Gender equity, an oxymoron?

In their own committee all but one member of the executive board are women. In every district within the committee, the majority of members are women. I live in Redwood City where the majority of our council are women. Now I’m an old white guy and I don’t see anybody who looks like me on our council. Should I be upset? This concept that someone has to look like me to be able to represent me has to be put to bed. It is divisive to our community and tends to pit one group against another on issues other than merit.

They use the term ‘promote gender equity,’ which, to me, is an oxymoron. We have equity when we ignore gender, race, ethnicity, age, physical attributes, sexual orientation and elect or hire people based on merit. What they are promoting is affirmative action-choose a women because she is a woman. I suspect they supported our embattled sheriff based on her gender with no more than a cursory look at her qualifications. They need to remember that they fought for decades against what was basically affirmative action-elect the white guy because he is a white guy. If it was bad policy when it was used against you then it is a bad policy when you use it against someone else. Let us choose equity where there are no adjectives before the word. 

Steven Howard

Redwood City