Tom Elliott: Gender-based quotas belittle women and do more damage than good

GENDER quotas in the workplace can do more damage than good, but there are plenty of things women can do to level the playing field, writes Tom Elliott.

Audiences prefer watching male tennis because the contest is longer and more absorbing; if women want equal winnings with men, then best-of-five sets should be played by both genders. Picture: AAP

IF women truly want equality in the workplace, then gender-based quotas must go.

Instead, women should apply for and demand jobs based purely on merit. To do otherwise demeans a sex that frequently takes umbrage at being termed “weaker”.

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This week a former power worker from the Latrobe Valley called me in distress.

An ad on seek.com.au indicated that energy distributor Ausnet Services needed eight new lineworker apprentices. Hoping this might enable his son to gain a foothold in the industry that had employed him for many years, the dad investigated the job opportunity further.

Unfortunately, he soon struck an insurmountable brick wall. Because the role of power linesman has traditionally been “male-dominated”, Ausnet’s eight advertised positions were available to female applicants only.

The unemployed son was not permitted to apply as his gender, over which he obviously had no choice, made him ineligible.

Like many companies, Ausnet has a goal of increasing its ratio of female employees to male. This is based on the idea that more diverse workplaces are good for business. Which is fine in theory.

But how does excluding male applicants from the physically demanding job of maintaining outdoor poles and cables improve the supply of electricity to Ausnet’s customers?

Women need to beat men at their own game.

Quotas like this don’t improve the lot of women in the workplace.

In fact, such reverse discrimination achieves the opposite. No one really wants a job for which half the population is automatically excluded from applying.

Women employed under such affirmative action programs attract suspicion from co-workers hired on merit. Mutual respect, workplace morale and corporate profits suffer as a result.

Instead, women need to beat men at their own game.

Here’s how.

First, girls should focus on maths at school. Study after study suggests that STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are paths towards higher lifetime earnings.

Yet far fewer females than males attempt harder courses such as physics, chemistry and specialist mathematics at VCE level; and an even smaller number do so at university.

Female-friendly arts degrees centred on subjects like feminism, cultural Marxism and various forms of sociology might appear interesting on paper — but they don’t pay the bills in later life.

Second, become an entrepreneur. Most of the truly wealthy people in the world — think Bill Gates of Microsoft fame, the late Steve Jobs from Apple or Sergey Brin and Larry Page who founded Google — took a punt on an idea and pursued it. No one handed them success based on their gender. And, interestingly, most technology gurus seem to be men.

Women, if you have an interesting online business proposal, don’t wait for someone else to recognise it — just run with the concept as fast as you can. Because if you don’t, someone else (quite possibly a man) will.

Tokenistic quotas in the workplace will never create a level playing field. .

Third, where physical standards are required for a position, stop expecting an easier test. In the Australian Defence Force, for example, successful male recruits are required to perform at least 15 push-ups. Yet for some unfathomable reason, female applicants for the same demanding combat roles need only complete eight. If toting a heavy weapon, running with a loaded backpack or carrying a wounded comrade out of harm’s way demands 15 push-ups, then 15 it must be — irrespective of what dangles, or doesn’t, between your legs.

Sport is the final arena where women must seek tougher treatment. For years now, female tennis players have received identical prizemoney to men in grand slam tournaments like the Australian Open. Yet in the finals women still play only three sets to the men’s five.

Audiences prefer watching male tennis because the contest is longer and more absorbing; if women want equal winnings with men, then best-of-five sets should be played by both genders.

The same goes for golf. Want to be taken seriously at St Andrew’s? Then female players should tee off from the same markers used by men. Why should women hit the ball a shorter distance than their male counterparts?

Athletics has a problem here too. Probably the toughest male Olympic track and field contest is the decathlon. This challenge requires competitors to excel at 10 forms of sprinting, middle-distance running, jumping and throwing.

Yet the female equivalent is the heptathlon, which avoids the 1500m run, discus and pole vault
in favour of an easier seven-event card. Should we conclude from this that women are 30 per cent less able than men?

I’m father to a seven-year-old girl. When eventually she applies for her first proper job, I want my daughter to be considered purely on ability rather than her sex.

Tokenistic quotas in the workplace will never create a level playing field.

Hopefully my little girl will achieve far more in employment than just the fulfilment of someone else’s box-ticking, pseudo-equality gender experiment.

Tom Elliott is 3AW Drivetime host, weekdays 3pm-6pm

@TomElliott3AW