Canadian Commodore becomes first female Commander of NATO flotilla

A very eloquent reply Alan that makes some important points. However, it does trouble me that much of the evidence for lowering the bar appears to be anecdotal ….’I know someone who said’ etc. I can only comment on my own experience as a teacher…of the seven managers I have had in 20 years of teaching, five have been women and two men. The women have ranged from competent to very good. The men were poor to absolutely incompetent! Women do face a wall of resentment…particularly in traditionally male roles like the military. That doesn’t mean to say that some women have been overpromoted, but then I have known many men that have been given roles that they weren’t up to!

The bar should not be lowered. It should be set where it needs to be set to get the job done. Sex, race etc. should not be a criteria. The only qualifying factors should be having the qualities to do the job – nothing else. It is important for everyone that quality is seen to be the one and only factor – this approach is the only one which is likely to build confidence from all concerned.

Herodotus
The government, and an increasing number of large private corporations, are extremely open about using diversity quotas and their unequivocal support for them. Quotas by their nature lower the quality of recruitment the pool because you will ALWAYS be excluding a number of talented people from the non prescribed group in favour of the prescribed group. Their use is openly standard practice in most areas of public sector employment.

Speaking In my own experience I have seen bar lowering in action but one’s own experiences are just as anecdotal as quoting others. Only really worth doing if the source is relevant.

‘Some men I’ve worked for are poor and some women were good’ is a strange one. The workforce is a cross section of society so it seems pretty obvious it’s going to reflect the fact people possess different personalities and abilities. Confusing personal observations with a concerted push to achieve equality of outcome through diversity quotas is something I try to avoid.

Like a little sting in the tail..don’t you? My personal experiences are not anecdotal to me as I can verify them. I can’t verify others’ personal experiences. In making choices in life, we often have little more to go than our own experience. I was in no way supporting diversity quotas, in fact I really dislike social engineering of this nature. I believe, in the long-run, they are counter productive for a number of reasons. But I understand why they are implemented, a drive for fairness in job opportunities is important. But the bottom line must always be, the best candidate for the job. Empirical experience is always more convincing than misogynistic rumour-mongering…for me at least!

I’m sorry you took that as some sort of attack against you, I can assure you it wasn’t intended as such, It’s difficult to tell over the internet sometimes.

Of course your personal experiences aren’t anecdotal to you but they are to me, that doesn’t invalidate them and pointing that out wasn’t intended to do so, the intent was to add a little objectivity to what I believed was a shared opinion, apologies for the confusion there.

Never thought you were supporting diversity quotas either, in fact I was under the impression we were pretty much in general agreement. The misogynist comment rather spoilt that but I suppose it’s sadly inevitable in today’s discourse, especially on sensitive subjects. Regardless, I think we do largely agree with each other, so before anyone else is pathologized as a woman hater lets end on a consensus.

Alan a very good response and having several RM friends and a son that has recently received his green beret I think the facts are slightly more stark than you suggest. There are not many males let alone females who can complete the Commando course and carrying heavy loads is an intrinsic part of the course and is not a bolt on. My son found carrying the GPMG a particularly enjoyable experience.
The idea that even a handful of women will ever pass this course as currently configured is fantasy and should be seen as gesture pc politics of the worst kind. Senior military leaders should resist on this type of interference and focus instead on employing women in other roles where there skills are superior to men’s. The military environment is not one for quotas but employing the best people for each specific role.

Thanks, that is pretty much how things were explained to me regarding the RM’s. I do fear, given the nature of the pressure, that standards will be quietly lowered in the future, worryingly.

Importantly, that is still a separate issue to this promotion, which I should re-state, given how easily these things are misconstrued, is very unlikely to be a decision based on anything other than military considerations, and is simply a good example that this practice DOES happen in some areas.

Alan I totally agree and although I was honestly skeptical about women in the front line, the skipper of the T45 has convinced me it can work in most areas. That Is what I was trying to say in my second paragraph, forget gender it is all the best people.

Chris we have this debate where I work and whilst I can see in a perfect world things might be 50:50 this does not represent reality. Simply and for the continuation of the species they have children and will for the foreseeable future be the principal parent. Things are changing and in some ways for the good but it seems this current desire for equality values motherhood very low indeed.
Flexible working is often aimed at women only, where is the equality in this and how can men take more parental responsibility when such engrained attitudes persist.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why so many public and private sector organisations have a disproportionate high number of senior level managers from public schools. A far more important factor to address social mobility but of course our politicians and media types who are predominantly cut from this cloth would rather not have this debate. All the best

Evening Chris

Women won’t, on average be paid more than men or even the same as men in the higher echelons of power such as business, what you’re after there is equality of outcome and it just does not work, as men and women are so different, Jordan Peterson explains that because men and women are different in the “big five” personality traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

This is taken from an article on him

“multivariate analysis of the gender pay gap shows that prejudice is only one small factor in the pay gap, one that’s much less than “feminists claim”. Other factors include women’s tendency for neuroticism – their likelihood to experience stress, depression and unpredictability – and their high level of agreeableness, to be cooperative and compassionate.”

Another big reason is family life, men don’t have to plan, give birth and then take leave to look after a baby (although some do but a small minority) that natural process immediately puts women at a disadvantage in big positions of power.

In Scandinavia which has done more for gender rights in law than anywhere else sees the same 20-1 female to male ratio in nursing and the same 20-1 male to female ratio in engineering, men and women will naturally drift to more suitable jobs, but apparently the business leaders in the FTSE 100 should be 50-50 male and female, could it not just be that high power business jobs naturally give a higher male to female ratio?

In regards to the BBC, a lot gets made of the gender pay gap in their presenters, but they never name drop the women who are not earning the same as their male counterparts, but if you actually look into it the top three men are Gary Lineker, Chris Evans and Graham Norton, then the next three highest earning women are Zoe Ball, Claudia Winklemen and Vanessa Feltz, this is what the feminazis & latte drinking social justice warriors in the London media bubble are trying to engineer, that Vanessa Feltz, who hosts a radio show in the morning, be paid the same as Gary Lineker who hosts the prime time Saturday night football show watched by millions , Golf, Euro and World Cups and the FA cup.

Alan Garner and Herodotus

Good discussion and just to note over in the states the NY fire department and the US Marines have admitted to changing the fitness requirements, although some argue with the US marine one because they routinely change it apparently, but it has faced criticism.

IMO all fitness tests for dangerous jobs like armed forces, police and fire etc should require different, male and female entry requirements, if they don’t there will always be complaints that women fail the tests more than men so really it should be changed as such, because women do have a place in these roles, because it’s not always physical, you have to use your mind as much as anything, sometimes brain power will beat physical power.

But physically Men and women are biologically different, Venus and Serena Williams, who has championed for equal pay in tennis “boasted” about being able to beat any male outside the “top 200” so up stepped no 203rd in the world after a round of golf and 2 pints, thrashed them both.

So keep the male bar very high to the sex who can actually achieve that level of fitness naturally.

@ Sjb1968
@ SoleSurvivor
I hope I can answer both excellent posts together:
Firstly I am no ‘feminazi’ or in any way seeking to justify some managed 50 / 50 balance. I am, for example, a fierce opponent of ‘female only’ candidate lists as this is blatant discrimination. The best example is MP selection lists that are only open to women ‘to increase the numbers of women’? Its plain wrong and reflects what SoleSurvivor writes about fitness tests for the military and emergency services. Anyone should be able to become an RM or Fire’person’ or even MP. Being a male or female of itself should not (IMHO) be a barrier to becoming any of those. But female Lists are now the Liberal Left way of doing things. Although I do smile that Harriet Harman’s husband became an MP in a Constituency that had female only candidate lists ….

I am just observing that women DO face obstacles that men do not. This has some very obvious reasons as SoleSurvivor eloquently describes (and indeed in some way justified my exact point) but lets take the most obvious one: Childbirth. This means a young male engineer will more likely be hired than a young female engineer simply because there is no possibility he will take a year off for a new baby at some undefined future point. To some extent recent laws have exacerbated this situation rather than helped women in their careers as more rights are given to women having children that cost the taxpayer nothing and the employers everything. Incidentally the much maligned (by the Left) ‘Zero Hours Contracts’ are hugely popular with working Mums (and Students and others where 80% approve in a 2018 survey) who find the flexibility suits them as they can match Maternal duties to young children with getting back into the workplace.

For the record I am not saying women should NOT have those rights as creating life is the single most amazing gift any person can give but we cannot just then say ‘oh women do not face barriers’.

Of course people (regardless of sex) will gravitate to particular career paths which suit their personalities, education and ambitions. So yes there are more female nurses and what is wrong with that? Its a fact. But no one is saying being male is a barrier to becoming a nurse. On a more serious note it is a fact that men are disinclined to become teachers as they (rightly or wrongly) feel they will be far more open to false allegations of sexual misdeeds than will any woman in the same job. Again its a fact of life but that IS one barrier men face (for example).

SoleSurvivor is again right when he states the obvious that men and women are built differently and their bodies are designed to do different tasks. Hence the recent uproar in athletics over Transgender male to female competitors. Maybe this surge to ‘equality’ is another barrier to female athletes … just saying.

Can I close on a more lighthearted note? I am of course, being an old dinosaur, of the simple belief men were originally designed to defend their tribes against other tribes and to kill big animals to feed the women who looked after the caves and cared for the children……