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The Forum > Article Comments > The myth of gender interchangeability > Comments

The myth of gender interchangeability : Comments

By Babette Francis, published 5/4/2013

To make the weight-lifting requirement for combat assignments gender neutral, how many pounds will be taken off the test?

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Poirot, as you point out, a military career was a way for an aspirant bourgeois family to rise to higher social rank. Lengthy loyal service was often rewarded with some form of rank honour, even up a Dukedom in some cases (Arthur Wellesley/the Duke of Wellington being a notable example).

To return to the topic though, in today's Australian milieu such advancement through meritorious service is a little different. Few military careers lead to high public office outside the military. Even someone like Peter Cosgrove, for all his accolades as a military leader, has largely found his opportunities limited to functional roles, such as coordinating natural disaster relief efforts.

On the other hand, a career bureaucrat, because of the opportunity to make lots of useful contacts and to hand out patronage while in office, is often rewarded with a significant public position after they retire from the bureaucratic ranks.

Some recent examples include Penny Wensley and of course Quentin Bryce, both of whom were careerist public servants/political opportunists before being given their public relations/public office role. The diplomatic corps and the judiciary are the surest ways to enter such company, although a few soldiers do manage it, including Major General Michael Jeffreys.

Because of the military merit-based promotional system, it takes a long while to make a significant military career. By contrast, a public service career can reach glittering heights in just a few years thanks to patronage and affirmative action. It seems unlikely that ambitious feminists will be much interested in the more arduous and less certain path, when the alternative is a broad, gilded highway.

I can't see how reducing standards to attract such people would be of benefit to anyone.
Posted by Antiseptic, Wednesday, 10 April 2013 2:36:26 PM
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Anti,

Just quickly. You are right.

The Vice Admiral I referred to earlier married the daughter of this Vice Admiral.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Saumarez,_1st_Baron_de_Saumarez

Naval or military service was certainly a way to distinguish oneself and get ahead if you had the aptitude for it.
Posted by Poirot, Wednesday, 10 April 2013 3:44:34 PM
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Isn't it interesting how things have changed and yet stayed the same? Patronage is still the best way to get ahead in "society", but the rise of the Civil service has largely eclipsed Military service as the way to achieve such patronage.

The upper echelons are still very incestuously intertwined, often linked by a marriage bond somewhere that is frequently unknown to the rest of us. The famous linkage of Quentin Bryce to Bill Shorten via marriage to her daughter is just a tiny example. Politicians and journalists are a very common pairing, as are public service "power couples", or politicians with such public servants.

At least in the old days there was an overt pride in such familial connections and they were recorded assiduously. Today the links are very often actively covered up by those in the know. The power is still constrained within a fairly narrow subset, but it's exercised more covertly. I'm not sure that's a great advance for society.

It's not just confined to marital links either, ideological connections have come to trump the idea of "the greater good" and personal sacrifice for the national interest and the types of ideological adherence have changed. Being seen to espouse feminism is now de rigeur for any aspiring careerist civil servant or academic or unionist. Failure to do so sufficiently fulsomely will be looked at askance and dissent will not be tolerated.

We have become a nation ruled, as ever, by a narrow class who have all been to the "right" schools and done the "right" courses at uni and plotted a cautious politically tuned course through their career. The genuine thinkers and achievers are nowhere to be seen - they're too risky to have around. It doesn't matter which side of politics you vote for, the class that is in power remains there whoever is incumbent and they are far removed from you and I in every respect.

Feminism's great triumph has been in harnessing the enormous social power of women. Its great failure has been in doing nothing worthwhile with it.
Posted by Antiseptic, Thursday, 11 April 2013 8:34:24 AM
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