An article entitled Women Want Quotas (December 6) reported gender equality organisations asking Parliament to introduce quotas. I totally disagree with this and I’ll explain why.

Equality is to be sought in opportunities and their availability not in the resulting statistical outcome- Mark Anthony Sammut

Quotas go against the very concept of meritocracy. Meritocracy means that whoever is the best suited for an appointment or responsibility gets it, regardless of gender, political beliefs, race or sexual orientation but solely on one’s merits and competencies.

Quotas, on the other hand, eliminate the “regardless of gender” part. If, for example, it happens that the best four candidates for a post are all men, why should they be balanced out by shortlisting two men and two women? Likewise, if the best four candidates are women, why should two men replace two more capable women? This happened in Malta’s nominations for a judge to sit on the European Court of Human Rights.

The Council of Europe ironically called this anti-democratic concept as the “democratic principle of gender balance”. What’s wrong if the three most competent judges for the post were men? What would be wrong if the three most competent judges for the post were women?

It seems the Council of Europe too is more inclined on balancing statistics than common sense.

Quotas are anti-democratic. If applied to parliamentary elections, it would mean that male candidates who garner a certain number of votes would not be elected to make way for female candidates who garner fewer votes. Does this not contravene the basic principle of democracy: respect of the will of the people?

And where would quotas stop? Should we set quotas to balance out also homosexual candidates with heterosexual candidates? Should we balance out candidates who hold a degree with candidates who do not? Should we balance out candidates wearing glasses with those who do not? Should we balance out candidates according to their hair colour too? Just for the sake of balance and statistical equality!

You can already see this being done in the election of executive members of the two main political parties. On each election, valid male candidates who garner more votes than female candidates have to be left out for the sake of balancing women representation.

So why are there fewer women in certain posts when compared to men?

There could be many contributing factors, predominantly our cultural mentality which, yes, must be changed and educated. But there may be other factors too.

Right now, 60 per cent of graduates are female. Was this the case up to 20 years ago? No. Until the 1980s, only about 30 per cent of graduates were female.

It would be quite valid to assume that, in the current pool of qualified people with reasonable work experience to expect certain posts, there are many more males than females. It, therefore, stands to reason that there will be more males in certain top posts than females. This trend is already being automatically reversed naturally and, in time, the pool of qualified people will balance out.

Moreover, it will probably consist of more females than males. There’s no need for quotas to force it now. It will come naturally and through merit not through discrimination.

As for the oxymoron “positive discrimination” being used in relation to quotas, I believe there’s no positivity in any form of discrimination. There’s either discrimination or equal opportunities.

I am all for women having equal opportunities for education and employment, as can be witnessed by the high percentage of female graduates.

I am all for women having equal opportunities and rights in elections. That’s why they can contest equally with men and on the same alphabetically ordered list. I am all for incentives to help mothers return to work because they are the gender that can bear children.

But I am not for competent men having to make way for less competent women as much as I am not for competent women making way for less competent men.

Equality is to be sought in opportunities and their availability not in the resulting statistical outcome. All the outcomes that follow are to be based only on meritocracy and competency, regardless of everything else, including gender, and regardless of statistics.

We are different unique humans and not numbers.

The author is a Nationalist member of the Gudja local council.