Let there be a woman
April 22nd, 2007Today, I’ll be voting for a woman.
I have discovered an interesting philosophical-political-social tool over at Peter’s philosophy blog: the veil of ignorance.
John Rawls proposed a method, which he called the veil of ignorance, for determining which social customs were just and which were unjust. The veil of ignorance criterion is as follows: a rule is just if everyone would agree to it given that they were made ignorant of their position in society. That is, the just society would be chosen by people who had set aside considerations of their own gender, wealth, race, parentage, etc. Ideally this rule eliminates personal bias from the choice and thus guarantees the fairness of rules.
For instance, would I consider the Athenian democracy a just society? Hardly, when I do not know if I am a slave, or a citizen or a woman.
I cannot hide my love of symmetry, on matters mathematical or otherwise (except architectural). Therefore I have another interesting tool to promote: the mirror of justice. A society is just when I’d gladly swap for the symmetric position in that society, whatever that symmetry might be. Would it be OK to be black? poor? old? an immigrant? a woman?
For those who do not know me enough, let’s set the record straight: my pseudonym is mandarine. Get it? never mind; read the rest of my blog.
Would I be glad to be a woman? Well, where I live, and especially when I live and what I do for a living, the answer would probably be sort of. There is still something wrong, though: little girls dreaming of what they can do when they grow up can now dream of being airline pilots, firefighters, brain surgeons, aerospace engineers, but not president. The Palais de l’Elysée is still a fortress of French patriarchy. When it is taken, nobody is going to tell girls or boys what they can or can’t do.
Today (and then again on the 6th of may, if all goes well) is my opportunity to do something. I will be voting for Segolène Royal. I am no big fan of Mrs Royal — I am no big fan of any of the candidates, although there are a few I outright detest. Do not get me wrong: I will not be voting for her just because she is a woman. That would be quite stupid — as if women were any better than men… I do make a habit of voting PS whenever I have an opportunity. And in this case, there’s more to it. There is Françoise Giroud’s theorem:
‘Women will be the true equals of men the day an incompetent woman is nominated at a high position’.
So here it is: if Mrs Royal gets elected, either she is competent and we get ourselves a competent president, or she is not, and we reach true gender equality, which is no small victory for an otherwise dull election.
Cross-posted at What We Said
Amen for Giroud! Let’s vote for equality through incompetence!
Excellent point as usual.
Maybe we’ll have an incompetent presidente (hopefully not), but we can take pride in having a good few true feminist thinkers, including Françoise Giroud, Elisabeth Badinter, Gisèle Halimi, Simone de Beauvoir.
On NPR (National Public Radio) today, there was a segment about a French reggae rapper named Khalifa who has written a song called Segolene et Nicolas. It was a catchy tune. I wish I knew enough French to translate.
He thought that Sarkozy was not the person France needs at the helm at this time.
I’ll research the lyrics and try to give you a translation. Sarkozy really scares a lot of people, including people who vote for him. And as he tends to want to do everything himself alone, we cannot just say he’ll do the media work and he’ll have a serious team working the state wheels in the back (as will probably be the case with Mrs Royal).