Because nothing says “equality” and “fairness” in the field of telecommunications quite so much as handing out managerial positions based on, you know, proof of cooter:
Deutsche Telekom AG said Monday it will introduce a quota for female managers, with a target to fill 30% of upper and middle management jobs with women by the end of 2015.
That would compare with only 13% in 2008, the company said. Deutsche Telekom said it would be the first on Germany’s 30-strong DAX index of blue-chip stocks to introduce such a quota.
“It is a matter of social fairness and a categorical necessity for our success,” chief executive Rene Obermann said. He argued that “having a greater number of women at the top will quite simply enable us to operate better.”
In an effort to make management jobs more attractive, it said it was expanding programs such as parental leave systems, part-time and flexible working-hour schemes and child care options.
Deutsche Telekom portrayed its move in part as a response to developments on the labor market and said that about 60% of business graduates from German universities are now women.
“A glass ceiling is, however, clearly still stopping too many talented females from making it to the top,” personnel chief Thomas Sattelberger said in a statement. “Introducing the women’s quota will enable us to break through this ceiling.”
Kristina Schroeder, Germany’s minister for families, said she was “delighted” by the voluntary move by the country’s biggest telecommunications company but signaled that the center-right government doesn’t favor legislating on the issue.
“A legally prescribed quota for women on supervisory boards must be the very last resort,” Ms. Schroeder said. “We will only succeed in bringing about the necessary changes by gaining the business world’s support, not by fighting against it.”
Norway has led the way in Europe in legislating changes to boardroom culture, introducing a 40% female quota rule for listed and state-owned companies.
Since then, Spain has followed suit with rules for female board representation and France has proposed a similar law.
To progressives, the most appropriate way to reinforce the notion that sex doesn’t play a role in one’s ability to do a certain job is to make sex the sole determining factor in hiring for a job.
Up is down. Black is white. Laverne is Shirley.
(h/t Terry H)
Quotas, because merit alone is too damn hard.
It’s Europe, so therefore, we should follow them.
Well, at least we men have shorter lines in public bathrooms. They can’t take that away from us…or can they?
Joe, remember it’s in Germany. Men are required to be sitzpinkleren.
Overspray is so fascist and misogynistic.
Secular Europe. If you don’t believe in something, you will fall for anything. Heaven on earth through progressive social engineering for example.
Do you think there are some men that are middle managers at Telekom feeling kinda twitchy these days?
Well, I suppose an emasculated Germany is preferable to the historically-observed alternative…
o_O
…an emasculated Germany is preferable…
Apparently, you don’t remember the East German Olympic “women’s” swimming team.
/shudder
Can’t wait for the transgendered quota. They’ll need proof of one-time cooter or proof of really wanting a cooter but not being born with one so they dress up and take some drugs to get bewbs and seduce the lead singers of a second-wave British invasion pop bands. Either of which make them well-qualified to lead an organization. Because nothing says, “I make good decisions” like dressing up as a circa 1986 Linda Evans and duct-taping your crank to your taint.
I dunno about the transsexuals, maybe they do make good managment. I mean, if you can come up with a plan that includes “cutting off my junk”, AND follow through with it, you might be a good project leader.
Chris, that’s true for the lopitophomy, but I’m not so sure about the addadictomy.
I suspect the women I work with would club someone to death, should they suggest that here… Of course, they happened to get where they are by dint of hard work, higher education and handling stress well.
I guess the fact that 40% of our managers in my department are already women doesn’t really show much of a “glass ceiling”. I have had three managers while working for the Swiss Insurance Behemoth. Two have been women – one left for a promotion…
Via the Anchoress:
SonDaughter of Tootsie!Coming to a theater near you.
Womanly leadership, the headline says. Hmmm. That could be another way into the bind.
Completely off-topic, but cool: Mark Steyn is subbing for Rush Limbaugh today.
=^D
Well, at least we men have shorter lines in public bathrooms.
They didn’t at Novell’s Brainshare 2000, which I attended, and breezed into the ladies’ room while men stood in line. I was dead chuffed.
Look, we’ll soon have everyone whipped into shape.
My company (a defense contractor) is practically begging for women, so as to approach some kind of representative population. But to succeed in my department, first you have to have some kind of applicable credentials. You have to have some minimum GPA, possibly lower than the threshold for male applicants, but respectable. I’d guess that if I were in the job market today as a new grad, with the GPA that I actually earned in college, I’d not meet the minimum GPA requirement for women.
Oh, and it has to be a decent university. If you get a BSEE from some WTF university (I think you can get an engineering degree from some WTF university, it’s not going to matter much if you’re female, disabled, and a minority.
But even if you do get in as a privileged hire, you’re going to have to make it on your own. You might slide through the first year, but the second one is where you have to perform or die.
I don’t have much trouble with giving minorities and women the nod for this reason. It takes years to train and evaluate new hires, so we tend to be very careful in screening out those who we think will do well from the rest. What we typically wind up with are women and minorities who didn’t perform GPA-wise as well as some others in the market, but who either have damned good reasons why not (eg worked a job to pay for school, or some such) or strike us as otherwise being particularly able.
I’ve passed on some resumes that looked like extraordinarily good “political” hires, but didn’t look so good for stepping into a job in my group. There are probably positions elsewhere in the company some of those people could have filled, but not in my area.
You will have fun. Brandi has spoken.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be criticizing the Europeans? Instead we should be egging them on.
Surely these efforts are doomed to colossal failure. I think it in our best interests to assist the Europeans into being so far ahead of us in the department of stupid ideas that, by the time we even think about imposing such moronic schemes at home, their failure is already self evident abroad.
Isn’t that our only hope against the progressives? That we stall their efforts here, while waiting for similar enterprises to collapse elsewhere? We did it (somewhat) with the commies, can’t we stick to a proven approach?
Well, if the precious little kiddies were ever left alone to think and act for themselves, they might grow up to be self-confident Sons (and Daughters) of the Free. They might not even want an all-encompassing nannystate, if you can imagine!
(Go watch the current Whittle vid, it’s somewhat apropos.)
“I think it in our best interests to assist the Europeans into being so far ahead of us in the department of stupid ideas that, by the time we even think about imposing such moronic schemes at home, their failure is already self evident abroad.”
While the strategy has a sort of merit on its face ThomasD, I think we can see that it hasn’t worked at all in the world as it is. We are, after all, faced with the utter stupidity of a government takeover of our entire health care system, which hasn’t exactly been working in Canada nor in jolly old England. The left couldn’t care less about empirical truths. Only unicorns will do.
I look forward to the day when half of these Boards of Directors are wearing burkas. Even then, our Moral Superiors still won’t acknowledge the cognitive dissonance.
Ooh! I see a future episode of South Park in the making.
Fixed it for ya.
Sdferr, true that. And I’m only being half serious – I honestly would not wish such stupidity on anyone, even Old Europe.
People can choose to ignore the bad news from Canada and Europe, just like they can lament the lack of an experiment ‘true’ communism, but at least it is not all wine and roses.
Dystopia, the playground edition. Feed someone Vegemite spread on kimchi for long enough and they’ll think they don’t like food either.
A “recess coach?” I think when I was in school they called it PE.
I have to wonder, has PE been eliminated from the curriculum (because it fosters “competition”, or is “unfair” to the “differently-abled”)?)
I’m beginning to wonder whether Edward Said is dead after all.
Is gender transformation surgery covered by Obamacare? Maybe that’s where Massa is headed.
I could offer them some pointers. On the begging part.
I love more women on boards…
On the video, both participants are naked. Hunter is propped up against the hotel bed headboard, with John Edwards belly-down on the bed between her legs. As Hunter, the campaign’s official videographer, holds the camera, a smiling Edwards performs oral sex. Because of the camera angle, Hunter’s face is not visible, but her distinctive jewelry is. Not only does candidate Edwards know he’s being filmed, one source says, he’s also clowning around and “graphically performing for the camera.”
Laverne is Shirley? Naw, Cagney is Lacey.
#13 LBascom
-Pope John PaulII The Great
FTFY
Or would’ve, if I remembered the strikethrough code.
Bad joke:
“We tossed her at the glass ceiling and she stuck!”
Laverne, Shirley, Cagney, Lacey, Hunter, whatever. Hell, I would pretty much screw anything. I refuse to be out done by Bill Clinton. I absolutely will rise to the challenge. And if you score me some Viagra, I can rise all the better.
More women on boards!
Tyne Daly recently guested on Sharon Gless’ current show. Senator, if you want to hit those, you don’t need Viagra. You need lithium.
“Feed someone Vegemite spread on kimchi”
EWWWWWWWWWW!!!!
GAK!
Well, I’d like to see those quota’d females tackle me on a football field. Hell, the men couldn’t even do it. I could tell you stories.
No shit, there I was minding my own business and all these guys thought they could get me. Wrong. But now I guess I’m just going to have to stand and fight.
So now my modified football motto is, “If I can’t evade you, I’m gonna’ kill you”, and, really, that’s all there is to it. Girlymen take special notice. I’m just here to help y’all, dontcha know.
The entire country of Norway instituted quotas a while back. Using what’s called the Tobin’s Q testing (named for Nobel winner James Tobin), it was proven that companies in that country performed 20% worse. Those companies with the most drastic increase in women to executive position via fiat scored the lowest.
Here’s the NYT article I paraphrased: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/world/europe/28iht-quota.html?ref=europe
My favorite quote from the piece is by Benja Stig-Fagerland:
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a female oversell her capabilities.”
Yeah…OK… *SNORT*
Cheers,
The Worm
Iraq and Afghanistan have quotas too, no? Was that our idea or theirs?
The propaganda firm of corpex, rd and meya; specialists in non-sequitors, strawmen and masters of the wrong + wrong = right approach.
When hopscotch is outlawed only oulaws will play hopscotch.
DeNova Metal Polish with Carnauba Wax Case Pack 12…
in jiyoung’ s case, if i was sunbae’ s mother, i will NOT approve of the marriage too. whether or not there was physical involvement between herself and seonjae isn’ t the problem here. the bigger problem here is that jiyoung has been with another man …