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Iceland almost gets female-majority parliament
- Proven 5y agoWho gives a crap what gender they are. Are they going to cut taxes and restore freedoms? If not, GTFO.
- thebooktocome 5y agoWhat freedoms have been taken from Icelanders?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- spacephysics 5y agoHere comes progressivism in all its glory
- mlang23 5y agomy condolences.
- dang 5y agoIf you troll HN like this again we will ban you. We've asked you before not to use HN for ideological flamewar, and you've continued to do it. If you keep that up, we will also ban you, so no more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jopython 5y ago```Iceland has elected a female-majority parliament, a landmark for gender equality in the North Atlantic island nation, in a vote that saw centrist parties make the biggest gains. ``` How is it 'equality' if one of the sides is majority?
- kaesar14 5y agoWow, yeah, how could women constituting a majority of a wealthy country’s government possibly be a step in the pursuit of gender equality?
- mlang23 5y agoDont ask, or you will be downvoted...
- antasvara 5y agoIf you read the article, women make up 33 of the 63 seats. That's ~52%, which is well within the margin of error for a country that is ~50% women. Looking at the binomial probability, we would expect this number of women (or more) ~40% of the time. I'd say that this is statistically pretty close to equality.
- eesmith 5y agoWith 63 seats (and assuming only two gender identifications), it's impossible for one gender to not be in the majority. Gender equality in this measurement is therefore likely meant to be interpreted as time-averaged, not instantaneous. Even with an even number of seats, unless 50-50 were mandated, we would expect fluctuations around the mean.
- gruez 5y agoRight now it's 52% female so I'm willing to let it slide even though it's not exactly 50%. That said, I'm skeptical that a pro-male representation camp will materialize even if it hits 60 or 70%. See: gender gap in college attendance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28436836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28436836
- klyrs 5y agoI'd look at "equality" as a statistical measure over time. If the imbalance is less than 10% in each parliament, and the frequency of male- and female-majority parliaments (say, over the last century) is similarly balanced, I'd call that pretty darn equal. Thus far, Iceland has only elected a single female-majority parliament in its entire history, so I'd agree with your implication that equality has not been achieved. I'd also agree with the article, that this is a landmark.
- mynameismon 5y agoHonestly, the fact that we are celebrating (not that we shouldn't) the election of the first female majority parliament shows why gender equality is still not achieved
- freeflight 5y ago> gender equality is still not achieved What would that equality look like when there are more genders than just two? [0] Not trying to be facetious here, I'm seriously interested how the "gender-fluid movement" sees the future on these kinds of issues? [0] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-gender-identity#types-of-gender-identity https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-gender-id...
- klyrs 5y agoApproximately equal representation of the populace, probably. Perhaps, rounding up to at least one representive.
- ohmaigad 5y agoYou have a very broken idea (just like most equality supporters) about what gender equality is. It should be equal opportunity not equal outcome. The usual argument about having a parliament divided 50/50 is that the population is divided roughly 50/50. But everybody always somehow forgets that even women voters aren't voting for women...
- inter_netuser 5y agoAt some point every well intentioned movement becomes a caricature of its former self, it seems.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- detaro 5y agoThere is a difference between "parliament should always be 50/50" and "parliament has always (until today) skewed in one direction, that suggests a problem".
- ihsw 5y agoEquity was always about vengeance and punishment, not fairness and justice.
- jdhn 5y agoWhy should I care? Does this mean that they'll make "better" decisions (better in quotes because better is subjective) than a predominantly male parliament?
- thereare5lights 5y agoIf this event is not meaningful to you, then don't care. This event is meaningful to women. If you don't possess the capacity for the empathy necessary to intuit why this is meaningful, then I don't think someone explaining it to you will make a difference.
- jmmcd 5y agoThis is not "meaningful to women", it is meaningful to all.
- thereare5lights 5y agoGiven that your post got flagged, that you admit it's meaningful despite you asking why you should care, I can only conclude you were trolling.
- jfengel 5y agoIt means you can stop caring about gender equality in Iceland, and start asking why your own country doesn't have the same. And if your answer is "it's impossible", then you can care that Iceland is a counterexample.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIt's not clear to me that an even split among genders in governance is an indicator of gender equality. Wouldn't it be more something like gender non-relevance for governance? If a trait doesn't matter for a given task, you would expect that trait to probably be proportional in the sample as it is in the population.
- 5y ago
- aaomidi 5y agoThis is super exciting and I'm proud of Iceland!
- hugi 5y agoThank you! As an Icelandic guy, we're extremely happy about this :)
- c048 5y agoCould you explain in detail why you're happy about this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- standardUser 5y agoIn a society without a history of male dominance over women, having a legislative body with more women than men would be commonplace or at least unremarkable. In virtually all societies through all of history, this has not been the case. So the fact that such a thing has now occurred is an indicator of reduced male dominance, something we should all be happy about.
- vimy 5y agoThis point of view assumes women have the same interests as men but were held back by society. What if women are just less interested in politics? Edit: I should have worded it better. I meant political careers.
- standardUser 5y agoMy point assumes no such thing. If you have a point to make yourself, feel free to make it instead of asking leading questions.
- dahart 5y ago
- aero-glide2 5y agoSo I haven't been in hackernews that long, but I'm still not sure what topics are allowed/not allowed. Because imo this isn't very relevant?
- arp242 5y agoOh gosh, the comment section will be fun no doubt. Anyway, as a matter of curiosity I counted the Dutch parliament, and 60 out of 150 seats are taken by women, or exactly 40%. I was just curious how it compares (data isn't on the website, so I just counted manually from the pictures, may be off by one or two members by accident; data at [1]). I had expected the younger MPs to be more balanced, but it seems it's the 40-50 bracket that's the "most equal": almost 50%, vs. 20% of under 40s. Not sure what to make of this; maybe women are more likely to go in to politics after pregnancy? Not sure... Would be interesting to do a more detailed analysis over more elections. [1]: https://gist.github.com/arp242/edc381cc34a437662be931d1783bf241 https://gist.github.com/arp242/edc381cc34a437662be931d1783bf...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fragmede 5y agofascinating that there first possibility considered is something related to pregnancy, rather than something about having grown up in the 1970's and before vs 1980's and above! Can't think of any single generational difference either?
- Jensson 5y agoI don't get it? What happened in 1980's that would make women less likely to go into politics?
- arp242 5y agoIt's just that it's the major and obvious difference between the lives of men and women, and it seems like a logical place to start. Undoubtedly there are other factors too – my comment wasn't intended as a complete explanation. > something about having grown up in the 1970's and before vs 1980's and above! Can't think of any single generational difference either? I don't know what your point is exactly?
- watwut 5y agoFor myself, I can tell with certainty that having small child and bigger one is massive differences in terms of how much time I have for other things. In general, women are more likely to be primary care giver, so this can make difference.
- redisman 5y agoThe corresponding number in the US for 2021 is 26.7%. The highest ever..
- saevarom 5y agoSorry to blow the thunder but due to a recount in one of the constituencies we no longer have a female majority in the Parliament. 3 women lost their seats to men.
- dang 5y agoI've changed the title above to reflect what the article now says. Submitted title was "Iceland elects its first female-majority parliament", which I assume is what it originally said.
- aegirth 5y agoSorry, after a recount that finished in the northwest constituency just over an hour ago this isn't valid anymore. Women are not in the majority anymore.
- bjourne 5y agoIn 1994 the leading Swedish party the Social Democrats made it their policy to have women on every other electable position. This policy obviously increased the number of female candidates the party fielded but, according to research, also increased the average competence level of the candidates. Contrary to common(?) wisdom, the competence of female candidates that took positions from male candidates were generally equal to or higher than the men that they replaced. Thus the fear that gender quotas that favor women in politics will decrease competence seem unfounded as it is contradicted by research. Furthermore, the research may also indicate that men has some inherent trait unrelated to their competence that gives them an advantage over women. Parties generally select their candidates through competitions and, on the local level, they often amount to nothing more than popularity contests... This process may be inherently biased against women. The research is here: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20160080 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20160080 I'm sure anyone who frequents HN is able to find and read the full article online. Feel free to read it before criticizing. :) The authors define competence as a combination of educational attainment with income level compared to the mean. So it's a very crude metric, but similar metrics have been used to measure competence in other contexts.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThe abstract doesn't say what you're saying. It says that the competence of men increased on average because the worst men got kicked out. Which is obviously what's going to happen. If you take a class of people and remove the bottom half, the average of the remaining people will necessarily be improved.
- alkonaut 5y agoIsn't that... exactly the point?
- Jensson 5y agoNo, the study doesn't even compare men and women. It compares men to men and women to women. It doesn't say anything at all about the competence of the newly added women compared to the competence of the kicked out men, since it has no absolute values of competence in the study. It just has deltas for men and deltas for women, so you can't compare. So all we learned is that reducing the amount of positions available to men will kick out the less competent men first. We didn't learn whether the total competence of the group got increased after gender quotas compared to before.
- jimjimjim 5y agoimportant note before reading the comment section in any part of the internet: some people will never be happy, and will try to make happy people less happy.
- nprateem 5y agoI wouldn't celebrate too much. We recently had a female prime minister who was probably the shittest in British history (until her successor). And yet Merkel and Arden seem great. It's almost like gender isn't the characteristic that marks a good politician after all...
- uxcolumbo 5y agoWhy do you think May and Johnson are incredibly bad at this? Their party's ideology? And that those folks usually can't relate to the normal person on the street? Which results in them not really giving a toss about them or not caring about what it means to cut £20 weekly for people already struggling while we are going into winter with higher energy prices.
- telesilla 5y agoOne of the great things about equality is that women get to be terrible people too, given the same opportunities. We're not some magical race of angels.
- nprateem 5y agoExactly. So shouldn't there be more of a push for a meritocracy instead of this incessant chasing of equal gender ratios?
- oxplot 5y agoDig down enough and all so called merit comes down to luck. And no, we shouldn't push for putting all lucky people in power.
- nprateem 5y agoAh I see. So you'd rather have a random selection of people attempting to do jobs they're not much good at, who are lucky enough to possess certain characteristics. Right...
- 5y ago
- golemiprague 5y agoMore women living on tax payer money, as if we need more of that. I will celebrate when women will open more businesses or get involved in more productive endeavours. Not that I think equality in all jobs is something we should strive for. Women and men have different inclinations and in average prefer to do different things. It is pretty clear now that all jobs are open for everyone, especially in the more liberal countries. If we have equal number of men and women in all jobs it means something is very wrong with our society.
- Aulig 5y agoI always look at how the gender ratio is in high-ranking and low-ranking party members. Usually the ratio is quite similar, which is most likely optimal from a equality perspective I'd say.
- iJohnDoe 5y agoWhy celebrate a female-majority? In 10 years are we going to see posts about celebrating a male-majority after females have successfully pushed out males? How about celebrating diversity?
- maccolgan 5y agoYeah, celebrate diversity in Iceland...
- rajishx 5y agoI for one going to look forward for a world ruled by women, it has been mostly dominated by mens and look where we are at now...