Women and snooker
Women’s snooker has always been a contentious subject; the sad fact that there has never been a woman player ranked in the top thirty two seems to prove the general view that “snooker is not there game”. This is a nice way of saying “women can’t play snooker”.
There have been many and various reasons given as to why women can not match the men in this field of sport. The first reason is the ratio of male players to female players in all tournaments; in fact it is the only sound reason known but still partly an excuse, there has to be an obvious or simple explanation.
Woman competitors in tennis, golf, cricket, athletics; all concede they are inferior to men (in strength) by accepting a rules change for there benefit, but in snooker there is no strength advantage, nor is there any reason for a condescending rule to make lady snooker players feel inferior.^
No woman in the top 30 in snooker? As we know, gender is socially constructed. There is no reason why women would perform worse at snooker then men. Therefore, to right past injustice, the blatant discrimination by the patriarchy, women should get quotas in the top 30 snooker rankings.
Let us enforce 40% quotas, like in Europe’s boardrooms 0 1 2. This would require 12 women to be promoted into the top 30 snooker players. (please excuse our sarcasm)
But what most prevents women from reaching the boardroom, say bosses and headhunters, is lack of hands-on experience of a firm’s core business. Too many women go into functional roles such as accounting, marketing or human resources early in their careers rather than staying in the mainstream, driving profits. 3,
In sports like Tennis, chess, snooker there are objective criteria of a person’s performance. So it is ridiculous to demand to force women into the top 30 ranks, if they objectively don’t fulfill the requirements.
It does not matter why! Be it for innate deficiencies, be it for lack of interest, lack of breadth of the player basis. It does not matter, they don’t perform and thus deservedly are not in the top 30. In chess, there is only one woman in the top 100. In Tennis women painstakingly avoid competing against men, except against aging ex-champions.
In top management there are no such unassailably objective criteria, and thus it is not possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt if women are put into these jobs unjustly. Though Warren Farrell made a pretty strong point towards explaining why women deservedly rarely make it into the best paid top positions.
Wait, there is more! This article continues! Continue reading “Snooker: no woman in the top 30. Do we need quotas for women?” »
Snooker: no woman in the top 30. Do we need quotas for women?
» continues here »