I don't know much about this particular case, but I'd also agree that quotas are very rarely the answer to fix discrimination.
(And I say this knowing that it may well have played a part in me getting into the university I went to.)
Ideally, we'd be able to select the best people for the job, and if those "best people for the job" reflected an institutional bias, you'd fix that at source. But I'm coming at it by analogy from educational selection, where a university should pick the best students, and if that ends up with a biased sample, get better teaching at an earlier stage for the minority students, don't put them onto a course they can't do because they haven't had good enough teaching, however bright they were born.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 10:49 am (UTC)(And I say this knowing that it may well have played a part in me getting into the university I went to.)
Ideally, we'd be able to select the best people for the job, and if those "best people for the job" reflected an institutional bias, you'd fix that at source. But I'm coming at it by analogy from educational selection, where a university should pick the best students, and if that ends up with a biased sample, get better teaching at an earlier stage for the minority students, don't put them onto a course they can't do because they haven't had good enough teaching, however bright they were born.