EU posting betrays skewed attitude to 'gender balance'
Thursday November 19 2009
What would the man in the street know? He is, after all, a man; and in the land of EU politics, gender correction is queen
Younger readers will have noted that Marie Geoghegan-Quinn has been nominated to the EU Commission by Brian Cowen. Doubtless many will have never heard of her until recently but will nonetheless make certain assumptions.
They will assume that she has had a glittering political career where she has touched political and personal lives. They will also reasonably imagine that she comes highly qualified to such a post in both educational and political terms.
After all, she will be part of a small group that will be responsible for the lives of half a billion people. They will assume that her career to date has had her marked as a natural to oversee the EU into the new millennia's second decade.
None will imagine that she could be nominated by the Taoiseach to such an elevated position merely to satisfy a "gender balance", regardless of her suitability.
Yet this is precisely what Brian Cowen has done. He has even asked fellow deputies to see gender balance as "a common goal" and a "shared responsibility". In one final piece of Herculean oratory, he urged the Dail to "pay particular attention to the presence of women in the college".
Geoghegan-Quinn's response was that she did not believe for one moment that the Taoiseach put her name forward simply because she was a woman. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as they might say in certain parts of Dublin.
Of course, it would be unfair to younger readers if we did not share the full story. Geoghegan-Quinn is a primary school teacher who wrote a very nice book 13 years ago about four young women living together in Dublin. She is, after all, a woman.
She has also held a range of short and minor junior ministries rising to the dizzy heights of Minister for the Gaeltacht in 1979 and Justice in 1993 where her big moment was the decriminalisation of homosexuality, which had more than a hint of "right place, right time" about it than was decent. Since resigning from politics 12 years ago, she has held a position in the EU Court of Auditors. Be still my beating heart.
A good CV, but certainly not a great one, and none of this would strike the man in the street as a stellar background from which to be hired for this mother of all jobs.
Then again, what would the man in the street know? He is, after all, a man, and in the land of EU politics, gender correction is queen.
Geoghegan-Quinn has had a serious start on most women, having managed to be the first woman to do just about everything. She was the first woman to hold a cabinet post in the history of the State, the first woman genuinely thought to be in with a shout for Taoiseach and now she will be Ireland's first female commissioner. If box-ticking were a science in the modern genderless world in which we live, Geoghegan-Quinn would have a triple first.
Yet perhaps one should not be too hard on Ireland's new commissioner. Notwithstanding the Taoiseach's best attempts to spell it out, apparently she seems to still believe that she has achieved this appointment on the basis of everything other than her sex. She and all of us know that this is, of course, exactly what has happened. Geoghegan-Quinn has not been nominated because she is the most talented person for the job but because she is the most female.
In this New Ireland, many men and women are hired not because they might be the best to do a particular task but simply by virtue of how the good Lord has genetically bestowed them. Our equality laws ensure that because no one must be chosen above another on a plethora of grounds, wrong people frequently get the right jobs. Abuse of remedies remains rife amongst certain sectors and no one, but no one, ever stops to ask, are we actually discriminating or simply trying to select the most appropriate person for any given position?
THE Taoiseach has advised the nation that Geoghegan-Quinn is not the best person for the job but is most definitely a woman and so, the only person for the job.
It is not her fault that he was so mealy-mouthed about her in public or indeed that she is clearly not qualified compared to others.
There is one thing she can still do, however, to save this situation. Refuse to accept the job on gender grounds and report the matter to the Equality Authority and upwards as discriminating against men. Now that really would be equality.
John O'Keeffe is Dean of Law, Dublin Business School. Kevin Myers is on leave
- John O'Keeffe
Irish Independent
