It might well be desirable that women have an equal chance in this life. I tend to think so, we around here take that as a given actually. You know, given that we’re liberals. But equal opportunity and equal outcomes are not the same thing, not at all. Which is what makes this insistence about women in boardrooms so suspect:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] City heavyweights have called on the next prime minister to punish companies that continue to keep women out of the boardroom. Dame Inga Beale, who was the first female boss of insurance market Lloyd’s of London and stood down last year, said the “time for action around setting targets and quotas for gender balance in senior leadership roles is here, with repercussions for those that don’t achieve it”. [/perfectpullquote] [perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]She called for the Government to impose “some sort of levy for those non-compliant firms that could then be used for further research into achieving better gender balance or be used internally to fund specific programmes for female talent development”.[/perfectpullquote]If a woman is bright – that should go without saying, that it is the bright people who get the top jobs – and also willing to put in those few decades of 60 hour weeks just as the men do to gain those jobs then sure, why not? Why shouldn’t there be equal numbers of people doing those top jobs?
The answer being that we’ve not got an equality of people wanting to do those preparatory decades. For the obvious reason that it is women who bear children and it tends to be women who then become the primary carer. Hey, sure, perhaps we can imagine a world where that second, the caring part, isn’t true. But people who insist we’re in that one haven’t met many human beings.
No, this doesn’t mean that a woman who goes off to work leaving the 2 month old sucking on the products of the breast pump is wrong or evil or anything. Only and just that the average, across the population, response to the having of children is different between men and women. In fact, if we note that fathers make more than non-fathers – yes, adjusting for age, education, all that – and mothers less than non-mothers we’ve now explained the entirety of that gender pay gap. There is no other reason we’ve got to look for because it all is indeed there in just those two.
So, why haven’t we got equal numbers of women execs? Because a large enough number of women think they’ve more important and interesting things to do in life than climb the greasy pole. They’re probably right too.
Hey, sexually dimorphic species and all that.
Sure, we can argue that having more diversity on that boardroom will make the company more profitable. Which then becomes an issue for the shareholders, doesn’t it? The company being run for their benefit after all. And if it really is true that companies are better when partly or equally run by women then the companies that are so will outcompete the others. 100% male companies will go the way of the dinosaurs. Actually, they should have done already given corporate turnover. They haven’t so there might be something wrong with the original assertion.
But here’s the specific question here. Fines means, obviously, that someone has done something wrong. Actually, that they’ve committed a criminal act. We’re not, as yet at least, at the point where the government can come take your money just because some pressure group doesn’t like you.
So, what’s so important about women executives that not having some should be a criminal act?
A woman who goes off and leaves her two month old child suckling at a pump is doing neither herself nor her child a favour. A multitude of research has clearly shown that better outcomes, for mother and child, are fostered by continual close physical contact in the early part of life, especially the first three months. That may not fit with current fashionable thought, but human beings are animals first and political thinkers second.
Thin end of the wedge – just wait until you have to have 0.001% of your workforce be the tail end of the LBTQ+ alphabet.
We’re not, as yet at least, at the point where the government can come take your money just because some pressure group doesn’t like you.
The whole social construct of ‘hate speech’ and ‘racial discrimination’ was forced on us by pressure groups. And nowadays the groups don’t need the government – they can just force you out of your job and bankrupt you because they don’t like a tweet…
The people calling for more women in the top jobs are the same sort of people insisting that a man can self identify as a woman and thus become a woman. Any company facing one of these proposed fines could just encourage one or more of their senior executives to become female.
Or have I missed something?
Obvious way to go!!!
By the end of this year all publicly held firms based in California will be required to have at least one female board member. Likely some well connected women will make a fortune serving on many boards.
Perhaps the best analysis ever written of these sorts of requirements was by TJ Rodgers, former CEO of Cypress Semiconductors, in a letter to a nun who complained about the lack of minorities or women on the board. It’s a bit long, but you can read it or download it here.
http://www.uvm.edu/~awoolf/classes/spring2006/ec20/Letter%20TJ%20Rogers%20Cypress%20semiconductor.doc.
I was expecting the response to ask how many men were represented in the management of the Penguin house.
They’re field. Headquarters is all male.
So women Cardinals then…