On Tuesday, 18 September, there was a 16-page pullout (sponsored by Accenture) in The Times titled, ‘Women Mean Business’. It’s full of the usual claptrap we’ve heard a thousand times before, so rather than insult your intelligence I’ll summarise the content as ‘Blah, blah, blah’. But two things caught my eye:

– references to a report (‘Gender Diversity and Corporate Performance’ published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute in August 2012. The references (those I’ve read so far, anyway) were carefully selected so as to mis-represent the Credit Suisse report as providing evidence of a link (again, a causal link rather than just mere correlation) between more women on boards and enhanced corporate performance. A standard tactic we’ve exposed on numerous occasions with regards to reporting of extracts from McKinsey and Catalyst reports in particular.

–  this next bit will go in my file, ‘S*** you couldn’t make up.’ It’s a piece titled, ‘Living in the age of Aquarius’ by the astrologer Shelley von Strunkel, in which she ‘analyses the role of women, from an astrological viewpoint, and predicts growing female independence.’

Can we look forward to a future in which female board directors appoint new directors on the basis of their astrological charts? Or maybe their handwriting? I can see that working out well… for atrologers and graphologists, anyway.