5 ms·

Is it just me or should the primary qualification for Defense Minister overseeing a 100 billion investment be competence rather than gender? I’m not German but

Is it just me or should the primary qualification for Defense Minister overseeing a 100 billion investment be competence rather than gender? I’m not German but this article keeps referencing the pressure Olaf is feeling to select another woman. Wouldn’t the pressure (in these times) be to pick the right person?

odiroot 4y ago
I believe the quotas were agreed with partner parties during the coalition negotiations. Maybe they're even set in stone in the coalition contract.
- danbruc 4y ago
  Which is a stupid idea to begin with. If you have equally qualified people, fine, pick by gender, but don't make gender the primary criterion. But they thought this through as well as the train wreck that gender neutral language is.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Doesn't German already have a grammatical neuter?
    - ido 4y ago
      Yeah, but you can't just refer to people as "Das", it would be like referring to them as "it" in English (i.e. it sounds like you're talking about an object rather than a person).
    - danbruc 4y ago
      German has Genus and Sexus, grammatical and natural sex. Das Mädchen means girl, grammatically it is neuter but naturally of course feminine. The main issue is that many job titles are grammatically masculine - der Lehrer, teacher - and there is a derived variant for women - die Lehrerin, female teacher - but none for man, in which case the generic term - der Lehrer - is reused. So they came up with the idea to always writer der/die Lehrer*in because der Lehrer could be understood as generic but also as masculine. Or some variant of this, they can not even agree on how exactly it should be written or spoken. The much more sane way to do it would be to just drop the female variant and retrain people over time to no longer infer a natural sex from the grammatical sex. We even already do this in cases where there are no natural sex specific variants, der Mensch means human, grammatically masculine but no one derives from that that we are talking about a man. Die Leiche means corpse, grammatically feminin but no one derives from that that we are talking about a woman. And if you really have to differentiate, then you can always use adjectives, der weibliche Lehrer, der männliche Lehrer, the female teacher, the male teacher.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    Well, yes, but you shouldn't be making gender the secondary or tertiary criterion either.
bt4u 4y ago
[dead]
this_user 4y ago
Scholz himself has set the goal to have gender parity. He simply could choose not to adhere to that. The worst that could happen is some internal criticism from his party. On the other hand, the MoD has been the red-haired stepchild of ministries in Germany for a long time, especially when left-wing parties control the government. You could almost think that they are intentionally trying to sabotage it by putting people in charge who are completely unqualified. Lambrecht is just the latest example of that. Then again, Merkel didn't do much better. Lambrecht's direct predecessor under the Merkel administration was not much different. Her predecessor became President of the European Commission after Merkel had to get her out of dodge due to a scandal that had resulted in a parliamentary inquiry. Her predecessor made decisions that were directly responsible for a lack of spare parts as well as a failed programme for developing the "Euro Hawk" drone. His predecessor's political career was ended by a plagiarism scandal involving his PhD thesis. And so on...
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  > red-haired I know it's innocous and unintended, but using this expression causes all kinds of problems to red-haired kids (I imagine as an adult you can get fed up with some references, too).
  - nix23 4y ago
    Shut up Ron, you got the nicest girl in the school.
  - mc32 4y ago
    It's like the saying 'scott-free.' No one intends it to denigrate anyone except for the subject of the sentence. The great majority of these saying have pretty much lost all connection to their origins but people keep insisting on resuscitating them and will take offence on behalf of a perceived offended person. No one really believes all red-headed children are the result of an illicit relationship.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    So what. I'm left-handed and survived all the references to anything "left" [1] being bad. From "two left hands" to "sinister" ("left" in Latin), from "the left-hand path" for those who are of the devil to the fact that "dexterity" derives from "dexter" ("right" in Latin), someone who is skilled with both hands is "ambidextrous" ("both right hands") while a clumsy person is "ambisinistrous" ("both left hands"), etcetera. Did I suffer from this? Nope, I'm in good company and fine the way I am. Same for red-haired kids, they'll come out fine and are in good company. Trying to protect them by playing the speech police is not just bloody irritating but it also does them a disservice since they´ll have to enter the big bad world eventually where there are no hdjjhhvvhga's to tell off the nasty people who say mean things to them. [1] apart from politics where the situation is oddly enough reversed
FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
https://memeguy.com/photos/images/ministers-of-defence-201717.jpg https://memeguy.com/photos/images/ministers-of-defence-20171...
jltsiren 4y ago
I'm not familiar with the German system, but I would guess not. Government departments often have a separation between career and political leadership. Career leadership consists of professionals selected for competence. The minister is a politician selected for political considerations. There may also be some political staff who serve the minister directly and are familiar with the subject matter. When a government coalition is formed, each party gets some specific positions, and it's generally free to choose who to appoint. Within each party, gender balance and geographic balance tend to be important, as the voters are otherwise likely to punish the party in the next elections. Some people also have personal priority, for example because they are in the party leadership or they reliably bring in a lot of votes. Not all minister positions are equal. Some (such as those dealing with economics, finances, and foreign policy) are important, while others (such as education and culture) tend to be low status. Top positions go to high-priority people, while low-status positions are often given to people with specific combinations of traits. Defense has been a low-status position in Germany, largely due to political culture shaped by losing WW2.
kadoban 4y ago
A bit more than half of the population is women. Unless you're assuming that women are by nature less competent, narrowing to half of the population either includes the best candidate or at least one infinitesimally close to the best candidate with ridiculously high probability. So what's the harm exactly? The benefit is that we actually end up with some diversity, instead of the usual old-white-guy club that most of the West defaults to in leadership positions.
- hackeraccount 4y ago
  Is diversity for it's own sake worth it? If they were to say - "We have a candidate with a bold new vision for the armed forces of Germany; they bring things to the table unlike anyone else - plus they're a woman." My response would be that that's great but I don't see what the plus part is bringing to the table. I'm slightly more familiar with the U.S. side of things and clearly woman get the shaft - mainly because senior positions tend to pull from areas (fighter pilots and SOF for example) where the applicability of those particular experiences to command compared to other areas is at least questionable. I think the answer to that problem is to see if the premise - running around in the boondocks leading a platoon in extremely high pressure situations or flying an F-35 off a carrier deck is relevant experience for a 4 star general or admiral - is true or if there's not equally or more relevant areas of expertise. Not - let's have people with different experiences because it's different.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    > Is diversity for it's own sake worth it? Probably. Even if the decisions made are 100% the same, or at least equivalently valuable, it has benefits throughout society because it makes people everywhere feel more included, and it gives children the idea that they too can do what they want. If you're a woman or person of color or etc. and relatively _nobody_ in leadership positions has anything like your life experience, and none of them look anything like you, what does that do for either your impression of how the organization aligns with your interests, or your desire to try for a career in whatever organization? Nothing good. > If they were to say - "We have a candidate with a bold new vision for the armed forces of Germany; they bring things to the table unlike anyone else - plus they're a woman." Those are not completely unconnected things. If your baseline is 100% old white men, someone who is not in at least one of those categories is likely to have different approaches and ideas that may be worth considering. So your question is a bit problematic to answer honestly, because it explicitly assumes that the diversity of experience part is 100% divorced from the diversity of thought part.

odiroot 4y ago

I believe the quotas were agreed with partner parties during the coalition negotiations. Maybe they're even set in stone in the coalition contract.

danbruc 4y ago
Which is a stupid idea to begin with. If you have equally qualified people, fine, pick by gender, but don't make gender the primary criterion. But they thought this through as well as the train wreck that gender neutral language is.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Doesn't German already have a grammatical neuter?
  - ido 4y ago
    Yeah, but you can't just refer to people as "Das", it would be like referring to them as "it" in English (i.e. it sounds like you're talking about an object rather than a person).
  - danbruc 4y ago
    German has Genus and Sexus, grammatical and natural sex. Das Mädchen means girl, grammatically it is neuter but naturally of course feminine. The main issue is that many job titles are grammatically masculine - der Lehrer, teacher - and there is a derived variant for women - die Lehrerin, female teacher - but none for man, in which case the generic term - der Lehrer - is reused. So they came up with the idea to always writer der/die Lehrer*in because der Lehrer could be understood as generic but also as masculine. Or some variant of this, they can not even agree on how exactly it should be written or spoken. The much more sane way to do it would be to just drop the female variant and retrain people over time to no longer infer a natural sex from the grammatical sex. We even already do this in cases where there are no natural sex specific variants, der Mensch means human, grammatically masculine but no one derives from that that we are talking about a man. Die Leiche means corpse, grammatically feminin but no one derives from that that we are talking about a woman. And if you really have to differentiate, then you can always use adjectives, der weibliche Lehrer, der männliche Lehrer, the female teacher, the male teacher.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Well, yes, but you shouldn't be making gender the secondary or tertiary criterion either.

bt4u 4y ago

[dead]

this_user 4y ago

Scholz himself has set the goal to have gender parity. He simply could choose not to adhere to that. The worst that could happen is some internal criticism from his party. On the other hand, the MoD has been the red-haired stepchild of ministries in Germany for a long time, especially when left-wing parties control the government. You could almost think that they are intentionally trying to sabotage it by putting people in charge who are completely unqualified. Lambrecht is just the latest example of that. Then again, Merkel didn't do much better. Lambrecht's direct predecessor under the Merkel administration was not much different. Her predecessor became President of the European Commission after Merkel had to get her out of dodge due to a scandal that had resulted in a parliamentary inquiry. Her predecessor made decisions that were directly responsible for a lack of spare parts as well as a failed programme for developing the "Euro Hawk" drone. His predecessor's political career was ended by a plagiarism scandal involving his PhD thesis. And so on...

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
> red-haired I know it's innocous and unintended, but using this expression causes all kinds of problems to red-haired kids (I imagine as an adult you can get fed up with some references, too).
- nix23 4y ago
  Shut up Ron, you got the nicest girl in the school.
- mc32 4y ago
  It's like the saying 'scott-free.' No one intends it to denigrate anyone except for the subject of the sentence. The great majority of these saying have pretty much lost all connection to their origins but people keep insisting on resuscitating them and will take offence on behalf of a perceived offended person. No one really believes all red-headed children are the result of an illicit relationship.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  So what. I'm left-handed and survived all the references to anything "left" [1] being bad. From "two left hands" to "sinister" ("left" in Latin), from "the left-hand path" for those who are of the devil to the fact that "dexterity" derives from "dexter" ("right" in Latin), someone who is skilled with both hands is "ambidextrous" ("both right hands") while a clumsy person is "ambisinistrous" ("both left hands"), etcetera. Did I suffer from this? Nope, I'm in good company and fine the way I am. Same for red-haired kids, they'll come out fine and are in good company. Trying to protect them by playing the speech police is not just bloody irritating but it also does them a disservice since they´ll have to enter the big bad world eventually where there are no hdjjhhvvhga's to tell off the nasty people who say mean things to them. [1] apart from politics where the situation is oddly enough reversed

FooBarBizBazz 4y ago

https://memeguy.com/photos/images/ministers-of-defence-201717.jpg https://memeguy.com/photos/images/ministers-of-defence-20171...

jltsiren 4y ago

I'm not familiar with the German system, but I would guess not. Government departments often have a separation between career and political leadership. Career leadership consists of professionals selected for competence. The minister is a politician selected for political considerations. There may also be some political staff who serve the minister directly and are familiar with the subject matter. When a government coalition is formed, each party gets some specific positions, and it's generally free to choose who to appoint. Within each party, gender balance and geographic balance tend to be important, as the voters are otherwise likely to punish the party in the next elections. Some people also have personal priority, for example because they are in the party leadership or they reliably bring in a lot of votes. Not all minister positions are equal. Some (such as those dealing with economics, finances, and foreign policy) are important, while others (such as education and culture) tend to be low status. Top positions go to high-priority people, while low-status positions are often given to people with specific combinations of traits. Defense has been a low-status position in Germany, largely due to political culture shaped by losing WW2.

kadoban 4y ago

A bit more than half of the population is women. Unless you're assuming that women are by nature less competent, narrowing to half of the population either includes the best candidate or at least one infinitesimally close to the best candidate with ridiculously high probability. So what's the harm exactly? The benefit is that we actually end up with some diversity, instead of the usual old-white-guy club that most of the West defaults to in leadership positions.

hackeraccount 4y ago
Is diversity for it's own sake worth it? If they were to say - "We have a candidate with a bold new vision for the armed forces of Germany; they bring things to the table unlike anyone else - plus they're a woman." My response would be that that's great but I don't see what the plus part is bringing to the table. I'm slightly more familiar with the U.S. side of things and clearly woman get the shaft - mainly because senior positions tend to pull from areas (fighter pilots and SOF for example) where the applicability of those particular experiences to command compared to other areas is at least questionable. I think the answer to that problem is to see if the premise - running around in the boondocks leading a platoon in extremely high pressure situations or flying an F-35 off a carrier deck is relevant experience for a 4 star general or admiral - is true or if there's not equally or more relevant areas of expertise. Not - let's have people with different experiences because it's different.
- kadoban 4y ago
  > Is diversity for it's own sake worth it? Probably. Even if the decisions made are 100% the same, or at least equivalently valuable, it has benefits throughout society because it makes people everywhere feel more included, and it gives children the idea that they too can do what they want. If you're a woman or person of color or etc. and relatively _nobody_ in leadership positions has anything like your life experience, and none of them look anything like you, what does that do for either your impression of how the organization aligns with your interests, or your desire to try for a career in whatever organization? Nothing good. > If they were to say - "We have a candidate with a bold new vision for the armed forces of Germany; they bring things to the table unlike anyone else - plus they're a woman." Those are not completely unconnected things. If your baseline is 100% old white men, someone who is not in at least one of those categories is likely to have different approaches and ideas that may be worth considering. So your question is a bit problematic to answer honestly, because it explicitly assumes that the diversity of experience part is 100% divorced from the diversity of thought part.