I'm moved to question the relatively new attempts to balance men and women on public and even private bodies, and, yes, the failure yet to achieve the balance shows just how difficult a task it is. Further illustrating the difficulties and pitfalls of that task was the performance this week of two women who've actually made it onto a public body. That body is Maitland City Council and the two women are its only two female councillors, Lisa Tierney and Loretta Baker.

As you may have read in a news report in The Herald, they gave an exquisite glimpse of those difficulties when they objected to another Maitland councillor's request for the council to support International Men's Day in November. Cr Philip Penfold suggested the council give much the same support to the men's day it gave to the International Women's Day last Sunday. About $1500.

No big deal. A worthy cause, given the belated emphasis on prostate cancer and male suicides. But no, the two women councillors just two days after they'd participated in International Women's Day with the council's support argued against the council supporting the men's day. It was premature, community groups had been more involved in organising the women's day, women faced different social challenges from men ... .

Whether or not those reasons make sense to you, you'd have to wonder why they'd object.

I don't know that Crs Tierney and Baker were lifted by political patronage into their winnable positions on party tickets, but I found myself questioning the wisdom of giving women leg-ups into such roles. Imagine the crazy reasoning flipping around the chambers like a deflating balloon if half the councillors were women!

Cr Tierney made the point at the meeting that being equal wasn't about giving everyone the same thing; it was, she said, about levelling the playing field.

In my column today I make the point that a level playing field, and these days it's tilted positively for women, is not a level podium. I suppose lifting women into public positions is, in one sense, levelling the podium, but I question whether the women, women in general and the people are winners in such cases.

Is it time we examined the wisdom of the secretive positive discrimination and the political leg-ups?