Anonymous asked: It's now politically correct to give preference to women seeking upper level positions in male dominated fields. Doing so makes an organization look "progressive." I was recently offered a job I was unqualified for, and upon saying so, was told that "it doesn't matter" because "we need a women in this position to get the boss of our backs." Rather than being pleased, I was offended. How dare they hold me to lower standards, and require less experience of me, than the men they interviewed?
In that situation, I feel, the problem is still with the mindset of the employers, and not with the idea of active diversification. Rather than looking for a qualified woman, the interviewers had decided to look for any woman - which is not only insulting, as you say, but deeply problematic. Interviewers like that have entirely missed the point: it’s not that hiring a lady will magically cause an organisation or department to improve, but rather that said organisation has been identified as an environment where ladies are implicitly but sublty excluded, regardless of their skills, and that the best way to tackle such cultures is to do so openly. Just hiring random, unqualified women, however, for whatever reason - because looking for a qualified one is deemed too hard, because the interviewers think it’s a stupid requirement - is both symptomatic of the exact same problem they’re supposedly trying to remedy and a perpetuation of same.
Even worse, telling a woman she’s been hired because she’s a woman? No. That is not how you create an equal workplace. In fact, it’s pretty much a textbook way to breed gender resentment - because if the new hire knows that’s why she’s been chosen, then it’s a good chance that everyone else does, too, and will likely resent her for it. It sounds like you did the right thing turning down the offer: any office with such a warped view of female participation is bound to have a toxic work culture, too. It’s awful you had to go through such an offensive experience!
Ideally, quotas and gender-preference wouldn’t be necessary, because we’d live in a meritocracy that, you know. Was actually meritocratic. But it’s a Catch-22 when the same sexist goons whose biased attitudes the quotas are meant to mitigate are the ones in charge of their implementation - and doubly so if the goons in question are making no effort to change, or are actively hostile to the whole quota system. Quotas are undeniably positive in many instances, but sometimes, I think, the bigger and more important step is to first change the minds of the people in charge of using them - or else what should be a positive policy ends up being twisted towards sexist, patriarchal ends.
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