Kate Emery: Getting a job because of your sex? It’s been happening for years

Getting a job by virtue of your sex? It just doesn’t feel right.

Jobs should be awarded on merit, not because of what is or isn’t between your legs.

So when do we invent the time machine to travel back and undo centuries worth of institutional sexism, exactly?

Because the fact that jobs have been awarded on the basis of sex for as long as there have been bosses and workers rarely seems to trouble anyone when the subject of quotas comes up.

Those who oppose gender quotas on the basis that women should earn the gigs on merit, not a leg up, live in an alternate reality where being a (white, straight, able-bodied) man hasn’t long been the leg-up of all leg-ups in our society.

Blokes who shudder at the idea that the Liberal Party could use gender quotas to deal with their “woman problem” seem utterly confident they got their position purely on merit.

The fact that a man might have gone to the same (boys) school as the boss who hired him, belonged to the same (men’s) club as the boss who promoted him and could be the stunt double for every member of the board that backed him is coincidence.

Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre man who believes he’d be in exactly the same gig if he was a woman.

Women aren’t better qualified than men because they’re women. There are surely as many unqualified and incompetent women in the world as men. It’s just that historical gate keeping has kept all but the best, luckiest and most persistent women out of plenty of top jobs, while the dregs of the men continue to seep through.

If you’re reading this column and thinking: “nobody discriminates against women these days” you’re half right.

Once upon a time the discrimination against women was overt: women were explicitly banned from doing many jobs and holding positions of leadership. Wartime necessity opened the door to many professions but, for a long time women were expected to give up their jobs when they got married to focus on their new, exciting and obviously unpaid full-time gig: being a wife and mother.

Just because those days are in the rear-view mirror and millennials like myself have grown up in a world where a woman’s right to work where she wants and get equal pay for it are protected by law, doesn’t mean that unconscious bias or discrimination doesn’t exist.

Research shows us again and again that bosses are most likely to hire people who resemble them. If men are over-represented at the top echelons of politics and business, the sausage party will never end.

These male bosses aren’t hiring and promoting men because they’re dickheads: it’s because they see themselves in the male candidate. They won’t think of it as unconscious bias, they’ll justify as the man being a “better fit”.

One way to tackle unconscious bias is to use quotas: a blunt tool that operates on the assumption that there are just as many talented and qualified women as men.

Which brings us to the Liberal Party, where Federal Opposition Leader Sussan Ley cracked the door open to gender quotas in a speech to the National Press Club where she said she was agnostic on whether they were needed but “open to any approach”.

Shadow defence minister and self-described “crusader” for women Angus Taylor was quick to support his boss, the first female leader of the Liberal Party, by declaring quotas would “subvert democracy”.

How quotas for women are undemocratic but quotas for National Party MPs on the Coalition’s front bench are fine is unclear at this time but I’m sure Mr Taylor would have a great answer. He’s there on merit, you know.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott helpfully described quotas as “fundamentally illiberal”.

As a social affairs reporter, not a political one, I can’t speak to the politics of whether gender quotas would help the Liberal Party to win back the young and female voters who have overwhelmingly deserted them.

What I can say is that quotas work in getting more women politicians elected. If that’s what the Liberal Party wants to do, they should, at the very least, not shut down the conversation.

But I have no doubt the party is taking its electoral wipe-out very seriously and looking to the future.

That must be why the Liberal Party’s latest fundraising email has Mr Abbott shilling for donations. After all, Mr Abbott supports women so ardently he included one in his 19-member 2013 cabinet.