this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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I mean, if genders are equal then an equal number of men and women should be leading in matters of gender equality.
And there are real issues that stem from this. If you make it so that under-represented people always lead initiatives to improve representation, you are adding workload to the under-represented people involved in the <activity> (governance in this case), and making them even more under-represented in the rest of the activity.
The optics in this case are bad enough that the downsides of sending a candidate chosen in a gender-neutral fashion outweigh the upsides, but I'd definitely advise being cautious about assuming that's always the case. If anything it's the exception, not the rule.
It's a shame that you're getting downvoted for this. You make an excellent point.
This is literally the only news article I have seen about The G7 Ministerial Meeting on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, and guess what? It's about a man being there. There's very little about what the meeting actually accomplished.
The optics are bad, for sure, but would Time have even written a piece about this meeting if the scandal of a man being involved wasn't there? Is this anything more than countries just making a token display by shunting some women off to Nikko for a photo op? Why is the name of the man involved mentioned in the article, but not one of the women's names is mentioned?
The entire piece seems set up like a fluff piece so that people can scoff at Japan for being such shit about gender equality, while feeling good about themselves, patting themselves on the back, and saying "Mission accomplished!" Even the media is playing along. Haha, Japan bad, other countries good, here's an article about a man!
Lol task failed successfully?
You're making a pretty good point. These conferences don't really DO anything. They're mostly box ticking and networking. And photo ops.
Lol, indeed!
The Times could have done more to educate, like at least listing the names of the women, instead of talking only about the man there.
It's horribly ironic and hypocritical.
This was a meeting on women's empowerment.
And where do you think a woman has more power? In a meeting on women's empowerment, or a meeting on... I don't know... how many weapons to give to Ukraine?
If you pull women away from the latter to send them to the former that is negatively impacting women's empowerment.
Like I said, the optics in this case make it worth it anyways, but it is not a clear cut rule where that is always the case, and it's easy to do it too often.
I'm struggling to understand why you think these specific women (and man) who are leaders on social empowerment are also going to be military logistics experts who are being pulled away from that field.
Rather I think they're diplomats in senior government rolls, because they're at the G7. In US terms think state department, not DOD.
Regardless the exact nature of the other meeting isn't the point. The general fact that DEI work is usually not the most impactful work you can be doing in terms of personal development and growth in the organization is, so saying that under-represented people need to lead it harms under-represented people.
I don't really understand US terms, but the man concerned is a Cabinet Minister, not a diplomat.
(A cabinit minister is the equivalent of if you had a high-up Senator who was in charge of overseeing policy in a sector, I guess).
So it's very much an elected leadership role.
Historically when we have had members of a majority in charge of Government portfolios/policy sectors that mainly affect minorities, I don't think you can credibly argue that was somehow "better for" under-represented people than being able to participate directly in leadership roles themselves.
Deciding which policies will benefit women in leadership roles is arguably of more direct benefit to the lived realities of women, than helping decide where/how to help arm soldiers in a war somewhere else in the world.
There's enough women out there that sending one as a delegate to a women's empowerment conference is not going to require pulling one out of a meeting about Ukraine armaments.
There's actually a lot of women around. So, so many. It's actually a little intimidating just how many women there are.
That's fair, but also beside the point. This isn't a conference on equality (which should have a fair number of male representatives). It's a conference on female empowerment. Yes most conferences of this nature shouldn't be female only, but this is a pretty obvious exception imo. So obvious, it's not really worth bringing up the alternative scenarios.