remotely even yet, amiright?

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

What do you think should be done about the overabundance of men, compared to women, doing the "dirty jobs" necessary to society? Garbage collecting, coal mining, steel workers, sanitation workers, linemen (fixing downed power lines in the middle of the night in a rainstorm). Do you want your fair share of those? What sort of action should be taken to make it 50/50?

 

[laughing dog]

Women only want their fair share. It is impossible to redress past wrongs fully. We'll be satisfied with justice in the present and to forgive past wrongs.

Fair share of rights, not of responsibilities.

The "wage gap" is because of mommy track. You don't fix that by punishing business for supposed discrimination, you fix that by working towards equality in child rearing.

The discussion is about membership on boards, so why are you babbling about "wage gaps"?

 

[Metaphor]

Oh, bollocks. I was looking at Austria and not Australia. In Australia, it's 1.0. So she was right: 50:50, then.

No. I understood you were referring to the proportion of women in the general population as the basis for your 51%.

What I want to know is, why on earth you'd think that the proportion of women in the general population is some kind of 'fair share' for the proportion of women on boards?

Tell that to Jennifer Lawrence.

That last sentence wasn't actually a joke. Not totally anyways. I think I'd pay some money to see that. And her response.

Are you suggesting Jennifer Lawrence is being paid less than the market value for her services?

Why haven't movie studios bid the cost of her services up, then?