How the female Green MPs are going to get screwed over by their gender quota rules

Next year will be very interesting when the Green Party does the list ranking as their requirement to have a gender balanced list is going to screw over some of their female MPs and probably send them out of Parliament.

If you were ranking the list based on achievements and positions, you’d probably go along the lines of.

1. James Shaw, co-leader
2. Marama Davidson, co-leader
3. Julie-Anne Genter, Public Transport Minister
4. Eugenie Sage, Conservation Minister
5. Jan Logie, much praised for work around domestic violence
6. Chloe Swarbrick, seen as future co-leader
7. Golriz Ghahraman, high profile on human rights

And on current polling they may only get seven MPs. But alas they are not allowed to rank their list on merit. They have a quota requiring men to get high list places.

So two of those female MPs will have to get demoted to list places 8 and 9. Because they are women. Not because the men ranked higher than them are better than them.

This shows why gender quotas are such a dumb idea. You can have a goal of diversity, but when you have a rule saying it over-rides the other criteria, then you end up screwing over ironically they very demographic the rule is designed to help.