Companies should employ more women, even if they aren't good enough.

This is not what "Equality Minister" Harriet Harman actually said. But she is advocating "positive discrimination", or "affirmative action", as Americans call it. And positive discrimination means that you favour a weaker candidate who is black or female over a stronger candidate who is white or male.  Positive discrimination favours the inferior. From The Telegraph:

Companies will be encouraged to positively discriminate in favour of women job candidates.

Firms will also be forced to publish details of how much men and women are paid, Harriet Harman, the Equality Minister, has disclosed.

The controversial moves are designed to promote more women to senior roles and to close the gender pay gap.

Miss Harman said the changes, which are being unveiled today, were necessary to get "a bit of a push forward".

A "bit of a push forward" towards what? Mediocrity? Inefficiency?

But she scoffed at suggestions that the new laws would make "women more equal than men".

Miss Harman said: "Most women are going out to work and they are just as committed to their jobs - the money that they earn is important to the household budget so they should be paid fairly.

"Yet listen to this figure - if you are a woman working part-time you get 40 per cent less per hour on average than a man working full-time.

"Now either this is because women are not up to the job or else there is discrimination against them. You can't challenge discrimination when it's kept swept under the carpet."

It is as well for Miss Harman that she is "Equalities Minister", an absurd non-job funded by the taxpayer. Were she in business and having to earn her keep, her incompetence at even basic logical thinking would ensure rapid bankruptcy. A woman working part-time earns on average 40 per cent less per hour than a man working full-time. This is because full-time jobs, for both men and women, are better paid than part-time jobs, and men are more likely to be in full-time work. There is nothing discriminatory about this. If a woman were paid less per hour for exactly the same job, as used to be the case, then this would be discriminatory. Moreover, women often choose less demanding jobs than men because of family responsibilities, or indeed because they want a balanced life. This is a reasonable choice, but why should it be subsidised by those who work longer and harder? Narrowing pay differentials between hard jobs and easier jobs means that those who make personal sacrifices must subsidise those who do not.

I note that Miss Harman does not touch on race. Would race trump gender in the diversity stakes? Michelle Obama was doubly lucky in being both black and female - how bad would her grades need to be, in Miss Harman's diverse Utopia, to keep her out of Princeton?

Diversity, that is employing inferior candidates, is all very well for Miss Harman and others whose "jobs" are underwritten by the taxpayer. A business, on the other hand needs people - men, women, transsexuals, white, black, gay straight or polyamorous - who can do things.