Quotas versus meritocracy: what is the cost of equality?

By now you will have seen that India’s parliament approved a bill on Tuesday 9th of March to reserve a third of all state legislature and parliamentary seats for women.  You would think from reading the UK press that this is an exceptional move but actually around 40 nations have some form of quota system in place for increasing the percentage of female MP’s.  The UK as a whole does not advocate the use of quotas, although the Labour Party has used this fairly unpopular device for a number of years, which resulted in the UK briefly rising the global chart after the 1997 election.  The UK currently ranks as 73rd out of 187 in terms of the percentage of female MP’s, behind countries such as Uganda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.  We still fare better than the USA, which has 16.8%, and India which currently has only 10.8% female MP’s, hence the need for quotas.

Those that oppose the idea of quotas often appeal to meritocracy as an ideal for the selection and election of our members of parliament.  They say that to introduce quotas is to give women an unfair advantage and that they should be able to get elected on their own merits.  In fact some argue that the women that are selected using this method are less worthy than potential male candidates that could have occupied that space.  What can we say in response to this argument?

Meritocracy is of course something to aim for.  In an ideal world, female candidates for office would be assessed alongside men fairly and equally on their merits.  That seems logical.  The question is not so much is this happening or not, but ‘what criteria are being used?’ Just what is merited? Much has been written elsewhere on the different styles that men and women display when leading and the benefits that both styles can have on a business environment. It’s recognised in the business world that having women take part in the running of your company with drive tangible benefits. This information needs to be passed on to and fully understood by the selection committees of our political parties and to the British media who routinely scorn female MP’s.

However, that aside (and it will be explored more fully later), I wonder what else is at play in producing the UK’s disastrous results in female political representation.  We may see a reflection of ourselves in India. The Economist featured a piece this week on Gendercide, the murder of girl babies due to a preference for boys. I’m not talking about abortion as murder, I mean the actual physical murder of female babies when they are born.  This happens widely in India, and in other countries, as well as there being a large rate of abortion of female foetuses. The Economist article explains that this is causing a problem in China, as the large numbers of men are now unable to find wives and crime levels are rising due to the unchallenged masculine energy.

In the UK we do not sanction the killing of any babies and lets be thankful for that but I wonder what vestiges of this preference for the male over the female we still hold in our psyches.  When we judge female leaders on ‘merit’ are we actually holding up the male version of leader as the ideal? When we assess a women for the job of politician are we actually assessing her against men that can do the job of being available 24/7, with support at home, with no direct caring responsibilities for the family, with an ability to compartmentalise thoughts and feelings?  Are we deeply preferencing men when we choose our leaders?

I think that the percentages of female leaders in business and in politics speak for themselves. The cost of equality is giving up the idea that men are more worthy than women. In India and China giving up this belief would save lives. In the UK it would open up our power structures to women and enable them to make the contribution they are capable of making, for the benfit of the country and our future generations.

(Photo by handmadebymaria, CC)