Saturday, April 09, 2005

Compulsory feminism in Norway

How do you like this. Laila Daavoey, who is the Norwegian Children and Family Affairs Minister (of all things!) has announced that Norway will simply shut down companies which don't recruit at least 40% of women to their boards.

Typical of left-liberals to use state enforced quotas. Right-liberals would have been more subtle.

Why the insistence that company boards have more women? Liberals think that individuals should be self-created. It's the first principle of their religion. Therefore, they hate the idea that gender might influence the course of our lives, as this is something we don't get to choose.

So when liberals see more men on company boards, they refuse to consider the idea that men, via their masculine drives, might be there because of a greater motivation, interest and commitment. Instead, they assume that men are there because of some artificially imposed inequality, which it is the government's duty to overcome.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Sweden, a new feminist party has been established. However, one of its founders, Susanne Linde, has been questioned for taking advantage of Sweden's remarkably lax welfare system. For the past five years, Mrs Linde has been claiming sickness benefit for being "burnt out". This benefit actually increased her income by over one third, from 200,000 to 330,000 kronor.

When asked whether she thought it right to gain such an advantage from welfare, Mrs Linde claimed to be unaware of her personal finances, which she left to her husband to handle, including the tax returns. Some feminist! I wonder if she is the kind of feminist quota material soon to be imported onto Norwegian company boards.

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