CREDENTIALS, COMPETENCIES, AND EXPERIENCE
Giving women the opportunity to excel on the job is something most people would agree with.
In my opinion, the key factors to select the best candidate for any job would be competencies, credentials, and experience. Unfortunately, these factors are constantly dismissed these days in the name of diversity and inclusion mostly in wealthy countries.
BE THE FIRST
In recent years, it became more important to focus on having the first woman in any function to be able to mark the gender checklist box and if the woman is of a particular race, the better. Her background and experience will rarely matter if she gets the job. This phenomenon started in the American and British entertainment industries which strongly influences pop culture globally. Slowly it started entering other industries and business sectors as well.
Women have come a long way in getting their positions in the workforce and there are still some sectors where they are still trying to excel. Because men and women are biologically different, there are jobs where women would excel more than men and there are jobs where men will excel more than women.
In the latter case, you will find women who physically perform “almost” at the same level as men like in the military, the police force, and the construction sector. They accomplish that level thanks to their physical and mental training.
It is also true that there are jobs that most women just are not interested in. But in today’s pop culture and mainstream news, it is not acceptable to even mention that. Married women who chose to oversee their household, which is quite the job, to begin with, are being berated for choosing to stay at home. Not to say that there aren’t married women that have a career and take care of their homes. They exist. But married women who want to stay at home and take care of their home and their children also exist.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRONUOS RECRUITMENT
As time goes by, the recruitment failures will start to pile up and will be impossible to ignore. We see the results in the entrainment industry such as failed movies, uninteresting books, and mediocre video games.
Even though it is obvious why the product failed in most cases we are not yet at that point where it can be honestly admitted that the recruitment team made a mistake hiring the one person for the job. As a result, we have women in charge in positions that are not delivering at their full potential. This reflects poorly on women in general.
It gives the impression that the job was not granted based on merit but merely on the basis of gender and race. This is a setback for capable women who maybe don’t have the connections or the right skin color, which is any color that is non-white, to be even considered for the job.
I would love to see great female characters in films, books, and video games. Characters to look up to like Ellen Ripley from 1979, Sarah Connor from the 1984 and 1991 movies, and the TV series Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009). I don’t understand why you would promote women-centric stories with mediocre material.
Ghostbusters (2016), Charlie’s Angels (2019), Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), and MIB: International (2019) are examples where they failed to build memorable and aspirational female characters. I have also seen how they would berate any valid criticism by male commentators as sexist. Even though there were women thinking the same.
GENDER EMPHASIS
In the public and private sectors in the U.S and the U.K, you also see it becoming popular to emphasize gender rather than credentials, capabilities, and experience.
It is frustrating to see this phenomenon growing and gaining popularity. On top of that, we are in a time where some women can’t even give a clear definition of their gender afraid of offending other people by stating a biological fact. Most species have under normal circumstances 2 genders.
To make it even more complicated gender has been mixed up with sexual orientation in regular conversations to make it possible to add more possibilities to the naturally assigned gender.
An adult human female now not only has competition from other adult human females but there is also the other gender that identifies as women but is not adult human females that are taking over jobs and positions for token ship (only selected for their gender and race) rather than for merit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I realize that this is an unpopular opinion at the moment coming from an adult human female, but in my opinion, anyone should get the opportunity to excel if they have the right qualifications and experience. Their gender and race shouldn’t weigh more under normal circumstances.
Competencies, credentials, and experiences are added bonuses if they are recorded to the curriculum of the selected employee. These days the recruitment process has been restructured in such a way that the gender and race of the candidates weigh more than their competencies, credentials, and experience.
However, selecting someone based on the token ship will not only be detrimental to the business in the long run but also to the individual. Especially when they don’t get the opportunity to recognize their weaknesses and further develop their careers. The result would be there firing after the established contract period or until they are not useful as tokens anymore.
Competencies, credentials, and experiences are building blocks of meritocracy that are dying and will have a serious impact on future job opportunities. On the other hand, it also motivates entrepreneurship with more people building their own businesses instead of choosing to work for an employer.
However, it is also true that the road the building your own business is getting obstructed by the established complex government rules and regulations for small businesses and the provided exceptions to bigger corporations.
Either way, you will need to fight your way to finding the job you deserve or build your own business. Both options require hard work and dedication. Those who manage to accomplish their goals should celebrate their achievements no matter how small they are. They matter.
The above notes are my opinion based on life experiences, and sources referenced in the text with links. I’m not sure if the links will be working in the future but just in case you can always check them if they are broken using tools such as the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive, a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. The date of the article or a week before should be timewise a good place to start.
My notes are all set. Let me know what you think
See you on the next page!
