The above-article appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper on October 2nd of this year, translated loosely as "Don't fall into the woman's career-trap!" by the journalist Carolin Wilms. The sub-title reads "How can more women advance in the financial sector?" (i.e. at banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies.) The sub-title concludes with the answer "With Mentoring." The text of the article, however, suggests that women will accomplish more for themselves if they insist on government-quotas:
Now, even the Christian Democratic Union (Germany's main Conservative party) offers a limited version of an employment-quota for women, even if it does not have a woman as minister-president, and even if only 12% of its regional supervisors are women.
Additionally, in the hundred largest banks and sixty largest insurance companies, women only occupy a quarter of all executive positions.
Wilms ends her recitation of the statistics with the comment "Since diversity has consistently produced better decision-making. . . ." She takes a glib, presumptuous stance on this issue and adds "A higher percentage of women in leadership positions will only increase the likelihood of a profitable result."
Of course, without government interference, you let the management of a business select its own personnel, according to its perception of its needs, judging the applicant by its own parameters, and fitting the applicant into the interactions of the business for efficiency's sake. If we insist that the business involve the government in its decisions, the government will do what is best for the government, not for the business, nor even for the society as a whole.
These concerns barely enter Wilms's consciousness. She only wants to know, "How can women achieve success, other than by quotas?" She possesses a socialist mindset, or it possesses her--use the government to compel private organizations to hire according to the government's specifications. Wilms is a German! Doesn't she know already that the Nazi Party compelled private organizations to hire according to Nazi specifications. Even bird-watchers and choral groups had to have a Nazi leader to lessen Nazi paranoia!
It never occurs to Wilms that women could start their own companies, where they hire whomever they want, and no one can question them about it. Wilms obviously has so little faith in herself, or in other women, to do the "paving," to pave the way into a commercial-field. Let the men do the paving, and the women will drive over that?
It never occurs to Wilms that she turns to the government to give things to women, things that they really need to get by their own efforts--to grant their wishes, like a fairy-godmother. It comes at a cost, namely that they will inhabit a subordinate culture--to the men and to the government--in letting others take the risks on their behalf, letting them retire their fear of rejection.
A freedom-loving society likes risk-takers and other people with the courage to forge their own path to accomplish their goals--paying their own way. Anyone who does this should make their own decisions. They have earned that right.
