Meritocracy, What Meritocracy?

Following the launch of the 50:50 campaign by Bristol Women’s Commission, Cheryl Morgan explains why unequal representation in politics just doesn’t make sense.

The new campaign to increase the number of women councillors in Bristol has received a great deal of support from across the political spectrum. However, as our report revealed, not everyone is happy with it. Conservative MP, Charlotte Leslie, told our reporter, “As a woman, I also want my right to meritocracy – to know I’ve got where I am on my merit, not on my gender.” You know what? I agree with her. I’d love to see women getting where they are on merit. The trouble is that what we have at the moment is anything but a meritocracy.

If you look at people in positions of power; if you look at people winning awards; if you look at panels of experts; if you look at guests on TV and radio shows; you see the same thing everywhere. Men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men. If a woman is included, she is often portrayed as a token, or it is said that she’s only there to represent women’s interests. Where the general interests of the human race are concerned, it is almost always men that get to speak, and men who get to be in charge.

And by the way, it is not just a gender issue. In this country it is overwhelmingly white, able-bodied, straight, cisgender men who occupy positions of power. And that’s without even starting on our culture’s unfortunate tendency to value good looks over competence.

That’s a meritocracy? Really?

Of course men come up with all sort of excuses to justify their unfair dominance. A common one is that there are more men to choose from than women. Now clearly in the general population that’s not true. 51% of the population of Bristol is female. Possibly more men put themselves forward for political office, but one of the objectives of the 50:50 campaign is to encourage more women get involved. Will that result in more women getting selected as candidates, and getting elected? We’ll see, but getting involved is clearly the first step to take.

There are areas of life where men claim justification for dominance because there are more of them taking part. Let’s take an example that is familiar to me: writing science fiction. You might reasonably think that more men are involved in that than women. In fact you might get that impression from the fact that lists of “Top Ten” writers are often all-male. I keep an eye on the promotions table at our local Waterstones. They usually have 35 books on it, and often there are only one or two women writers featured.

One woman science fiction writer is SL Huang. She also happens to have a maths degree from MIT, and recently she wrote an interesting article an interesting article on the probability of such all-male lists, assuming that men and women are equally good at writing. If there were equal numbers of men and women in science fiction then the probability of an all-male top ten would be a vanishingly small 0.098%. Even if 90% of science fiction writers were men, the probability of an all-male top ten would only be 35%.

I happen to be in the science fiction business. I know a lot of writers, many of whom are women. They might not make up 50% of the field, but the proportion is lot more than 10%. So I think what we are seeing in mostly-male top ten lists, mostly-male award lists, and mostly-male promotions tables, is not a meritocracy, but a systematic bias in favour of men.

In their defence, men may argue that they are simply better at some things than women. When it comes to certain physical activities, I’m happy to admit that the average man is better than the average woman. I wouldn’t fancy my chances playing rugby against men, though I suspect that most men would lose badly if they took on Serena Williams at tennis.

When it comes to other areas of life, however, I don’t see any reason why men should dominate. What’s more, in other parts of the world they don’t. The business magazine, Forbes, recently published a survey of the number of women in ministerial positions in governments around the world. The UK has only 22.7% women in the Cabinet. Even the USA, at 26.1%, does better. The supposedly sexist Italians manage 43.8%, the French 50.0%, and the Swedes 52.2%. Leading the pack, with a whopping 62.5% of women in ministerial positions, is Finland.

I happen to spend quite a bit of time in Finland. That number doesn’t surprise me. When I attend literary conferences there the panels of experts are often all women, or have just a token male. Does that mean that Finnish men are somehow genetically less capable of being writers or politicians than British men? I doubt it. Certainly they don’t lack for skill and bravery, as their success in motor racing shows, but if you have ever seem Kimi Raikkonen do an interview you’ll know that they are not always the most garrulous of men. The difference, I think, must be cultural, and cultural differences can be changed.

I see no reason why British women (and Finnish men) can’t play a greater role in politics. I also think that it will be good for us if they do. At the launch event for the 50:50 campaign our Lord Mayor, Clare Campion-Smith, noted that if all members of a political leadership come from one small segment of society then their decisions will tend to based solely on that group’s experience of life. The way that the current government’s austerity measures have disproportionately hit women is perhaps indicative of the male dominance of the Cabinet. So let’s have more women involved in politics, more people of colour, and more people from all other social groups as well. Let’s have a meritocracy, and not just a system that is biased in favour of white men.

Picture: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock