I believe that collective guilt is wrong, particularly when the collective is race or gender.
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Why are we discussing quota’s at all when it comes to men and women? Are we seeing disparities between men and women in certain roles as a problem that needs to be solved?
@Gain brought up disparities in managerial positions and positions of authority (which is the one most often cited). Have we concluded this disparity exists due to prejudice and therefore the right solution would be to impose a quota?
Which is why I used kindergarten teachers, 97% women and 3% men, is that also a problem? Is the disparity due to prejudice? Is the solution to put in place a quota that would 1. discriminate against better qualified women. 2. Break the law on discrimination 3. Contravene UN human rights resolutions and in the end provide a worse environment for the children?
Now if my example of the kindergarden problem, analysis and solution sounds insane, because it is. Please explain how the same formula of identifying a problem, analyzing the problem and reaching a solution is any different for the situation illustrated by Gain.
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yes, I know. Which I why I suggested people who are disfigured in some way still have a genuine disability. It’s precisely because most people have a visceral reaction to disfigurement that you’ll get the same sort of objective assessment from anybody, across many different cultures. You will not get the same result with regard to women’s “suitability” for certain jobs.
I’m not arguing for quotas, btw. Even in cases of disability, I don’t think quotas (ie., punishments for unfairly discriminating against people with eg., only one eye) are a great idea. You would get a far better outcome, IMO, by offering modest incentives. Tax breaks, for example. Reason: offering a disabled person a job does impose a certain cost upon the business. Not much of one, probably, but some. Giving people a good reason to be nice is usually more productive than threatening them for being smallminded. Apart from anything else it feels “fair”: the government is going to be nicer to you if you’re nicer to other people.
I used to know a guy with moderate cerebral palsy. He had reasonable mobility and could make himself understood, but he still had trouble getting jobs even though he was highly qualified (software engineering). The nature of his disability meant that he typed slower than most people, so I’m pretty sure a couple of grand per annum in tax breaks would have removed any reservations an employer might have about giving him a job.
I would not recommend this to encourage employment of women because, as I said, doing so implies that women are somehow inferior and/or are more trouble.
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So having a certain appearance can be a disability in practical terms, not because it interferes with a person’s performance in a job, but because it makes it harder to get the job in the first place.
The aspect of a person’s appearance that causes the problem may be something as simple as… skin color. Or gender.
Is society perfect? Most people would say no.
Is there anything a government could do that would maybe possibly have a beneficial effect on society? Most people would say yes.
Do some of society’s problems have a gender aspect? Most people would say yes.
Exactly how a government might improve those problems is not something as simple as waving a magic wand or using pure math, but as with disability quotas, it stands to reason that it’s possible doing something is preferable to doing nothing. You keep saying or insinuating that doing anything = extremism ergo bad, yet you concede that disability quotas are not extremism and are actually good. So if you say it’s good and non-extremist over here, why do you suddenly do a 180 over there?
I don’t know. Have we? You seem to know, so why don’t you tell us?
…which is a non sequitur because teachers are not managers. (Authority figure and manager are not interchangeable btw.)
You’re the only one here suggesting doing anything about kindergarten teachers (by the way).
You’re still getting away from what I was actually talking about. Since you like to complain about unanswered questions, instead of asking me to explain someone else’s point of view, how about responding to
and
Thanks in advance. 
OK, so let’s get to the crux of it shall we. Incentivizing claims of discrimination where none may exist is highly divisive.
This is what we are talking about when ratio’s are used to claim some form of discrimination is taking place. It may provide an indicator but is certainly not proof, ratio’s of kindergarten teachers or people taking out your trash would demonstrate that.
So why are such conclusions being drawn in positions of power, I would suggest it is because people making claims of prejudice where none may exist as a means to leverage more power or advantage for their own group.
If you don’t think a society that rewards such claims and provides incentives in terms of more favorable quotas for the group making the claim on no other basis than an observed ratio will not see an abundance of such claims when the claim itself does not prove prejudice in itself then unfortunately I have news for you.
It’s the recipe to create a completely dysfunctional and divisive society.
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If you hold that a group (a corporation, a state, etc.) cannot be deemed a person in a legal action, you’re going against thousands of years of jurisprudence. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you throw out the very concept, you’ll need to replace it with something else.
Think about it: if a group harms you, and the individual(s) directly responsible either can’t be determined or can’t give compensation (they might be dead by the time the case is decided), what then? No compensation for you?
And what is “guilt” anyway? When a group is found guilty of – or responsible for – something, that doesn’t mean every member of the group is responsible at an individual level. If a corporation is fined, the fine is not deducted from the wages of the rank and file employees. If a corporation wins compensation, the same employees don’t benefit except perhaps indirectly. Same with states: “every American owes $x” makes a nice soundbite but isn’t really true.
Now if, as it seems, you want to say any kind of quota system in employment means one certain group is being found guilty of the crime of being better off and therefore being punished for something that isn’t its fault (or isn’t the fault of the individual members), there is logic in that, but it’s zero-sum thinking and not necessarily the best way to get things done, which we’ve already said is more important than ideological purity (though you’re welcome to disagree with that).
Isn’t the complaint here that individual men are being held responsible (shamed and punished) for the things that other men (most of them long dead) have done over the course of thousands of years? I think @QuaSaShao and you agree on this point, that every member of the group (i.e. men) shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of other members of the group.
Toxic masculinity is the reason why there are so few male kindergarten teachers. It’s considered unmanly or too menial for a man to be a kindergarten teacher. The same applies to secretaries and nurses, though there are more and more male nurses now as people have realised how silly that stigma is. Nursing is an incredibly physically demanding profession.
And there is always pedophilic concerns.
Glad for you to join the conversation @Gain , both those things are true. Is that the whole story though? Could it be women enjoy working with children more than men?
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No.
It certainly could be part of it, why not?
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Because any gender imbalance in any field has to be the result of systemic oppression. Anybody saying otherwise is just either blinded by ignorance or a hateful bigot.
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Is that sarcasm?
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Yes.
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Still avoiding those questions, I see. Do you think they’re somehow illegitimate?
None may exist in the case of a putatively disabled person, yet you still think the disability quota is good. What exempts it from the criticism you direct at all other types of quota (real or hypothetical)?
Discrimination is not a new concept. People have been noticing trends and tendencies for a long time, from “restricted” hotels (no Jews allowed) to “white flight” neighborhoods, and so on. It’s not always easy to prove any given person or business performed a specific act of discrimination, and discrimination isn’t always a conscious decision. But if adding up all the evidence leads you to the conclusion that there is a significant degree of systemic discrimination with significant negative consequences for society, it stands to reason that there might be a systemic (partial) solution.
So for example if people in a certain community are afraid of the police, not only because of the reputation the police have among them, but also because they don’t see themselves represented among the police, you might try hiring new officers from that community, or you might say “ah but we musn’t discriminate, because ideological purity (and the UN)”. The former isn’t guaranteed to work, but the latter is guaranteed not to work. The former would technically be discrimination, yes, but in pursuit of a socially desirable objective, and limited in scope (and presumably duration), and if successful it would decrease discrimination overall.
If only the authors of the UDHR had conceived of exceptions to their ban on discrimination instead of making it all black and white. Oh, wait – they did. 
Must be a conspiracy to seize power and socialize the world, eh? 
Still zero-sum. I would suggest it’s a lot more complicated than that.
You’re the one saying there’s no other basis than an observed ratio. It’s one thing for there to be no X among the local police in a city where X are Y percent of the population, but it’s another thing for X to be afraid of the police and therefore refuse to talk to them – sooner or later, that will have consequences far beyond anyone’s ideology being offended.
In employment (in the broad sense), not all types of jobs are the same. You have the ones that tend to be employment in the legal sense – “skilled trades” and all that – which require skills that, generally, anyone with a brain can learn and perform adequately. It’s not easy to come up with reasons why a male cashier would be better or worse than a female cashier, whether in terms of skill or in terms of effect on society. With teachers, there are rationalizations about the skill part, with scientific evidence to support them, though how that evidence is collected and interpreted can be problematic (as has been discussed in other threads), and even if it’s correct, there’s still the question of the effect on society (since teachers are role models), but at the end of the day it’s more of a working job than a representing job.
On the other side you have directors of corporations, legislators, judges, etc. If you think about it, holders of political offices are selected through extremely discriminatory practices – discrimination by citizenship, place of residence, political affiliation, age, sometimes even place of birth… why? It’s not enough just to have the skills. A large part of the job is to represent people. This can also apply to judges. In Canada, Quebec gets 1/3 of the Supreme Court by law, and by convention the rest is also geographically representative. And then there’s the Governor General who by convention alternates between anglophone and francophone. Should the UN stop all this horrible discrimination? 
Business leaders are an interesting category. Corporations and other businesses vary wildly in size and power. Some are de facto states, making their boards of directors de facto governments. In other words, the private sector isn’t always truly private.
And there’s already discrimination there, in the form of laws saying (for example) you can’t have more than X% non-residents or non-citizens on the board of directors, or you can but then you pay a higher corporate tax rate, and so on.
So there are already quotas, big-league. The ones that have been around for long enough rarely get any attention – people just take them for granted. Should they all be abolished? Would that even be possible? And would the results necessarily be in society’s best interest?
Is it possible that some other types of quotas than the ones that already exist might be beneficial? The proof would be in the pudding. As you said yourself, the top priority should be to get things done, not to be ideologically pure.
As I said, that’s logical. And I don’t go around saying men are evil or hang out with people who do.
Yet if there’s no such thing as shared responsibility/benefit, then there’s no basis for social development – people should refuse to be “punished” by paying any kind of tax ever, and so on… (We have a thread about that, btw.)
Meanwhile, some members of the site want to sue the most populous state on the planet because of a virus. Not sure if you’re among them, but I think you get my point: there’s having cake and there’s eating it, and it gets weird when you try to do both.
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Groovy.
That’s not what I said, though.
I wish them good luck with that.
Not really, no.
The argument is that men are still benefiting from injustices in the past, similar to white people. Concepts like social privilege used to be purely academic, but are now mainstream. Obviously it sucks on an individual level if you happen to be the guy who loses out, such as Asian Americans who fail to get into top universities despite having the highest grades.
Really, quotas are just another aspect of every identity group fighting its own corner. The concept of trying to do what’s best for everybody died out long ago and I don’t think it’s ever coming back. We’re all tribes now and it’s a fight for what’s available.
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Conflating groups with categories is sophistry. The Ku Klux Klan is a group but white males is a category. Being a member of the Ku Klux Klan determines the content of your character but your race, gender, ethnicity don’t make you guilty of anything except by association in the minds of the weak-minded. Likewise, the suggestion that an individual can be individually innocent but collectively guilty is just another poorly thought-out deployment of the guilt by association logical fallacy.
Understanding Guilt By Association Logical Fallacy
Guilt by association, also known as the association fallacy, is officially defined as “guilt ascribed to someone not because of any evidence, but because of their association with an offender.” More often than not, this term is used in a legal context, but sometimes it’s used casually.
In this particular context, an individual can face criticism or backlash as a result of their likeness to an existing group or entity. Conversely, honor by association is the inverse of guilt by association describes a situation where someone is lauded as a result of their affiliation with groups that are perceived in a positive light.
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