Feminism and Positive Discrimination

I am not a feminist. I want women to have equal rights to men, but I don’t think that is feminism … equalism perhaps? The only way I think I can explain what I am talking about is with an example which is what started off my anger at feminism. For those of you that don’t know about the UK political system (many Brits do not understand it), in its simplest form imagine the country broken up into hundreds of pieces. These are constituencies and each constituency has an elective that has a seat in Parliament (an MP). At elections you vote for the political party you want to represent your constituency, you vote for the man you want to be MP for constituency (not which party you want running the country) although the chances it will be the same. Then the party that has the most MPs usually (but not always) is the party that runs the government. Confusing? Yes. But you don’t need to fully understand it to see what my problem is.

There are some constituencies (I don’t know where) where the government stated that they must be only women candidates. This made me so mad. This is not how you run a country. What if there was a man better qualified to have that post? What if there weren’t any women that really wanted to do it, but people were forced into it because men weren’t allowed? Women don’t have to do everything that men do. They should have the opportunity to, but they don’t HAVE to. If a woman is best qualified for a job … any job then that should be why she gets it. If nothing else, it’s insulting to say that a woman wouldn’t be able to get into Parliament without this helping hand. I’m sure I’m going to get plenty of people disagreeing with me, and I’m sure I know what they’ll say. But ill deal with those comments if and when they come. Quotas are a bad idea, whether it’s in gender, race or anything else.

Women ARE different to men, we all know this. Women (on the whole) are more compassionate than men, it’s in their genetic make-up, part of the child raising thing. They are (on the whole) physically weaker than men, and they do (often) let their emotions cloud their judgement. Men have better spacial awareness. Women are more able to see the bigger picture when men go steaming into something all hot headed. There are some jobs that are just better suited to women, and some better suited to men. I’m all for equal opportunities and equal pay, women should be able to be whatever they want to be, but they shouldn’t be forced into mens’ jobs when the men may be better suited to it. This IS discrimination.