Only if human properties are statistically independent.
If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over.
This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women.
It seems to me that you argue from a POV that basic human properties are statistically independent. Now... Why do you think that is so?
It means that someone would get less outcome than he or she would have gotten without the policy, true.
> This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women.
Wages or positions in companies are fundamentally different to medicine. We can decide how our companies look like. We can't decide how our body works.
> It seems to me that you argue from a POV that basic human properties are statistically independent. Now... Why do you think that is so?
I think you got me wrong here. I tried to argue from a POV of a reasonable being. I assumed that this is independent from any basic physical properties or even being "human". It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.
Well, for the most part, our power over our workplaces is also rather limited. True, you can leave, and go to a "different" company...
> It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.
I... think that statistical independence of human properties is a valid basic assumption.
However i think that it is worthwhile to question that assumption from time to time. Especially when, as mentioned in the article, more free societies like sweden or finland have more unequal outcomes than societies like iran (which iirc instituted a male quota for some STEM fields a few years ago).
This is a difficult topic...
This only shows that the measures that are taken might be inappropriate to fulfill their purpose of establishing gender equality and is unrelated to the mentioned assumption.