Reply #61: Maybe I'm misunderstanding you... [View All]

[primavera]

... but it kind of sounded like you were saying that you felt that, for you, as a woman, in order to be "fairly represented," you needed to be represented by women. Is that right? So if I go into a hospital, as a man, should I refuse treatment from nurses because so few of them are men? I'm not sure I'm following your reasoning here. I think we share the goal of a discrimination free workplace in which people are free to engage in whatever occupation they wish without constraint, but I don't think one can measure our progress towards that happy outcome simply by comparing percentages of women in the population against percentages of women within any given occupation. What if few women want to become construction workers? Should they be compelled to become construction workers whether they like it or not in order to achieve statistical symmetry? Likewise, is proportionate representation in each and every occupation a meaningful indicator of gay equality in our society?