Mandated parity isn't the way. Elections should be meritocratic.
What if a society had such innate bias (not saying this one does or doesn't) that true meritocracy was impossible?
In a vacuum yeah but we don't live in one.
Considerations would have to be made for the potential blowback and political damage which might be caused by forcing parity. You might lose more ground than you expect you're gaining with a move like this.
Federal Constitutional Court rejecting this law in 3... 2... 1...
So politically talented women just don't exist then? That's obviously not true and I know you would agree with me on that, but it's the implication of what you're saying here, is it not? Surely I don't have to explain that they won't just pick a bunch of random women to be on their party lists now? Because there are plenty of politically talented women?
It will still be meritocratic, but half of the people on the list will have to be women from now on.
they should be but they aren't.
Huh? The implication is that you shouldn't go into any election (or selection process period) with the mindset that "I must have 25% options from group A no matter what, 25% options from group B, no matter what" and so on.
The actual solution to the problem of gender bias in elections is to keep the candidates anonymous, requiring them to run a platform without an identity attached to it. Voters then pick the platform they like the best.
nobody ever would make elections work like that
oh sorry I didn't understand your post correctly
but anyway, that system might mitigate the gender biases voters might have, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to better representation of women in parliament, would it? It also isn't an option for countries that have party-list proportional representation electoral systems
Then fix the underlying problem instead of putting a band-aid over the issue.
What is fixing the underlying problem, according to you?
education, and then letting the changes propagate from there. might take a bit more time but it would be a more stable and natural.
Education about underlying biases or something like that, you mean?
By the way, who's to say that this rule will just be band-aid? I think after a while it will have fixed the underlying issue by making 50% representation of women in parliament 'normal'
Quotas do not make quality. That's just a simple fact that applies to anything that requires a specific number of a specific type of person.
How shit does the German government have to go and for how long just for this heavy-handed top-down approach to make it feel "normal"?
Innate bias probably exists but how would you go about determining that objectively? You could also then be accused of being ideologically inconsistent if you didn't mandate parity for minority representation and I feel like this would open up a can of worms.
Objectively it's the best solution even if it's probably the most unfavorable one.
Ideally, majority of the reasons any one person should vote for an individual should be of that individual's political platform, not who they are. And the rest should be based on their character, not whether they have a dick or a vagina.
Um, how so? Are there no qualified women according to you?
Well, legalizing gay marriage leads to increased support for gay marriage. Requiring that women make up half of the candidates on a party list may have an effect similar to that.
This has zero relation to what he said and makes no implications on the quality of women.
He said quota's do not make quality and that it will lead to shittier governance. How else am I supposed to interpret that other than that he thinks it will lead to a bunch of unqualified people ending up on the party lists?
That makes no claims on whether or not women can be qualified. Just that quotas are a terrible system for achieving quality.
But what is that based on? Why do you think political parties would just pick a bunch of random women to meet the quota, unless you think there just aren't any in or outside their party ranks or something?
I did a little Google search and came across one study in which there ended up being no difference in the quality of the politicians and another one where the quality actually increased, because women are ***on average*** more educated than men and those more qualified women replaced more low-educated men on the lists.
Right now, qualified women are not ending up on party lists not because they can't be found or something, but because men (sometimes less qualified, even) are chosen over those women. Whether that is conscious or subconscious, I don't know.
It's literally just a functional aspect. Quotas are not quality filters in fact they are the opposite, they're literally just about achieving quantity.
Also the full contents of neither paper is actually available. Also the evidence for women being more educated than men varies pretty notably. Looking in the U.S. for instance the Census itself has found that there is no appreciable difference in the level of education of men versus women. The difference is less than 1%.
And the argument that qualified women aren't ending up on the ballot needs substantiated because that looks like supposition as is. "There must be more women out there who are being refused a place." Just because someone, man or woman, wants a position does not mean they are actually qualified for it.
I'd like some more clarification on what people think about this. You say it "may" have a similar effect, but isn't that just speculation? Despite having a list of women who could fit the position that it doesn't necessarily mean they're THE candidate for the job, you're just padding out a list at that point, no? The candidates who would have been on there from their merit alone, rather than because they're a women are still more likely to win, or not?
The article also goes to say "The under-representation of women goes against the German constitution, which calls for equal democratic participation, the Greens argued in their motion." Isn't it a job of the constituents to vote a candidate to represent themselves? Half of the population IS women and they do have equal voting rights, what is making women not vote for women? Are women simply less interested in politics?
Well yeah, but that doesn't mean that there's a decrease in quality either now does it??
I sadly can't find a place where you can view the full contents, but come on man, is it really that hard to believe lol
I haven't seen any articles on 'gender quota disasters' in the countries that have implemented quotas for their parliaments
So now you do believe that there aren't enough qualified women??
Oh boy, the education agurement that's more a condemnation of an education system than of men's abilities.
sure, I guess, but the study is not saying that we should have more female politicians because they are generally more educated (in some countries anyway, like mine), nor am I. The study is not arguing anything, it just researched the effect of a quota on the quality of elected politicians. I was merely aiming to disprove the idea that having a quota decreases quality.
I personally think we need more female politicians for representative reasons, to set an example for society and I think women do generally have a different perspective, which is valuable. Also, look at who voted for Trump by gender. You'll notice women largely did not. Women also ********generally******** tend to have more empathy and so forth iirc (correct me on that if I'm wrong) which I think is better for governance.
The empathy arguement is correct, if you judge it by its shalloow top layer; however its been revealed and known that men tune out the emotions because their brains are wired to instead solve the issue causing distress as women instead hold steady and match emotions the person suffering.
Well isn't it great to have a proper 50/50 balance then?
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