So I just came across this article (link at end) from the London School of Economics' Business Review:

Gender quotas and the crisis of the mediocre man

Quotas aren't anathema to meritocracy: they increase competence levels by displacing mediocre men, write Tim Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickne

I don't know what the fuck these people were smoking when they came up with this research, but let's just say there must be an office carpet somewhere in LSE absolutely cratered with hot rock burns.

Our main finding is that gender quotas increase the competence of the political class in general, and among men in particular. Moreover, quotas are indeed bad news for mediocre male leaders who tend to be forced out.

So why it is so bizarre? Because this is how they measured the level of competence:

  • Rather than measure competence by education level as in previous studies, they decided to measure competence through "a comparison of the private incomes across people with the same education, occupation, age, and residence in the same geographical region (members of municipal councils in Sweden typically keep their private job)"

  • This means that men were only considered competent in relation to other men and so those who had the most senior management positions and the highest incomes were rated as being the most competent (apparently, the comparison was not drawn between men and women as you might have expected)

  • They then also found a positive correlation between the highest earning male politicians and high scores amongst men who had taken "enlistments tests of the intelligence and leadership capacity of those who did military service"

But here is the best part - their argument for why gender quotas should be introduced is that when women are legislated into political positions their main effect is that:

... the average competence of male politicians increased in the places where the quota had a larger impact, and that the effect is concentrated to the three elections following the quota [ ... ] This suggests that quotas work in part by shifting incentives in the composing party ballots. Mediocre leaders are either kicked out or resign in the wake of more gender parity.

In other words, the implication seems to be that the value of gender quotas has nothing to do with the competence of the incoming women in themselves, but in the outgoing men who have just been displaced - for apparently being rated as Betas(!)

The 'competent' men who remain are therefore the high earning, ex-military, managerial types.

How in the name of yellow rubbery fuck can this be considered a feminist-inspired policy working for equality when it's main impact is to explicitly increase the number of Alpha males in positions of political power?

How the fuck is that in any way, shape or form sticking it to the frigging Patriarchy?

And how is it that men who earn the least are considered as Beta males who are too unworthy to have a say in political decision-making - as if income is the only measure and qualification for political intelligence?

And is if all that was not bad enough, not only is the competence of the female politicians apparently not rated using the same measure - which would be interesting in itself - but the researchers/crack fiends who wrote this report also give us this little gem (my italics):

... in 1993, Sweden’s Social Democratic party voluntarily introduced a strict gender quota for its candidates. In internal discussions of the reform, the party’s Women’s branch observed that some men were more critical than others. The quota became known colloquially as the “Crisis of the Mediocre Man,” since the incompetent men had the most to fear from an influx of women into politics.

This is just fucking insanity ...

Edit Link to original - with thanks to u/thrway_1000 for that (assuming he/she is not a bot)