LOL

And the best story of the day was an accidental meeting with UTS’s gender diversity leader.

She’s hatching plans to get more women into engineering degrees.

It’s a sector that is already over-subscribed. Everyone uni had the same program targeting the same minority of left handed girls.

They’ll have to start paying women to do engineering degrees. Actually they already are.

I asked her why the program existed and she answered that they wanted to get more women into engineering.

I suggested that when the problem and the solution are the same that there might be an issue.

Confusion.

I asked her whether there was some evidence from overseas that gender balance in engineering provided better economic outcomes for engineering firms.

She knew of no such data and countered that my suggestion was a non-sequitur. The issue is apparently about the vibe of the thing.

Not much I could counter there.

So I suggested an alternative approach; squeeze more men into the degrees that women normally cluster into thus leaving the women with no option but to enter into unfashionable degrees such as engineering.

That was an abhorrent concept.

LOL. And I did.