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April 7, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
14:24
Are you against quotas？
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BBC research released today shows that women still hold fewer than a third of the most senior positions in the UK.
For High Court judges and above, only 13 posts, 13% excuse me, of posts are held by women.
Well, only 15% of FTSE 100 company female directors are female, and in politics, one in five government ministers only are women.
Overall, the number of women in top jobs like managers, directors, and senior officials is 32%.
And now the EU is considering whether to change the law and force companies to promote more female workers.
An authority exercising force on people against their will is the literal definition of oppression.
Norway, Belgium, and France already have boardroom quotas.
Which is coincidentally my argument against quotas.
Cherie Blair thinks it's a good idea.
Final nail in the coffin.
If Sherry Blair thinks it's a good idea, it's a fucking awful idea.
For a long time, you know, well, you have resisted the idea that we have to take special measures.
And with good reason, you walking corpse.
If you have to take special measures, you are not equal.
But the truth is, we have waited and waited, and unless we do take special measures to actually look at the systemic reasons why women aren't making it to the top, we're never going to succeed.
The systemic reasons being those women choosing not to pursue those life paths.
And so what you're going to have to do is make it impossible for them to not pursue those life paths.
Or either we, this, I don't know what group you think you represent, Sherry, but this we, I assume that's, you know, very, very wealthy Prime Minister's wives, won't be getting to the top for some reason.
Where is this plan?
Who has this plan that says, look, 50% of women at least have to be in power, or what?
If we have systemic barriers to making sure that half our population is not getting access to all the opportunities that they should be...
Alright, let's think about that.
What are the systemic barriers?
The systemic barriers are the fact that to get to these positions, you have to have risen on merit.
You need qualifications, you need experience, and you need to have proven yourself in those environments.
Now, if they are systemic barriers that you need to remove, then you are arguing for idiots to be placed in top jobs.
I think that's a fucking awful idea, don't you, Sherry?
Then we are not fulfilling our destiny.
Destiny!
Are you a prophet from God?
Have you been touched by the Almighty?
Did you come down from the mount with these stone tablets carved with the Lord's own finger, Sherry?
What are you fucking talking about?
Destiny!
There we go, not fulfilling our destiny.
That's right, woman!
You have a destiny!
Look at your face!
Oh shit, I was just going to go home and watch Hollyoaks.
But it's a good thing my Lord Prophet Sherry Blair came along and told me I had a fucking destiny.
And to top off the irony of the idea that women have a destiny, that means they're not free.
That means they don't get to make their own choices.
If it's destined, then it's all predetermined.
That means someone else has made this choice for women.
They don't get to choose it themselves.
Joining us now, former Minister Edwina Curry and Fiona Cowood, who's features director for Cosmopolitan magazine.
So on one hand we have a politician who was not particularly successful but she did manage to get herself elected and become an MP.
And on the other hand we've got a features editor of a women's magazine.
Very good morning to you both.
Do we need help to fulfil our destinies Edwina?
I don't think we need quotas.
Good.
Video over.
Edwina Curry has said the only sensible thing that will be said in this video.
Feminists, take note, see you next time.
I don't think we need all women shortlists.
I don't think we need any special help.
I mean I'd love to see more women at the top in all sorts of posts and particularly things like judges where it really does matter.
But I think the way forward is for us women to be as good as we can get and to go and bang on that door and say actually you're missing some really good talent here.
That's the way forward.
So the onus is on the women to do the banging on the door.
Yes.
The onus is on the people who want the achievements to actually fucking achieve them.
Edwina Curry, I didn't know much about her.
I knew the name, but I had to look her up.
And I tell you what, she's gone up in my estimation from this.
She knows where the problem lies.
And the problem lies with women simply not working hard enough to achieve these positions.
And that's not because women don't work hard.
That's because they don't want to go where this feminist cabal is trying to push them.
Rather than on governments to give them help.
Well, I think you've got two problems.
The first is, the moment you start introducing quotas, you're discriminating.
Well, at least we know that Edwina Curry will be first against the wall when the feminist revolution comes.
How dare you make a good point?
And people who have been discriminated against should not practice it on others.
Edwina Curry, number one enemy of Tumblr.
But the second thing is, in practical terms, the moment you start having special arrangements, the people who come through have not acquired the talents and the skills that they will need for the majority.
I used to say in Parliament, for example, the people who came in on the all-women shortlist, most of them were absolutely useless.
Most people can't remember who they were.
You see, the difference between Edwina Curry and modern feminists is that Edwina Currie is a person.
She isn't a template that was pumped out by fucking women's studies degree courses.
She has been in the real world.
She understands that just because they're women, that doesn't make them good.
That just makes them women.
You know, anyone can be good at a job, like Edwina says, 100% accurately.
If you don't go through the steps, you don't have the necessary experience.
Miss Cosmopolitan Features Editor, if you'd like to favour us with a predictably stupid response, please.
Quotas don't work properly.
Yeah, no, I have to say I don't agree with Edwina, I'm afraid.
I think the thing is, the rate at which things are changing is just too slow.
I think it's going to take about another 70 years to get an equal number of women as men on boards.
And this idea that there's no talent out there or that it's tokenism, I just don't buy it.
That's right.
If you're going to do something stupid, you may as well start arguing from a position of absolute ignorance as well.
No, go on.
Tell me about your time, Fiona Cowood, as an MP and how the quotas of women that you received were actually really high quality.
Because figures show that, you know, women and girls outperform boys at school at university.
The number of women with graduate degrees outstrips the number of men.
Yes, but it turns out that a graduate degree in gender studies doesn't help you run a multinational corporation.
The talent is there, and I just don't think that the men who are already on boards, you know, the prevailing dominant white middle to older age man, I don't think they're looking in the right places.
You're right, they're not.
They're actually looking in places that might foster the sort of skills they actually require.
Maybe if women went into those, you'd find more women in top jobs.
Maybe if women didn't keep making life choices that prevented them from getting to these top jobs and instead out-competed the competition, they'd be there.
But it's probably none of that.
Probably none of that.
I think that, as you said, it's a giant white male conspiracy.
Hang on, I'll be back in a second.
I just need to go cash in my patriarchy check.
It's just arrived in the mail.
Okay, so how would this work?
He's got a top job available for the head of a company.
What should that company do?
Hire a woman, of course.
What kind of stupid question is that?
They should walk out of their offices, go down into the street, find the first woman they meet and give her as much money as she wants.
So we only want women to apply for it because we want to add to the number of women in top jobs.
I think it's about having women represented on the long list.
And also, you know, headhunters, it's about being creative about where you find this talent.
And the reality is that there is a drop-off when women, you know, do very well.
Very well get pregnant.
Well, yeah.
Now, listen to Edwina.
When they get pregnant.
Who listening has heard women say, I fell pregnant?
That's the difference.
That is the difference between Edwina Curry, an intelligent, self-actualised woman, and this trollop next to her who's just like, well, things just have to be done because women can't do anything for themselves.
Something has to happen to women because women are objects and not actors.
But women do very well in their careers up until they reach the age where they're going to get pregnant and then there is a drop-off.
Yeah, she chose to get pregnant.
She chose to do something that was going to take nine months of her time and probably about a year off work instead of furthering her career.
She can't do both at the same time.
She can't take maternity leave and turn up at the office.
I mean, what's your solution?
Should all women be sterilised so they can't give birth because that way there is no chance of them dropping out to pregnancy so they can buckle down and put the hard work in like a man.
what needs to happen is that pipeline needs to be nurtured and I just don't think businesses are willing to face up to the reality and there is also a really important business case for having women on boards.
This idea that...
What vapid twaddle!
Their needs.
No, I want.
That's the thing.
I want because then I can have my cake and eat it.
There doesn't need to be.
If anything, there needs not to be because what you're proposing is detrimental to the businesses themselves.
So they are going to become less efficient, they're going to make less money and eventually they'll probably end up failing.
It's bad for business.
Edwina, though, is that congratulations on your impending birthday.
Is that something which is which is imposing part of a glass ceiling, do you think?
It doesn't impose a glass ceiling.
I managed to do everything.
I had my children, I have my career, but it takes a lot of juggling.
Oh, Edwina, we've been over this.
What you're proposing is called hard work.
And feminists don't do hard work.
Why doesn't anyone listen to them?
And you have to convince yourself.
Plus, I think having children is a lovely thing in itself to do.
What I would like to see is the clever young women that Fiona is accurate describing at school being given a much wider range of options.
We tend not to think of women going to business.
We think of them going into bing, the media.
We think of them reading magazines and being interested in clothes and all that sort of stuff.
You know, um old women like me get very annoyed at that because in in the days when I was uh trying to make a go of things, what we needed to do is convince business, politics, industry that we have we have brains and that that was what we were really uh available for.
Jesus Christ Edwina, steady on.
I don't think that having to prove yourself and earn the respect and positions that the feminists are trying to get is ever going to be something they're going to get on board with.
Not when they're having such success by just nagging people into giving them what they want.
How do you get those industries to change their attitude towards women?
Or are you suggesting that the problem is that women have the wrong attitude towards those industries?
I love how confused she is.
Are you saying that women aren't taking getting results as seriously as they need to be to achieve in these industries that thrive exclusively on the results that they produce?
I think part of this has to come from the top.
I think part of it has to come from people like Mike David Cameron and others thinking, actually, we're not going to have a quota.
We just need more.
And this is the way I did it when I was a minister.
I would say, look, I'm not going to have a quota.
I don't know what's enough, but I want more.
I'm more women on these boards.
I want more women and more.
And go and find them.
They're there.
But that sounds exactly like a quota.
That's because it is a quota.
The problem here is that no one's being honest.
Women do not want to do these jobs.
Therefore, they are not putting in the hard work that is required to get these jobs.
There is nothing about this that is logically inconsistent.
No, it's not a quota.
This is just being a lot more proactive without saying I'm going to discriminate against other types of women.
More proaction and a higher aspiration, a wider aspiration from women themselves.
I think women have wide aspirations.
I don't agree that women are only interested in magazines and the media and jobs like that.
I think, you know, the problem is that...
Well, what stopped you becoming a woman scientist, for example?
I wasn't interested in it.
Exactly!
Case fucking clothes.
You got him!
But that doesn't mean that women aren't interested in science.
That's a huge generalisation, I think.
But it's also accurate.
Your average woman, if you were to take a sample of every woman in the country, would not be a scientist.
She would not have a particular interest in science.
But nobody is saying that women can't have an interest in science.
They can have an interest in whatever they want.
The reality is that it's been proven, lots of studies have shown, that when you've got a boardroom situation, people look for people who are like themselves.
We've given men a chance to change things.
They haven't done it.
So it hasn't been a lot of time.
But you just end up with poorer quality boardrooms.
the tragedy that when you start if you have a bus route into Heathrow you don't learn to drive You know, you really have to come through the mainstream.
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