FEMINISTS, such as Anne-Marie Slaughter, often claim that  companies have an obligation to create an equal number of positions for men and women because equality is profitable. The expenses of accommodating women employees in demanding jobs, so the argument goes, are ultimately compensated. If employees devote much less time to their jobs and are often distracted, productivity increases.

This fantastical argument, rehashed in Slaughter’s latest piece in The Atlantic, defies common sense. It has also been refuted. See British academic Catherine Hakim’s long report on the subject.

Despite the many forces pushing equality, there is virtually no organized resistance to this flawed thinking and the coercive project of workforce quotas. There is promising news, however, from Britain. A businessman, Mike Buchanan, has started a new organization, Campaign for Merit in Business, to resist “positive discrimination for women.” He writes:

The reasons for the ‘imbalances’ between the numbers of men and women in the senior reaches of organisations in general, and in the boardroom in particular, are very well understood, although not widely understood. They’re attributable (as are phenomena such as the ‘gender pay gap’) to the choices freely made by men and women with regard to the world of work and have nothing to do with discrimination against women.

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Mike Buchanan writes:

The Institute of Economic Affairs has asked me to give a presentation on the subject of gender diversity in the boardroom, and in senior executive roles generally, at their headquarters – 2 Lord North Street, London SW1P 3LB – at 1.00 p.m. on 29 August. All are invited to attend and can contact me at the Campaign website.

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