[Tietäjä]

But you're no way near that, and whining because you get bullied at school by the girls seems a bit lame.

Again, this is called seriously not getting the point. But let's twist it a little. Whining because boys get discriminated in school by female teachers (which is what many are currently saying on the public debate, and which I will below elaborate) is lame. Whining because women get discriminated by men in the working life isn't. Good job Dante, you're really hitting the red button of the equality debate. Which is what I'm on about - not claiming that the society was matriarchal, but that the current with-quota-to-equality is only taking it to a direction where there's a) institutional systematic discrimination towards men (see: a suggested quota of minimum 40% women in PLC boards, matriarchalism) b) adverse selection. Read below.

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

"Equality" in terms of exactly the same number of people of each gender working in a given field is not a goal of any sane person - it's that people have equal opportunity to work in a field if they so desire. If you could show systematic bias against men in university applications, I suspect you could challenge it in the courts, taking the issue to the EU if required.

What comes to equality, you're slowly getting on to my point here. There's no systematic bias against men in university applications - but there has been a public debate where the general opinion coming from psychologists and academics is that the Finnish scholastic system favours women in the methodology, and has systematic bias. This can be elaborated by the fact that in high school, females get better grades on courses. This is reversed, or better said, leveled, at the point where the final exams come. The final exams are ultimately judged by teachers and acadamians who have probably never met a single person whose exams they check. This is where the female teachers - female students -axis that has been recently discussed in the major news papers (including the Helsingin Sanomat) gets cut off. Some might argue the damage has already been done at that point. I'm not overly concerned about such,though.

But the number of people being admitted to university is not (by itself) evidence of anything at all. On one of the courses I did at University I was the only male - but that's because it was a language-esque course and girls flock to that sort of shit. In the engineering faculty of the same university, the courses were often without a single female (or so I'm told). Is this evidence of prejudice against women in engineering and males in language courses? Maybe, but it's impossible to tell just by looking at the numbers.

No, it's more like the typical gender social assumptions. Women become nurses, men become engineers (and this also contributes to the much debated wage gap regarding equality).

No, that doesn't stand to reason at all. A target is supposed to redress some sort of systematic imbalance.

Indeed.

Quotas are generally an unpleasant solution to a problem, not something you introduce as soon as the numbers aren't exactly even.

I'll return to this below.

62% of parliamentarians are males

And 60% of ministers are female. So?

So, despite what you say, females hardly to be massively dominating every aspect of Finnish life.

No no, women aren't dominating the society in the term mentioned. You've missed the whole point - what I am talking about, is how stupid forcing quotas such as 40% females in PLC boards is, and how the only direction such quotas can take is to cause adverse selection and to discriminate the other gender. Equality will never be reached by discriminating either of the genders. Let's take the theory.

A PLC a has 20% of it's board women.
A PLC b has 20% of it's board men.

Both PLCs have rationally chosen boards they find are most capable of performing their jobs, hence no adverse selection has happened. Assuming both boards are fit at equal size, the "equality" comes true on number terms. Now we introduce a quota of 40% women. PLC b is fine with the quota, as it changes nothing. PLC b will have to sack some men and replace them with less competent women. Discriminating due to gender happens, as does adverse selection. While the generic picture is that males are predominant in the PLC boards, this should elaborate that a quota will nevertheless introduce discriminating and adverse selection.

I think in the debate concerning equality introducing further discriminating of either gender in order to reduce discriminating on the other gender is wrong, and that's what I'm going after. I'm going after the fact that women aren't the only bit of the society that is being discriminated - while the figures will say that men are in "charge" (which is true in a perspective), we will never achieve an equality with compensating the situation through discrimination. The way to work is from below, to start with the educational level and root out the prejudice. If you look at the development of the figures, you can already see this happening. It's producing results. The thing is, when you start a project like this it isn't going to complete to even close to "balanced" figures in a decade. Maybe not two. Three will be realistic. The current society is lead by men who have been around after and during the wars, and when the society has been widely different in what comes to women's position. They're prejudiced and discriminating, more or less intentionally, women because of that. But the thing is, the women of their age do the same. Many elderly women will agree with certain sexist statements. You can introduce a quota and force things in, but that's further discriminating and I'm not a fan of working things out through revenge and further force.

So what is wrong at the moment? At the moment, as Minister Wallin said, the equality debate (in Finland) is focused on women. It's actually all about women, it's no longer really about equality. We keep wondering how to improve women's position in the society, and Haatainen comes up with a quota from Norway (of which Allfather already expressed his opinion on IRC as we talked, and you can guess what it was). Yes, the quota will nominally balance things. In the real world, it will cause friction. It's solving the problem by sweeping it under the carpet. Yes, you can hide the waste, but it will remain there. What needs to be done? The equality debate needs to move more into a direction where both genders are participating, and the interest is creating a scheme where both genders are socially equal: not only equal through forced legistlative means. While there are lots of sore points that discriminate women, it's not that black and white. For example, many factions (such as Amnesty International) regard the obligatory military service that only hits males as a gross violation of human rights to begin with.

Regarding the topic of the thread: this is another area where lot's of discriminating towards men happens because of social prejudice. It has to do with the mentioned woman's role in the society. I'm all in favour of riddancing those gender social roles, which I find will help achieve better equality. It will not happen through quotas. In fact, quotas are likely to cause damage to that goal, as, as mentioned, they discriminate one gender. If we take the road of placing a quota that discriminates men on each area we find suitable (a quota for PLC boards, a wage quota for women-orientated industries (inflation HI!, huge raises in hospital expedinture thus government expendintures thus taxes, HI!), a quota for this, and a quota for that. I'm sure there are a million spots that would superficially benefit of a quota. If we'd just slam a 40% women on all executive positions quota, we'd look very equal on numbers. While, in reality, we'd be building a matriarchal order where the position of women is ensured by quotas, not social equality, discriminating men. I'm not in favour of forcing women into military service, either, even if that'd obviously be a huge step towards equality: and, in fact, on short term, it'd help women gain more footage on the upper level tasks (Finland, having the history it has, has plenty of it's - on both public and private sector - executives, directors, and so on ranked high in military reserves; an officer training from military, and good record on rehearsals, say a reserve lieutenant rank, will advance you greatly if you're looking for leadership positions in Finland).

The bottom line is, that social prejudice and inequality (in to extent of female parliamentarists and ministers, and to extent of court handling gender-related cases such as rape and custody cases when it comes down to word against word, given example of can't be fixed

If the rape was a 'statutary rape' ie she 'consented' but was below the age of consent, and the man thought she was of legal age and had consented - why shouldn't that result in a lesser sentence?? surely the culpability is reduced??

This is an example where there's social gender discrimination. Most of "sane" people will agree that a sixteen-year-old (can lie about her age and) is nowadays fairly well aware what having sex means. In cases like "statutary rape" (to the extent of making laws about it: see the fresh UK suggestion regarding having sex with drunken women), you can find a lot of cans of worms.

62% of parliamentarians are males
53% of judges were male (for 2000, the last years stats were available)
73% of senior civil servants were male

53% is a bad figure isn't it, and given that 60% of the ministers are female, it's hard to say there's gender discrimination in the parliament anymore. Parliaments change every four years, though, while a senior civil servant can act at his job for thirty years. If he was hired fifteen years ago where discriminating women was "more common", he'll still have good fifteen to go. These changes take time (but if you look at the statistics, the change is happening).