Greece Implements Gender Quotas
Greece ranks third in Europe with 75.5% of female judges, raising concerns about gender imbalance potentially affecting judicial decisions despite the author's general opposition to quotas.
As a supporter of the free market, I have always been sceptical about quotas in businesses, organisations and services—much like the concerns raised about economic interventions in Greece—because they run counter to the freedom that must exist for any group to function efficiently.
An entrepreneur or a shareholder managing a company cannot have in mind the correct proportion based on some characteristic. The sole purpose of the company is to operate with the aim of increasing its value and profit for shareholders.
It is not a social institution where the state is compulsorily enforcing a supportive policy towards specific groups of people with certain identifying characteristics. It sounds harsh but it is purely a matter of values: the company, through its supreme orientation towards increasing profits, helps society immensely.
In a profitable organisation, pay rises will be given, the value of the employee will be rewarded, staff who manage to move forward will have morale in the only way that companies measure their value in numbers: by increasing turnover and profit.
However, I was surprised to read the Eurostat study that Greece, with 75.5% of judges being women, is the third highest country in Europe! How does this affect the administration of justice? Every citizen has three in four chances of being judged by a woman.
However fair and just female judges may be, they differ psychologically and biologically as human beings from men, with the consequence that there is a possibility of influence on a decision due to their temperament (just as is also the case for men).
We have observed in recent years particularly harsh decisions towards men, while women accused of roughly the same type of case are treated more favourably. Justice, however, is a structural mechanism of a law-governed state and requires protection at all costs.
Spain as a country has for decades applied the principle of balanced presence (presencia equilibrada) in the judiciary so that the two sexes are represented within the range of 40% and 60%, close to an absolute half.
In Belgium there must compulsorily be a minimum representation of 33% for each sex in judicial bodies. Germany has 50.7% women judges.
Do we really want, in the lottery that will happen to each of us who appeals to or is called to attend a court, to have almost equal chances of being judged by a woman or a man?
The state must legislate a special protective framework, and not only concern itself with gender quotas in companies.
