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Trudeau gives Canada first cabinet with equal number of men and women

it's 2015.. but somehow gender matters as a qualifying factor

liberals never cease to amaze me with their focus on identity politics.


The only draw to their broken ideology is an appeal the tribalism and thievery.
 
But at that point you're just begging the question because it becomes about representation of women in parliament rather than just in the cabinet. Either way, a group of people being gender equal should not necessarily prompt more questions about 'have they been chosen based on their merits' any more than a primarily male cabinet. Yet we don't ask such questions of primarily male cabinets, we just assume it's based upon merit.

No, sorry, you have ignored the key issue most have with he OP. If a predominantly male cabinet was trumpeted for having the most males represented I am sure you could see your way to questioning how that is worth mentioning.
 
yeah.. your theory of identity politics in politics is as concrete as simple math... sure.. sure. :roll:

It's not a theory of identity politics. It's a statistical artifact that any first year UG in a technical degree will learn. It's based upon simple random sampling and it's not very difficult to understand.

We could replace 'politicians' with 'elephants' or 'carrots' and that wouldn't change it's validity. CanadaJohn made a very vaild point regarding the parliament from which the cabinet can be sampled upon is not representative of the entire populace but really that just begs the question because the parliament itself would be representative if it were based upon merit.

At the end of the day, none of that changes my point that only when women are chosen in equal numbers do we think to question credentials like we have in this thread. When women are not chosen in equal numbers we just accept that males have just been chosen on merit rather than because they're the best lapdog/most popular/some guys drinking buddy.
 
It's not a theory of identity politics. It's a statistical artifact that any first year UG in a technical degree will learn. It's based upon simple random sampling and it's not very difficult to understand.
I understand simple random sample...your argument goes beyond that, however.


We could replace 'politicians' with 'elephants' or 'carrots' and that wouldn't change it's validity. CanadaJohn made a very vaild point regarding the parliament from which the cabinet can be sampled upon is not representative of the entire populace but really that just begs the question because the parliament itself would be representative if it were based upon merit.
Oh, i doubt we'd be talking about a possible conscious decision to focus on gender regarding elephants or carrots, but anything is possible around here.

At the end of the day, none of that changes my point that only when women are chosen in equal numbers do we think to question credentials like we have in this thread. When women are not chosen in equal numbers we just accept that males have just been chosen on merit rather than because they're the best lapdog/most popular/some guys drinking buddy.
to be honest, i question the merits of everyone he's hired on... but just my habit when faced with people who focus on irrelevant factors ( like gender or race) when choosing a staff.... it shows a distinct lack of judgement to me.


as an aside, I would have never even given this "gender issue" a 2nd thought if it wasn't brought to our attention...I literally would have never noticed the gender make-up of his cabinet.
 
Well this should be obvious in any case, and should be heeded in any distribution of cabinet member genders/ages/religions etc.

But, it's funny how no-one brings up that point when a cabinet is a male majority, even though as a statement it is just as valid.

Consider this, given that men and women are equally capable to perform cabinet duties, and given that the gender ratio in Canada is roughly 50/50, then statistically a cabinet chosen solely on merit is likely to be an even 50/50 gender split (plus or minus a small margin).

What this also means, is that if there is a statistically significant skewing of the ratio (say a 70/30 split, such as David Camerons cabinet in England) it is actually more likely that this cabinet has been chosen for reasons other than just qualifications/capability to perform the job at hand. Essentially, male cabinet members are being chosen for the fact that they are male, rather than their qualifications.

However, when a male dominated cabinet like Camerons is revealed, nobody questions the qualifications of the chosen cabinet members. When a gender equal cabinet is revealed, suddenly people start to suspect that people have been chosen for reasons other than qualifications, despite the fact that this assumption runs counter to the statistics.

Rather curious, isn't it.

The overall percentage of the population of male v. female wouldn't matter much here. It would be far more important on what the available candidates are and what their qualifications happen to be. It is actually unlikely that the potential candidates for a position will be equally split between men and women and thus you will have likely more of one gender than the other.
 
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