AIBU to find the whole "lets fire the men and bring on women" approach to this cabinet reshuffle REALLY offensive?

[VanGogh]

That's just it really. The bloody cabinet reshuffle.

All over the news this morning I've been confronted with "tired, pale and male out" women in.

Personally, I don't give a fiddlers the gender of a person in a role so long as they are the right person for the job. This whole "men out, women in" story pretty much guarantees (IMO) that any woman promoted will now be perceived both by the public and her colleagues as "she's just here because she's a woman" rather than the right person for the role.

I find it offensive to women. Am I on my high horse? AIBU?

“I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons”

^^ There's a comment from our (Australia's) minister for Women, Thecageisfull. He is also our PM.

I agree wholeheartedly with thecageisfull's point about the selection process. Let's be more honest, local parties (of all colours) are run by older, white, men. In my experience, the exceptions are rare.

Is it any wonder that when selecting a candidate, this isn't the most conducive environment for looking objectively at candidates experiences and judging their skills? The skills that women have are often undervalued by society, workplaces and of course political parties. With qualities such as assertiveness being seen as off putting in a woman but attractive in a man.

Constituency parties chose candidates in their own likeness and so the cycle of men choosing men is hard to break. I think having women in the cabinet shows local parties that there are 'women of merit' ought there and that they are very capable indeed of doing a good job.

(And I say this as a non conservative voter)

bragmatic

Granted, that was in the 70s, when he was a young bastard.

But just to convince you, here's a more recent comment:

“I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think are both, they both need to be moderated, so to speak.”

bragmatic so good to see that nothing much has changed in Australian politics in the last 20 years. It's almost comforting. Almost.

Sorry, I'm derailing...

As you were.

Yes CaptChaos.

I'm sure all us pesky women need is a good root.

I don't want to speak in defense of Liz Truss, or indeed Esther McVey who is ,in my opinion, an odious and cruel person, and a bare faced liar to boot, or Nicky Morgan (education ) who is a misogynous homophobe, imo, but we have had plenty of incompetent men in cabinet positions. Gove, Lansley, Hunt, Osbourne, Cameron to name but a few. It's likely that they too got their cabinet position due to their gender (colour and class) too. Jobs for the boys, jobs for the girls, it's all the same shit.

I had to have words with DH the other day when he reported that his company's board had lost their only woman and so had quickly recruited another as it looked bad to have an all male board. He's pretty good generally so I was shocked how easily he slipped into the assumption that this woman was only there because of her sex.

It's simple - if you believe that men are inherently better than women, then male domination at the top of politics/business is perfectly natural.

However, if you believe that both sexes are equally competent, then if you see male domination in positions of power you have to believe that a number of less competent men are there in preference to more competent women, simply because of their sex. That's the essence of privilege. But nobody looks at a cabinet full of white men and says 'well they've only been given jobs because they're men', do they?

Oh, I do agree thecageisfull
I see the charmless Mr. Gove has also been shoved out of Education.

However, I also think that Cameron was desperate to promote women on this occasion, regardless of their track record.

Too little too late.
It's all tactical election policies now not real 'let's get this sorted' politics.
It's like when a players bought on for the 89th minute in the cup final.

Positive discrimination doesn't offend me. The power imbalance between men and women has been so great throughout history that I'm afraid the scales will have to swing the other way from time to time until some sort of equilibrium is achieved.

If the only women ministers the Tories can find at this point before the GE all turn out to be crap we can blame the Tories for the imbalance in their selection process, not womankind as a whole. I mean, what is the actual likelihood that there are no Conservative women in existence who are willing and able to do these jobs?

And, as Nick Robinson said on R4 this morning, the outgoing ministers aren't exactly leaving behind a shortage of middle-aged, white males are they?

We're only going from 3 women to 5 or (max) 6.

Not particularly radical (or cynical) IMO.

Am I missing something? So far there have only been Liz Truss and Nicky Morgan brought in that I've seen, and the only other woman being tipped for a Cabinet-level post is Esther McVey. So are we seriously suggesting that appointing (possibly) three additional women to the Cabinet, bringing the grand total to six, is a step too far and offensive to women because there will then be too many women in the Cabinet?

However, I also think that Cameron was desperate to promote women on this occasion, regardless of their track record

It's a shame they didn't think of it decades ago, then they could've recruited women at the grass roots, selected them, got them elected and then he might actually have a pool of competent women to chose from instead of his 'Is that the election I see on the horizon? You in the skirt! Come here!' approach

thecageisfull, Tory candidates are chosen by local parties, not the centre. Ironically the majority of people choosing Tory candidates are women on selection committees.

Somewhere along the line, women are being prevented/hindered by someones/somethings/circumstances from getting into politics. I don't think this particular batch of promotions has been done to promote women in cabinet but if it has the effect of making these kind of role more accessible for women (or maybe seen as accessible, which is half the battle) then that's a good thing?

These particular women, I would prefer to not have in the cabinet. I'm looking at you Truss.

grovel I know that but something is going wrong somewhere if women aren't being selected across the board. They are either being actively discriminated against or they are not up to the job (why?). If 60-70% of candidates on the long list are women and 0% on the shortlist are then it may just be a co-incidence but if it happens over and over again then it may be a good idea for party leaders to step in so they don't end up with a minister for women and equalities who wants to reduce the abortion limit and voted against marriage equality. Labour had women only shortlists and so don't find themselves in quite the same hole.

I absolutely can't stand Esther McVey. But the whole thing has just be done to stop Labour asking why there are not more women in the cabinet.

I'm really torn.

On individual levels, I think Gove is a real danger in education, so I'm glad to see him go. And I agree that it all seems quite cynical, and not a wholehearted attempt to get the best person for the job. After all, if they were really fussed, FFS wouldn't they try to remove some of the hurdles women face anyway?!

But despite all of that, I do think it is important to acknowledge that women don't always get jobs purely on merit, even if we'd like them to. It's important to make people aware that women who might have been as good as (or better than) the men sometimes get pushed out before they have a chance. So I think the debate surrounding this isn't a bad thing.

To me it just smacks of tokenism and a desperate attempt to entice women to vote for them. I couldn't care less whether a Tory MP is male or female. They're still Tories...

Thatcher hated women.

I agree.

It's a transparent attempt to go for the female vote.

Added to putting a euro-sceptic in as Foreign secretary to win the UKIP vote, it's all a little too desperate.

That said, it's almost impossible to know how to vote at the next election.

I just read this on another thread

"Back to the reshuffle, I've seen a post by someone I know on FB who has done a lot of research and advocacy for kids in care who says some who are out in the reshuffle (not Gove, who will be chief whip) have been linked (to the child abuse scandal) He thinks they're getting binned now for damage limitation."

Just don't know what to believe any more...

So... before the reshuffle there were 20 female Tory ministers (three of them in the cabinet). Now there are 22 (five of them in the Cabinet).

As Lucy Powell has tweeted, there's now no minister for childcare.

Not really sure that this can be described as "men out, women in" on any kind of significant scale. And if it's an attempt to go for the female vote it's a bit of a crap one.