School axes head boy and head girl roles, two boys are voted into new gender neutral positions

[Kookabura]

Link to telegraph article here: www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/04/17/grammar-school-axes-head-boy-head-girl-roles-bid-establish-gender/

Pallisers

Exactly where has it been shown that these two boys got the job based on unfair bias?

Your position actually does a disservice to women because it reinforces the incorrect idea that they cannot succeed without some form of special treatment being given

As has been previously stated, girls at secondary school usually perform to a much higher level than boys and are generally more mature. If two boys have been put in charge, they may indeed be pretty exceptional characters. Or not. We don't have enough information.

It wouldn't surprise me if the next leadership team the school 'selects' will now contain two girls because of this media story.

If that did happen, do you think those hypothetical girls are going to feel proud of their achievement, or is it going to be marred by the thought that they may only there to 'balance the books'?

Any woman could be anything she wants if she only applied herself/didn't get distracted by children or periods/was as good as a man. That is simply it - women have been slackers for millenia and hence their lack of representation in all the top jobs/professions/positions of power. Lazy underachievers.

Yup. It's weird how chance always favours people with penises in this kind of thing but it's maybe like tossing a coin and getting heads 225,857,942 times in a row - it's bound to come up tails soon right?

Or maybe that's a fucking wonky coin you're tossing there.

"If that did happen, do you think those hypothetical girls are going to feel proud of their achievement, or is it going to be marred by the thought that they may only there to 'balance the books'?"

That's the whole point - if you enshrine equality as the default it becomes a fair and level playing field. if you suddenly like start basing appointments on other factors people start to see that choices are being made for political purposes.

One boy and one girl - neither feels like they are there to balance the books. it is just the way it is, because that's fair and representative.

If the school left it as it was (and it works perfectly well in other schools and always has done) this possible after-effect would not have been a problem.

Men seem to have a lot less tolerance than women for bullshit. Plus they don't get attacked for calling bullshit, while women get accused of being transphobic or feminizs

Yes I agree. We really do need some men to speak up for us in order to get this bullshit sorted. That’s a terrible thing to admit but I think until this happens we’re just dismissed as TERFS.

.*

Forced equality?That's not equality.

Well nor is inequality. I'd rather have forced equality frankly.

This is what pisses me off about the whole anti-positive discrimination argument. The idea that at the moment there is any kind of level playing field. We already have discrimination. It just isn't positive.

Remember

I agree that they should have just left things as they were.

As it is, let's see what happens.

A 50/50 basis for things like boards and Parliament is based on the knowledge and acceptance the men and women are equally capable (something we all believe in, right?).

So if we know we have to choose 20 men and 20 women, we choose the best ones to do the job. Just the same number of each. This in no way makes either sex feel like they are being chosen because of their sex - because it is exactly the same on both sides.

I just don't understand when people suggest that women's shortlists are sexist or undermine women's achievements. Because by suggesting 50/50 splits are unfair, you are basically saying that women aren't good enough and don't deserve a 50/50 place.

Hear hear remember.

Certain

Because all forced equality does is replace one injustice (girl might not get a top job because of bias), with another injustice (best person for the job might be a boy, but he doesn't get the job because of representation).

Bollocks. Positive discrimination just takes out our actual subconscious or conscious discrimination for us for a while while we learn to think properly about men and women/black and white/whatever.

Otherwise all we have is discrimination and us sitting around shrugging and saying 'Ach well...'

Remember

It a nice idea, but it's fundamentally flawed because it assumes that an exactly 50/50 split of men and women are applying for those jobs, it also doesn't account for any statistical variation.

To reverse the scenario in order to illustrate my point, let's consider midwifery. Men are grossly underrepresented in that field (something like 90% plus midwives are women)

What if we implemented your plan?

For arguments sake, let's say there are 100 midwife jobs to fill, so we should split them down 50/50 between men and women? Right?

But what if 1000 woman have trained to become midwives, and only 50 men have? Every woman has a 1 in 20 chance of getting a job, it's incredibly competitive and difficult. Meanwhile every single man who applies gets the job. If you were number 51 on the female list, how fair would that be?

Obviously my figures are made up for ease of illustration but they make my point.

Having a rule that says all jobs must be filled by an exact ratio of 50/50 men and women seems fair at first glance, but is actually incredibly unfair and inefficient.

Certain

But it pre-supposes that unfair bias had taken place in every single case, and always against the perceived minority.

'Feminism is about gender equality'

No it isn't.

Yeah. That's kinda what we're here for. Because we think that unfair bias is taking place against WAG. Hence the Feminism.

Certain

Because we think that unfair bias is taking place

It probably is in some instances. But then if we implement your system, we just impose unfair treatment on men in some instances instead, except this time it's accepted and approved unfair treatment that nobody can complain about or seek redress on.

And coming back to the whole point of this thread. Nobody has shown (or even has any evidence) that these two boys got the job unfairly.

As I stated earlier, I don't see the problem with the traditional Head Boy/Head Girl system to be honest, but we are where we are.

Thread handily bogged down.

Pure anocdata here

But in a local school it is a popularity contest, children can vote for their choice of head girl and head boy

But over the last few years girls seem to have voted for both, but the boys pretty much just for head boy

Which doesnt cause a problem in the school as its equal...but it might if it was gender neutral and they were voting for the two positions...if that makes sense

But as i say just anocdata

So no one yell at me

Or type in caps lock obviously

I feel there were too many emoji in that post

It seems quite bizarre if the final selection rested with the head (is that what I read earlier in the thread?) and she made a decision to have two boys. Some kind of virtue-signalling? "Look, how gender-neutral I am."

Never mind Rufus, I like emojis. They make up for the lack of physical signals.

juells

Juells

Or the Head just picked the two best candidates for the job?

I still don't understand why a man is in Feminist Chat on a website called Mumsnet.

I wonder too @Juells, it seems really tone deaf to have made that choice whilst going on about being gender "neutral".

Who knows, maybe they will pick two girls next year, or even an all girl committee. Maybe.