Are quotas making the cut?

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter many years of negotiation and discussion, the Church of England now has a female bishop, Libby Lane, to be henceforth known as the Bishop of Stockport. Certainly a step forward, but this breakthrough has now opened the floodgates, with many people demanding more women bishops (which is fair enough) and, more alarmingly, calling for a quota of women bishops.

In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, the quota is used to ensure a certain number of a minority group. To be more specific, it is used in relation to big institutions – the Church, the government, general employment – to regulate the amount of people who are female, an ethnic minority, LGBTUA+ or whatever other criteria are applicable.

I can certainly appreciate that these groups have a hard time, often facing discrimination,

but the idea of quotas seems like a massive step backwards.

When analysing the cabinet, attention is often paid to the amount of women or black people chosen to hold the most important posts, the idea being that the government cannot truly represent these groups if it does not have a representative amount of them making crucial decisions.

This reasoning does not make sense to me – roles as important as these ought to be selected on merit, and I see no trouble with having a cabinet full of white, middle-class men if they are the best people for the job. If people are being denied positions that they would be suitable for and, indeed, good at, simply to fulfil a box-ticking exercise, something is incredibly wrong.

It also seems to be a bit of a kick in the teeth for the people supposedly benefiting.

There is pride in working hard and making your own way to the top. To be given a cushy job based on the colour of your skin or your gender is, frankly, a bit insulting, and you are effectively a ‘token’ employee, in place to satisfy some form of anti-discrimination law. It ought to be the case that the competent be rewarded – I know that these laws are in place to prevent daft situations based on daft viewpoints, but they are not the excuse to shoehorn people into jobs that some seem to think they are.

I wish The Most Rev. Lane all the best of luck in her future career, and I hope that she does an excellent job in her new post, paving the way for more women to become bishops. But if the situation becomes twisted and calls start going out for every tenth bishop to be a woman solely to balance the books, then that is not acceptable.