What does true equality of opportunity look like?

In the aggregate, there should be no difference between equality of opportunity and outcome.

Most of the equality of outcome proponents are just pushing for more women in lucrative positions, which shows how it is flawed thinking before it leaves the starting stalls. If they were campaigning for more women in the less cushy male dominated areas of employment I might take them serious.

Equality of opportunity is all that is needed.

Within reason of course. My Lapello's job application has been overlooked but I understand.

Only at death we are truly equal…

California have recently made it illegal for companies not to have a woman on their board (must have 3 by 2021).

True equality of opportunity would be a demand for a certain quota of Parliament representatives to be people with no wealth behind them already in order for them to run for elections for parliament. Good f**king luck ever seeing that sort of "equality"

professore wrote: »

We already have equality of opportunity in Ireland. There is nothing stopping anyone working their butt off and getting a good degree in a well paid discipline with skill shortages - other than their own interest, motivation and ability. They are throwing money at disadvantaged students nowadays.

This is simply not true for many people prof -

Facts and figures

Disability and poverty

Employment has a key role to play in preventing poverty among people with disabilities. Research carried out by the ESRI shows a strong link between disability, joblessness, and risk of poverty, and conversely that employment is a safeguard for people with disabilities against experiencing poverty in their working years or on retirement. Over 80% of people who were ill/disabled and at risk of poverty were in households with nobody at work. Over 80% of those who were ill/disabled but not at risk of poverty had income from employment (67%) or a private pension from employment (14%).

Employment

The 2011 census showed 33% of people with disabilities of working age in work, compared to 66% of non-disabled people.

In total, there were 112,000 people with disabilities in employment. In international terms, Ireland’s employment rate for people with disabilities is low, even allowing for inter-cultural differences in how people report themselves as having a disability.

There are particularly low employment rates for people with physical disabilities, and those with intellectual disability or with mental health difficulties.

Comprehensive Employment Strategy for People with Disabilities 2015 - 2024


Getting financial assistance from the State, I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s like trying to get blood from a stone. In many cases people simply don’t have the resources themselves to be able to apply for assistance of any sort from the State.

Once you are qualified, can work reasonably hard and have a half decent personality you will walk into a job regardless of gender, race,.sexuality etc. All the other stuff is just white noise. The ones shouting loudest about equality of outcome are people who have studied unemployable subjects.

That’s not particularly true either, on either of those points. It’s idealism at best to suggest that anyone can simply walk into a job regardless of their gender, race, sexuality and so on. They can’t, no matter if they’re qualified, willing to work reasonably hard, or have a cracking personality. Everything depends upon what potential employers are looking for, and they generally aren’t looking for people who they imagine will be of no value to the organisation. As it happens, ironically enough, people who studied courses in which there was previously thought to be no prospect of employment are being snapped up by corporate giants - Google and Microsoft of course being two of the biggest and most well regarded and recognised, notwithstanding the fact that Google have their own problems to sort out with the numbers of millennials they chose to employ, to their own detriment of course.

Tokenism and virtue signalling probably seemed like a good idea at the time and made them attractive as an employer to other misguided misfits :pac:

I have a degree in a STEM subject. There were 2 women out the some 100 students that participated in the course in my former uni.

I don't understand what barriers are in place to stop a 17yo female from applying for a STEM subject. How could a 17yo woman feel before they ever engaged in it think that they wouldn't get on in it in a career ? It's a bit rich to say that women aren't being allowed to get on in STEM areas when they don't even engage in the study of it in the first place.

I didn't go into Computer Science in the end. I decided it was way too demanding on my personal time because if you don't know Computer Science requires constant learning on top of the work itself. That's just the way it is and I suspect it's the same in other STEM subject areas.

I think that many women don't go into CS exactly because of the same reason I didn't, especially because woman may wish to have a family. I'm male and still I didn't want to suffer the burden of all my free time being soaked up by constant learning often just to keep up no mind advance.

And get this , which backs up my last point, both the 2 woman who were part of my class, were lesbians. So not one single heterosexual woman studied CS in my class year at UCD.

^^^many women don't have vaginas

Paddy Cow wrote: »

That's a good point. How will we evaluate who is a woman and who is a man? Could a man self-identify as a woman and get in as part of the gender quota?

in a word, yes.

Paddy Cow wrote: »

Gender quotas are the worst idea ever and will only lead to division amongst the sexes. I am a woman and would like to think I would get hired because I'm able to use my brain and not just because I have a vagina and the company gets to tick a box in their quota ratio.

Gender quotas don’t in and of themselves lead to division among the sexes at all. What is almost guaranteed to lead to division among the sexes are people who feel they were denied opportunities for employment based upon their gender, and that’s how we’re now at the point where gender quotas are now becoming more prominent and getting more attention than before - because they’re an outcome of what has been an imbalance in opportunities between people on the basis of often immutable characteristics. In your example, you have it arseways - currently it’s more likely you wouldn’t even be considered for a role because you’re a woman, and so you wouldn’t be given the opportunity to show off those brains you’ve got, often based upon the assumption that based upon the fact you were born with a vagina, you’re more likely to want to push a gaggle of children out of it at some stage and employers would have to consider paying you for maternity leave and possibly comply with legislation regarding allowing you time to breastfeed and so on. It would cost them less to hire a man, whether he’s likely to be a half-wit or not generally tends to be irrelevant, as is obvious from the sheer numbers of men in positions where they have the opportunity to hire women, but they don’t, because they imagine women will want to take time off to have children, like maternity leave is coming out of their own pockets - those women should stay at home and be provided for by men rather than getting any ideas above their stations.

Feminists go on about the objectification of women but being hired simply because you have a vagina IS objectification. It's saying that women aren't strong enough to rely on their own skills and merit and having a vagina is the most important thing in the interview process if going up against male candidates. I find it ridiculous and embarrassing that they think this is empowering.

I’m not a feminist, but from what little I do understand of modern feminism (and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t understand a lot of it what with men now identifying as feminists and so on), you’re presenting an argument that was never made by mainstream feminism at least. They aren’t suggesting that women should be hired on the basis that they have a vagina, but rather they are pointing out that women aren’t being hired on the basis that they have a vagina, and what the people with the power to hire women suggest that having a vagina says about women. The people making those assumptions are usually men. Feminists are arguing that because of the fact you have a vagina, you can have all the skills and talents and experiences which have made you who you are, and you still won’t be given the same opportunities as men to show what you can do, because of the underlying prevailing assumptions about you by men, based upon your sex. Feminists may well have a point in arguing that it’s so ingrained in society that people do it unconsciously, even to themselves.

There are numerous studies done which suggest that women lacking confidence in their own abilities is one of the greatest barriers holding them back from opportunities in employment, and the basis for their lack of belief in their own abilities is based upon their own perceptions about other people being more capable than they are. It’s definitely something I’ve noticed in the years I’ve been interviewing men and women for different roles - in primary school teaching for example, it’s blatantly obvious among male candidates that they lack confidence in their own abilities. I know I do too, in spite of my mothers insistence that I should become a teacher as she believes I’m more than capable. She ought to know - she raised me, and has 40 years experience as a primary school teacher herself, but when offered the role of Principal in the school, she refused to take it because she didn’t believe she would be as capable in the role as a man.

Pointing out that women are absolutely just as capable as men, is empowering, and the corrolary of that of course - pointing out that men are just as capable as women, is empowering. I feel confident now that I could be a primary school teacher, but ask any teacher now and they’ll point out to you that unless you’re truly passionate about educating children - don’t become a teacher, because the remuneration package is crap - low pay, no job security and you’re far less likely to be hired over a man. That’s not to mention the reason I personally wouldn’t do it is because educating children has become a secondary consideration for the Department of Education who seem to interpret the term in loco parentis quite literally, where teachers are expected to fulfil the role of parents, and complete a rather tedious set of box ticking exercises and a mountain of paperwork on top of everything else they’re expected to do. Having said all that, it still beats the hell out of me why teaching is by far the most popular choice among students applying for third level education according to our most recent census figures, and that’s not the only thing I’ve observed in education -


Gender imbalances in the classroom – and all the way up

I'd rather see a board of ten men who got their on their own, than eight men and two women who are there to fill a quota. Do women who want to get hired because of a quota think their colleagues are going to respect them? When diversity quotas become a thing, would they be happy to give their slot to a less able candidate but that candidate is a person of colour so the company gets to tick two boxes at once - female and diversity? I don't think so but this is the dangerous road we are going down.

Nobody gets to boardroom level on their own, and anyone who tries to convince you that they did, it’s safe to say they’re full of shìt. I certainly wouldn’t wouldn’t want to work with someone who was so far up their own hole they’d forgotten about the numerous people who had helped them get to where they are. One of the things that struck me about the tech industry, and this is something that struck me 20 years ago, is that it’s a sausage factory - there’s literally fcukall women in IT. There are a few exceptional examples of course, such as Safra Catz (CEO of Oracle), Meg Whitman (former CEO of HP) and Marissa Mayer (former CEO of Yahoo), but they would be the most well known in the tech industry, and hardly ever heard of by anyone outside of the tech industry.

Women should be respected regardless of how they are hired, and so when you ask the question do women who want to get hired because of a quota think their colleagues will respect them, the answer is of course that they should have no reason to expect that they wouldn’t be entitled to an equal level of respect as their colleagues who are full of shìt imagining that they got where they are on their own.

Diversity quotas as I previously pointed out, have been a thing for a couple of decades now at least, certainly long before I was born, and would I be happy to give my position to a person who I imagined was less capable of my job than I am? Of course not, that would be stupid. As it happens, the vast majority of people vying for my position are men, and by sheer virtue of their numbers, there are far more less than capable men vying for my position before women even get so much as a sniff at vying for my position. That’s why in a sausage factory, the person who isn’t endowed with a sausage is likely to stand out more, to me at least, than having to deal with soft-headed sausages all day. Nobody wants to deal with a soft headed sausage really (I feel that the metaphor may be stretched at this point :pac:).

I would certainly be happy to give my position to a person who I imagine would bring something new to the table, as opposed to a bunch of soft-headed sausages who imagine they are entitled to my position on the basis that they imagine they got the opportunity as a result of their own abilities. That they could display an ability to flatter their bosses ego and kiss arse generally isn’t all that useful to me, and certainly offers no tangible value. We’re already well down the road where black people (that ‘people of colour’ identifier is a level of stupid I won’t stoop to) are being given opportunities they wouldn’t have had before due to the fact those opportunities were denied to them on the basis of their skin colour. I don’t see any reason why it is of any advantage to society to continue to deny women opportunities they should have solely on the basis that they were born with a vagina and we expect that they shouldn’t be getting above themselves and challenging the status quo. I would be only too delighted to see opportunities for men to do the same thing, because everyone already has the opportunity to work in waste management if they want to, but everyone does not have the opportunity to become CEO of a tech giant if they want to. God knows Elon Musk hasn’t exactly been covering himself in glory lately and has had to step down while the woman who took his place at Tesla is expected to act like his mother rather than being regarded as capable of turning around a shìt-show of a company -


New Tesla chairwoman's biggest challenge is controlling Musk