Clinton says half her Cabinet will be women

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Well, so far this thread proves exactly why I argued a few days ago that the United States is not actually ready for a female president, even though a female president is what they're going to get.

"How about a cabinet that is 100% competent?" Did some dope really just say that? They think so low of women that they believe Hillary will not be able to find ~10 competent ones for her cabinet? Sheesh. This is exactly why it's important to be up front about gender representation in politics, throw caution to the wind, and flatly argue that yeah, choosing someone because they are a woman is a good thing to do. Current systems of thought do not appropriately recognize the merits of women, so we need to make sure that there are policies in place that help give women a leg up over the invisible barriers they face. Otherwise we'll always have people in power cut from the same cloth and the ideals they reproduce will privilege the same people. And it will continue to look neutral because acting as if it is only merit that has gotten us centuries of mostly male cabinets allows us to not have to question what it would really mean to achieve gender parity. Look no further than this thread to see how threatening real equality of opportunity is.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

In all fairness she's hardly just going to pick the first 10 women off the street...

Exactly. It's not like America doesn't have 5 very capable and experienced women for a presidential cabinet.

It's also not like the best possible choices for most of the cabinet positions aren't men.  It's not anything wrong with women as a group; there just aren't as many women at the very top levels of government, academia and industry.  Would you rather have the absolute most capable and experienced cabinet member or a reasonably capable and experienced member who's also a woman?

What I want is very simple, I want her to do the best job she can without taking gender into consideration in her decisions.  Is a woman the best possible pick for Attorney General?  Pick the woman.  Is a woman the best possible pick for Secretary of State?  Pick the woman.  But if a man is the best possible choice, pick the man.  I don't care.  Just don't pick the woman when the man is the best possible choice solely because you want your cabinet to be gender-balanced.

If we keep doing this, other countries that don't do it are going to end up with stronger cabinets and outperform us.

It's really absurd that you think there is actually one objective best pick for a given job. It speaks to the biases that prevent women from being recognized.