Cas:

I’m finding it bizarre how astonished people here are at the idea that we should respect the experience of experts.

Ah. See the reason I’m astonished is that – to me, at least, and possibly some of the others – it doesn’t sound like you’re saying ‘we should respect the views of the experts’.

It sounds like your saying ‘We should attach more weight to the opinion of $Gender_Type’. I have an enormous problem with that attitude, because that’s exactly the kind of mindset that causes social inequalities in the first place, and personally I’m in favour of reducing social inequalities, not using them as a foundation for change.

That’s my first problem.

My second problem is pretty much what Dan says: I don’t see the difference between saying ‘Women experience more sexism, therefore anything a woman says on the subject is more important’ and saying ‘90% of CEOs are men, therefore if they say they shouldn’t hire a woman, we should ignore anything a woman has to say on that subject – after all, the men are the one’s with the experience’.

I think you’re failing to see the flip side of your argument: if you assign experience based on gender in “favour” of women, you have to do it against women as well. And then you are pretty much doomed to having women experience more sexism. Feels like a world of wrong to me.