Hello blogosphere,
As you can tell from this blogger, I do not blog much. I recently heard a conversation with a mentor and friends and they all believe that it's a great idea to blog. We all constantly have things that bug us, genius ideas (for the while they last), opinions on issues while they are still hot, among other things. I think I am afraid of one more commitment. However, I am going to be blogging my responses, thoughts whenever I feel like and that way I can follow my thought patterns and progress in life and in writing.
For my international friends, junior year refers to the penultimate year of school; whether college or high school. I am in my third year of college O_O which is exhilarating considering the fact that I was in high school just the other day. Life goes too fast. #sigh. The reason I used the captioned the above is because I am finally taking classes that I love and care for. I am taking a Political Science class dubbed "Political Economy of Development" by Dr. Devesh Kapur. He is awesome; every time he finishes his lectures, I just want to clap- every lecture is a TED talk. And just so you get a better picture, in most class, a few minutes before class ends, people are already packing up. In this class, we are still seated 5 minutes after the end of the class. And even when he stops, most of us are still staring at him in awe (at least I think we do).
I've covered a lot in the class; governance, poverty, measuring poverty, globalization, trade etc. Everything that encapsulates politics and the economy. Yesterday we had a conversation on the relevance of affirmative action and quotas in increasing the representation of women in higher levels of public office leadership. To say the very least, affirmative action is an interesting (read controversial) topic. I personally believe that we need to increase representation, equity and access. Whether we do this through quotas, affirmative action or nominations is up to society, admissions offices etc. Some of my classmates feel that promoting empowerment at earlier ages would help women to be more competitive at higher levels, the assumption here is that men are encouraged to be leaders earlier on in life? I am not sure this is quite the case. The example of Girl Scouts and Boy scouts was pointed out as being discriminatory at a young age, where girls bake cookies and boys tie knots and do other "manly things". My argument is that in pursuing equality, we should not lose who we are/were created to be. There are characteristics that men possess that women do not and vice versa, increasing access does not mean that we should convert women into menish figures. We need to understand that we all have different approaches to decision making and that diversity is great as opposed to homogeneity.
I have not developed this argument or thought process well, but it would be nice to hear what people think of affirmative action or quotas. Should they come with sunset clauses? Does it infringe on democracy? I mean, does democracy even exist in it true perfect form?
I am glad I finally got to write some of my thoughts down.
Until we meet again! Hakuna matata!
Kerubo.
