Affirmative action has seen many incompetent women get a leg-up to senior managerial posts in the public sector in particular.

Then there is ex-PM of Oz, Ms Julia Galah'd (well named by Obama), who even voted herself pay higher than Barack Obama and the UK PM (all with ten times plus the population of Oz). What a self-serving disaster she was!

From the Liberal side of politics there is the example of Ms Sallyanne (Salaryanne) Atkinson, who presided as CEO of a major childminding business that went belly up, becoming a national scandal. There was no saving 'Salaryanne' was clueless about her fiduciary responsibilities, especially of the financial sort, but insisted that she was there because she was such a great communicator!

'Salaryanne' mirrors the failed 'Galah'd' who similarly is re-writing history, blaming others others and similarly still did very well for herself.

Competent, deserving women will, like their male counterparts get there through their own ability and demonstrated record of exemplary performance.

Affirmative action draws the (ahem) 'entrepreneurial' do-getters.

go-getters

Dearest Foxy,

Yes, I have to admit I've worked under some utterly incompetent Indigenous male 'leaders', but once or twice in association with incompetent Indigenous female 'leaders' as well. Come to think of it, I've never worked under a competent Indigenous leader, male OR female. But that's just one of the problems with probability.

I remember one Indigenous male boss who I disagreed with (on the phone) and who threatened to come out and punch the daylights out of me. End of that annual contract, of course: never, never disagree with an Indigenous boss. I recall another female boss in Indigenous student support who worked from home [how do you DO that ?]

To get BTT, perhaps the fork in the road, at which point feminists chose the wrong fork on the whole, was in the mid- to late eighties, perhaps earlier, when feminists mostly chose identity over equality politics, as outlined in a magnificent article by Joan Wallach Scott: i.e. they couldn't see that equality meant far more than 'sameness', if it ever meant that at all. Perhaps each generation has to re-learn all the dopey lessons of its predecessor - and sometimes they don't.

Joe