A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Forge Master]

Still a woeful percentage though. 100% male for centuries and we will be lucky if it gets to 50% women in this century. Parliament or Cabinet

It's still progress, change takes time. But at least it's going in the right direction.

[eldargal]

Agreed on that. I also don't have a problem with chasing a percentage, the only argument against it is that there are not enough competent women to fill the places and that is false. Or you argue that the men that are in parliament are much more competent than the women and I challenge anyone to say that and keep a straight face. The fact is ministers are seldom chosen on merit regardless of gender, they are chose for their politic.

[Forge Master]

There's still the "old boy network" "jobs for the boys" culture to contend with. I hope this is a generational thing and as MPs retire they will be replaced by more forward thinking men and women. There's also the public vote to contend with and unfortunately the masses are too ignorant to realise just who and what they are voting for.

[Mr Mystery]

Politics will always be Crony based. It's the very nature of the beast.

Every party does it.

[eldargal]

Yup but for some reason when the subject of women comes up people start talking like all the men got there on merit and we couldn't go demanding more women because some unworthy souls might slip though into high office.

[Mr Mystery]

Oh absolutely.

I have an excellent response to that.

[Forge Master]

Ahh Gove, a man who's managed to piss off teachers and cripple the tourist industry with just one policy.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Y'see, it's efficient talent like that which makes incompetent men so much more attractive in politics. A women would've had to work to get to a decent position, and thus generally knows what she's doing, but a man like Gove can consolidate several screwups into one, giant screwup to save on his time while the lady would probably be doing something less croney like trying to make the country better or something...

[eldargal]

I play a game with people who bring up the whole merit thing, I ask them to name their least favourite cabinet minister and then I ask them to name one female politician they think is worse than them and to date only one person managed to think of one (Harriet Harman) and even then he wasn't exactly strident about it.

[Forge Master]

Tessa Jowell.