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Version 1 Version 2
No maids in waiting - why are we pillorying Dutch firm for banning female staff ? No maids in waiting - why are we pillorying Dutch firm for banning female staff ?
(5 months later)
A Dutch caterer, Hans van der Linde, has been explaining to an indignant A Dutch caterer, Hans van der Linde, has been explaining to an indignant international press why he decided that male-only waiting staff would work better for lunch at the nuclear security summit at the Hague earlier this week. “If 20 gentlemen are serving and three platinum blonde ladies, then that spoils the image”. Indeed. In official photographs of the world leaders at the meeting, you can immediately spot how the presence of ladies, even when they are dark-haired and comprehensively outnumbered, can still destroy, as Mr van der Linde has argued, any hope of visual homogeneity - in which respect Angela Merkel’s red jacket must have been especially unwelcome. And those of us hoping for a safer world can only hope that the threat of the German chancellor distracting her male colleagues from the pursuit of nuclear security has been dealt with as competently as the similar risks to male concentration that would be presented by female waitresses, at least according to protective summit official Jean-Paul Weijers.
international press why he decided that male-only waiting staff would It seems all the more unfair to pillory Mr van der Linde and Mr Weijers when the Dutch purge only differs from many similar efforts in this country in having been so successfully realised. A photograph of the Tory front bench was only disfigured, recently, by the presence of two women, clearly visible on the second row back. Similarly, the inclusion of just three women’s names among the 19 progressive signatories to the new letter asking for more radicalism from David Miliband, indicates what can only have been a concerted attempt at male uniformity.
work better for lunch at the nuclear security summit at the Hague earlier this week. “If For it is too much for us to believe, surely, that 16 progressive gentlemen from our leading think tanks could just not have noticed, as they finessed the wording, that they outnumbered women writers by over five to one on a radical document that demanded among other things, “transformative” change, the creation “of a much more equal and sustainable society”, and the “empowerment of everybody”.
20 gentlemen are serving and three platinum blonde ladies, then that No, the idea that a battalion of progressives could call for the empowerment of everybody, and not spot that they embodied a worse sex ratio than the Tory cabinet is almost as preposterous as the creation of an all-women blog in 2014.
spoils the image”. Indeed. In official photographs of the world leaders at the meeting, you can immediately spot how the presence of
ladies, even when they are dark-haired and comprehensively outnumbered,
can still destroy, as Mr van der Linde has argued, any hope of visual
homogeneity - in which respect Angela Merkel’s red jacket must have
been especially unwelcome. And those of us hoping for a safer world can
only hope that the threat of the German chancellor distracting her
male colleagues from the pursuit of nuclear security has been dealt with
as competently as the similar risks to male concentration that would be
presented by female waitresses, at least according to protective summit
official Jean-Paul Weijers.
It seems all the more unfair to pillory Mr van der Linde and Mr
Weijers when the Dutch purge only differs from many similar efforts in
this country in having been so successfully realised. A photograph of
the Tory front bench was only disfigured, recently, by the presence of
two women, clearly visible on the second row back. Similarly, the
inclusion of just three women’s names among the 19 progressive
signatories to the new letter asking for more radicalism from David
Miliband, indicates what can only have been a concerted attempt at male
uniformity.
For it is too much for us to believe, surely, that 16 progressive
gentlemen from our leading think tanks could just not have noticed, as
they finessed the wording, that they outnumbered women writers by over
five to one on a radical document that demanded among other things,
“transformative” change, the creation “of a much more equal and
sustainable society”, and the “empowerment of everybody”.
No, the idea that a battalion of progressives could call for the
empowerment of everybody, and not spot that they embodied a worse sex
ratio than the Tory cabinet is almost as preposterous as the creation of
an all-women blog in 2014.