Thursday, April 07, 2005

FEMINISM COMPULSORY IN NORWAY

Norway will shut companies that refuse to recruit at least 40 per cent women to their boards by 2007 under an unprecedented equality drive, a cabinet minister said today. "Companies have been dragging their feet. They really have to recruit more women," Children and Family Affairs Minister Laila Daavoey said. "In the very worst case, they will face closure." Norway's parliament told firms in 2002 to ensure at least 40 per cent of each sex in boardrooms by mid-2005 to force corporate leadership to match Nordic traditions of sex equality elsewhere in society. Before today, however, Oslo had not spelt out sanctions for non-compliance. Many companies denounce the scheme as the toughest corporate sex equality goal in the world. "Since 2002 the percentage of women in boards has risen to only 11 per cent from six," Ms Daavoey said. "Yet there are thousands of qualified women out there - companies can choose from half the adult population."

Many European nations have more women in boardrooms than Norway and the male bastion is a paradox for a country where 40 per cent of the cabinet of Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and 37 per cent of parliamentarians are women. Ms Daavoey, who oversees sex equality rules, said that all state-controlled firms including oil group Statoil and telecoms firm Telenor had already complied. But many other firms are lagging, including energy and engineering group Aker Kvaerner or internet search group Fast. Many business leaders say the rules will force them to recruit ill-qualified women as quota fillers.

"If we can recruit women to our state companies why can't private businesses do it too?" Ms Daavoey said. She said the threat of closure was meant as a spur. "I don't believe that companies will get into a situation where they risk closure. Companies will obviously find women," she said.

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HATRED OF CHRISTIANITY IN NYC

New York prides itself on being the most diverse city in America — “a gorgeous mosaic,” as Mayor David Dinkins used to say. Do traditional Christians have a place in that picture? Apparently not. King’s College, an evangelical school in the heart of New York City, is slated to be killed off by the New York State Board of Regents. But not without a fight. In fact, considering their outrageous treatment of this Christian school, New York State’s Board of Regents may find itself killed off instead.

King’s College is an evangelical Christian school that decided, in 1999, to move from the suburbs to the heart of the city. The idea was to prepare Christian students for positions of national leadership. King’s would focus its curriculum on a rigorous course of politics, philosophy, and economics, and would expose its students (many of them from red America) to a great financial, media, and intellectual center. Instead of giving up on American culture and hiving off into isolated communities, these Christians were determined to take high-quality religious education into the belly of the beast, so to speak. King’s College is now located in the Empire State Building. ...

King’s College has been accredited by the New York State Board of Regents for over 40 years, and all was on track for yet another renewal. After the college was scrutinized by the New York State Board of Education and an external site visit team, the Regents’ own Advisory Council recommended a five-year extension of King’s accreditation. So the stage was set for a fascinating experiment in higher education — an ultimate encounter of red and blue America.

That was until King’s College caught the attention of John Brademas, a quintessentially liberal politician, and one of the newest members of the State Board of Regents..... As soon as the question of King’s College’s accreditation came before the Regents, Brademas began to throw up a series of patently bogus objections, all of which were answered in the written material prepared by the Regents own Advisory Council. Brademas harped on the college’s small library — yet neglected to note that King’s is across the street from the Science and Business Branch of the New York Public Library, and seven short blocks from the library’s main building. That gives King’s a better library than all but a handful of colleges and universities in New York State.....

Maybe John Brademas can come up with a persuasive explanation for his objections to King’s College that does not involve anti-Christian bias. Yet so far, all signs point to the worst sort of blue-state bigotry. If Brademas had really wanted answers to his questions, he could have found them long ago in the materials prepared by the Regents’ own employees. Instead, for months, Brademas has recycled the same baseless charges. What’s more, even if Brademas’s charges were true, they all involve matters that, strictly speaking, are beyond the purview of the Regents. It seems that it’s acceptable for a Christian college to exist, so long as it stays nestled safely outside the cultural mainstream. Secularists and religious liberals have apparently claimed New York City as their inviolable capital.....

Everything about the Regents’ attempt to kill King’s College reeks of a politically motivated attack. In no case did the Regents show that King’s was out of compliance with any of their official accreditation standards. In fact, Joseph Frey, the state Education Department’s Assistant Commissioner of Quality Assurance, publicly stated that the college was in full compliance with the Regents’ standards. The Regents’ decision even violates their own guidelines. The Regents gave King’s only one year of accreditation. That is an effective death sentence, making it impossible to retain or attract faculty or students. Yet the Regents’ own parameters call for accreditations to be granted for a minimum of five years.....

John Brademas and the New York State Board of Regents had better wake up. This little battle is not going to go away. The Regents’ conduct is so far outside of even their own written standards that the legality of their assault on King’s is in question. The Center for Individual Rights, which litigated the Michigan affirmative-action cases before the Supreme Court, has offered its services to King’s College pro bono. (You can follow the King’s accreditation battle here.)

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