Sex in Parliament

Everything about modernity is progressive – including, it seems, its mental illness.

The latest symptom is evinced by the Commons Women And Equalities Committee that’s calling for all parties to ensure, on pain of a fine, that at least 45 per cent of their candidates are women, an increase on the present proportion of 30 per cent.

The present disparity, says the Committee, creates “a serious democratic deficit”. This shows a staggering ignorance of the meaning of democracy, supporting the diagnosis of a serious sanity deficit.

Now the very existence of such a Committee within our legislature turns the mother of all parliaments into a mother… well, a mother of all travesties, is what I mean.

This vital committee is chaired by Maria Miller, former culture secretary. One has to acknowledge that Mrs/Ms Miller has at least some qualification for the job, that of being a woman. That’s more than one can say for her previous tenure, largely spent on destroying whatever is left of British culture.

The proposed law strikes me as frankly misogynistic, offending the lifelong champion of political correctness in me. Why just 45 per cent? Why not 51, which is roughly the proportion of women in the population?

Overlooking this lamentable slip, I still have to crack a vainglorious smile: my firm belief has been vindicated: modernity isn’t just misguided and vulgar – it’s actually stupid.

There isn’t now, nor has there ever been, a single human institution boasting even representation of all groups by whatever criteria, be it race, sex, class or age. The inability to make this observation betokens an inert mind unable to build an intellectual structure on an empirically verifiable fact.

But the stupidity of the likes of Mrs/Ms Miller goes deeper into the clinical picture. She and her ilk make the knee-jerk assumption that the absence of even representation betokens discrimination.

It was the American thinker Thomas Sowell who pointed out the simplistic vulgarity of this view. He remarked, for example, that there isn’t an army in the world that faithfully represents the ethnic or social composition of the nation.

Looking at a more narrow group, Asian academics in the US are outnumbered three to one by Hispanic academics in history, while outnumbering the latter 10 to one in chemistry. Obviously discrimination isn’t a factor in either disparity.

That some company bosses or selection committees may be biased against certain groups is beyond question. All attempts to expurgate humanity from human beings have failed – and the doctrine of original sin explains why.

But this blanket observation means nothing unless it can be shown, evidence in hand, that, say, Asian historians are discriminated against in favour of Hispanic chemists, while the latter benefit from discrimination against their Asian colleagues.

In fact, the evidence shows exactly the opposite. Discrimination against any group bears tangible fruit only when there’s no cost attached. Hence the bigoted chairman of a charity funded by private donations may indulge his bias for free: his capitalisation isn’t going to suffer because he hires, say, men over women.

On the other hand, it won’t be long before a rank misogynist running, say, an advertising agency will realise that indulging his prejudice costs him money. Having spent 30 years in the advertising business, I can testify that the very same men who didn’t think much of women in general joyously hired women who could do the job.

Now it’s idiotic even by Mrs/Ms Miller’s standards to suggest that selection committees overlook women out of some invidious bias. For political correctness has made such great inroads into the national psyche that fielding female candidates actually pays.

The example of Mrs/Ms Miller’s glorious career supports this observation. After all, one fails to see how she possesses any noticeable prerequisites other than her sex for a cabinet-level post – or indeed any post involving any responsibility.

People have swallowed the canard of even representation and, all things being equal, are more likely to vote for a woman than for a man – women voters definitely incline that way. Hence for a political party to discriminate against women is tantamount to cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Since discrimination manifestly doesn’t explain why a mere 30 per cent of our MPs are women, what does? Here one has to remark that gross figures seldom tell the true story – in fact, they’re more likely to obfuscate it.

The more things are held constant in a statistical evaluation, the truer to life it’ll be. Hence I’d like to see any evidence that a male candidate is ever chosen over a woman who has pursued her political objectives with the same energy, dedication, single-mindedness of purpose and effort.

I rather suspect that most, though clearly not all, women would find it hard to combine spending18 hours a day on their political career with doing things only women can do, such as bearing children (which many women of child-bearing age still tend to do).

We’ve had two female prime ministers in the time I’ve lived in England, which means that some women can overcome such obstacles and do exceptionally well. But we aren’t talking about some women here. We’re talking about huge samples: 51 per cent of the population versus 30 per cent of MPs.

It would be insulting your intelligence to suggest that selection committees should pick candidates best qualified for the job, a suggestion obviously unheeded in the case of Mrs/Ms Miller.

If that means packing the Commons with women, so be it. If not, that’s fine too. What’s not fine is the pandemic of madness clutching our world by the throat.