by Brett Stevens on September 2, 2017

The Left has been trumpeting its latest “study,” which purports to show that gender quotas increase competence by squeezing out low-competence men and replacing them with women:

Gender quotas increase the competence of organisations by leading to the displacement of mediocre men, a new study has found. …The study found that the average competence of male politicians increased most in the places where the quota had a larger impact. The findings can also be applied to workplaces, the researchers said. On average, a 10 percentage point increase in female representation raised the proportion of competent men by 3 percentage points. The researchers observed little discernible effect on the competence of women.

Naturally, this is the oldest form of “fake news,” namely that the study itself makes some critical logical errors. Briefly, these are:

It studies a political party. “The LSE team studied a strict gender quota introduced by Swedenâ€™s Social Democratic party for its candidates in 1993.” — not only is this a tiny sample size, but it uses a field which is not known for rewarding actual competence, but popularity. There was no effect on the competence of women. In other words, we are not displacing the incompetent with the competent, but people who are the same level of competence, because the quality of female candidates did not rise. They measure competence by income alone. Check this out:

Competence was measured by comparing the private incomes across people with the same education, occupation, age, and residence in the same geographical region. Those with higher incomes were deemed more competent. Those with higher incomes — adjusted for education and other factors — were seen as more competent, despite there being no measurement of their actual abilities or the effects of their policies.

What we are more likely seeing with this study is that when you squeeze out men in order to hire women and minorities, the only men who remain are those who are strongly self-serving, which probably indicates a willingness to go along with the quota policy as a means of preemptively covering their tracks, then engaging in behaviors that enrich them. In other words, we get more of an oligarchy by applying the policies designed to create equality.

And hilariously of all, they chose politicians to demonstrate this.

Tags: affirmative action, gender equality, gender inequality, oligarchy, quotas

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