Men are more likely to pursue politics, but anyone who’s in politics I’d imagine aims for the premiership, whether male or female.

Well as you said yourself, these are cultural influences that come nature. Women have a lot of their roles in society due to genetics and so do men. It’s why a lot of societal norms are the same across the world. There’s of course certain cultural aspects which influence where people work that aren’t from that.

The majority of politicians in the western world are men for two main reasons. The first being the majority of the population being white. The second being a lot of politicians have been in their jobs for a long long time, people often re-elect the same person in their area again (in the U.K. we call these safe seats), allowing for those who were in politics 40 years ago when the social landscape was different to still be a large amount of the government. Despite this, the cabinet under the previous prime minister in the U.K. had 0 white men in it.

White and black are races in the way we use it to refer to humans, it’s easier than saying “Anglo-Saxon” or “Ethiopian”. Anyway, the races don’t have any notable mental or physical capabilities that are different due to race, but there are those due to socio economic reasons, but that’s a different kettle of fish that I’d rather not go into as I’d be here all day. The only reason I brought up race is it’s a area you see affirmative action get put in place for, which especially in the case of university and college admission has been proven to not just be discriminatory but also negative towards those that get in. This video explains it bette than I can.

Under a meritocracy you wouldn’t see an even split. Different people are into different things and go into different areas. In a meritocracy you’d see the best people to do the job get it, so it’s very possible to have a crazy skew in the numbers of men to women or whites to blacks or whatever, all comes down to who’s best for the role and whose applying. It’s not a problem, just like it’s not a problem that women are the majority in some roles and men are the majority in others. Men are less likely to want to be nurses or look after children, whilst women are less likely to want to work on an oil rig or be a mechanic. It’s just down to what the sexes prefer, partially do a biological level (women being naturally more caring and child focused whilst men are more proactive and stronger).

The scully effect has nothing to do with discrimination in favour of women. It has to do with a female role model, which have existed in politics for longer than short lists have.

The parties in the U.K. make all female short lists, basically saying only women can run in certain constituencies. Discriminatory, really. Pretty sure they also have all minority ones as well in Labour U.K.

Meritocracy still works in a prejudiced society, just to a lesser extent. All that creating all-X short lists does is create more prejudice and likely promote the non-best candidate

Doesn’t matter if it’s 100% male or 100% female as long as they’re democratically elected and are good at their job.

Not sure what it’s like in NZ, but in the U.K. a lot of female MPs are likely only there due to female only short lists, which I think is a terrible thing to have. Meritocracy is what’s important, if I became an MP just because of a characteristic and not my beliefs or merits then I’d be unhappy about it.