Female quotas, my view

Today I attended a session about self branding at the Women in Technology summit in Ireland, delivered by Maureen Gaffney. The session wasn't bad and definitely gave the audience good food for thought on improvement areas for our daily private and work lives.

One of the questions raised by the women in the audience asked Maureen to addressed the debate around female quotas. The question didn't receive a satisfactory answer, because Maureen replied, rightly so, from a scientific and empirical perspective. She didn't voice her personal opinion likely because of the position and situation.

This blog is instead my playground and here I go with my personal view about female quotas. 

I don't like quotas. 

They are against any democratic and meritocratic principle as they override the systems designed to bring forward the strongest, most competent candidates. In an ideal world the very thought of introducing female quotas wouldn't even exist as the women participating in politics and high levels of finance and technology would be well represented and they would be recognised as such. The result will be a set of decisional groups which will be made of men and women, balanced in quantity and core competences. Forcing quotas is therefore a violence performed over what already is a meritocratic system and I don't like it. 

Although I am firmly convinced of my statements, they carry a flaw: this is not an ideal world. Not every candidate is evaluated fairly and where spontaneous fairness is lacking the law comes into play and forces society to adopt a shape that is representative of a wish for the future rather than the present reality. I understand why companies and political institutions need female quotas but as Maureen Gaffney put as well, only as a temporary solution: a remedy to adopt until the society proves to have changed in terms of meritocracy and fairness toward women.

Of course, when we talk about sociological changes, we're not talking years, we're talking decades... and I wish I'll see the day where quotas won't even be a matter of debate anymore.