The minister of technology looked like he considered himself worthy of a glass of champagne after having answered a tricky question at a forum debate about the ICT sector this week: How will you solve the gender gap problem? To paraphrase it, why are all the IT hotshots in this country male?

“I’m going to force young women to study hardcore subjects like programming and civil engineering, while the men shall study advanced beauty therapy. What was that? You’re a young woman who has always dreamt of becoming an interior designer? Tough luck, kiddo! We need to make this society equal, so you have to study something that is perceived as manly. As for you, young lad, enough talk about wanting to be a software engineer. You shall study flower arrangement. A flower boy, you shall be. Why bother with individual happiness, when we can have EQUALITY,” was what the minister didn’t say. That reasoning is reserved for misguided gender activists. But he said something almost as unhelpful.

What the minister of technology, Yogida Sawmynaden, plans to do to narrow the gender gap in IT, he said, is to improve internet connectivity. That way, more Mauritian women can join the world of work while staying at home at the same time, he said. He seems to imagine a scenario where women remain in their so-called natural habitat, the home, while taking little breaks from cleaning to type on their laptops. That, naturally, will allow them to take over the island’s IT companies. Gender gap issue solved! And, while the Mauritian minister was marketing his pseudo-solution, a lost bunch of activists halfway across the globe, in Sweden, began organising a man-free festival. Since all men are supposedly violent, a women-only festival is, according to them, a great gender equality victory.

When are people going to realise that gender equality means just that – equality. It doesn’t mean new forms of discrimination, promoting traditional gender roles or restricting our freedom by putting pressure on us to inherit the opposite sex’s outdated gender role. Why do we get ourselves so lost, when the real solutions are obvious – the same opportunities for everyone and equal pay for equal work?

We are nowhere near achieving real equality. In the US, which is far from being the worst example, the average woman still only earns 79 cents for every dollar that a man gets. Most countries, including this one, allow women to take paid time off work to care for their children, but don’t offer men that opportunity. And, every time a person of influence even insinuates that a woman’s place is in the house, we move backwards.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it, Albert Einstein once said. To discriminate for equality is like making love for virginity, kill chickens for veganism or sell heaters in hell. It is always going to backfire. So, no champagne for Yogida this week.

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