Esotera said:
The very fact that there's such a massive disparity between the two genders indicates discrimination. If the gender divide is above a reasonable threshold e.g. 70/30 then there is probably a social issue that is stopping women. And given that UK politics is mostly run by boarding school boys I find that way more plausible than not enough women being interested in politics.
And boarding school girls (and grammar school boys and girls). Why would a disparity necessarily mean there's discrimination? Behaviour can fall along heavily gendered lines even when nothing but free choice is involved.
For example:
We had a female PM
in the 80s, in the
conservative government. She was PM for a long time. At the very least, Thatcher is evidence that a woman can and has succeeded to the highest levels of government. We've had many female cabinet ministers besides. Many women have paved the way and provided role models and showed it could be done.
Some time
after this, the labour party introduced gender quotas, resulting in a large influx of women who became MPs. But of the 80 or so women who could stand for the 2010 Labour leadership election, only one chose to (Diane Abbott, bless her). This included prominent female politicians and cabinet members such as Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears. I'm sure each of those 79 women had their reasons; but discrimination wasn't one of them: no one could've stopped them from standing.
I think instead of telling girls that "You will be stopped by the boys club" and "You need special help just to compete", we should tell them "If you want to stand, then
stand", and if they choose not to (even in numbers as great as 80% or even 99%) then we have to let those women stand by that decision. It's as simple as free choice.
But don't take my word for it, listen to actual female politicians [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qfr-YHKWMQ].
OT: There have been a couple of articles in the news recently about how we should be trying to boost the number of women STEM undergraduates. Whilst this is probably the most pressing issue, that doesn't mean we should forget about the small percentage of men doing certain courses e.g. psychology, biology.
And thank you for acknowledging that.
Trying to convince women to go into STEM fields is part of a larger agenda however; to increase women's earnings compared to men, since those fields are generally well paid, because they're tough and so few people want to do them.
I would also mention that no one appears to be interested in convincing women to do other male dominated professions: all the dangerous and dirty jobs that lead to the workplace death rate being 90% male, for example. I wonder why that is.
Cheers