Reply to post: Interest and choice.

Interest and choice.

The thing with all these quotas is that they completely miss interest and choice as part of the equation.

Women historically (and even in current times) have as a statistical cohort shown a preference for jobs that give flexibility to work/life balance.

This does not mean every woman chooses that flexibility (as female doctors, physicists, mathematicians, engineers and so on demonstrate), but a lot do.

They often choose careers that give them that flexibility. My other half, for example, did her degree in engineering, aced it with a First, then chose a career in Finance, because it required what she is great at (diligence, accuracy, planning and calculations), paid better and was more flexible.

The ratio of female Engineers that follow that path through a career is small, compared to the male presence. That's not because it's a "Boys club", it's because interest goes elsewhere. Which is fine.

It does rankle when these quotas are set up saying "There must be (x)% female representation". Quite possibly in some fields, there aren't actually enough women who _chose_ that path as a career to fill those posts globally, irrespective of whether they're even good or not, so if one place meets a quota, they're guaranteeing that other places will have few, or no women (thus perpetuating a myth that women are excluded).

It's also fallacious to claim that "if you are in a minority, you're automatically weak and in need of protection by numbers"; I work in a predominantly female environment (and the women who are in the senior, and often the more junior roles are fiercely competent).

What I find is that when I go out and talk sense to people, they talk sense back to me. We reach agreements on basis of evidence.

Our work needs are met, and we're all expected to do our jobs. I'm ok with "being in a minority". I honestly don't care what colour of skin (and there are all colours in the environment, again, all fiercely competent), sex or anything someone is. As long as they're good at what they do, and they mesh to make the combined group better than the sum of the individuals, we crack on with it and make the world a better place where we can.