British followers of this blog will need no reminding who the vociferous feminist Janet Street-Porter is. This is a woman so full of self-satisfaction that she said on the TV programme Loose Women not long ago:

I’m very intelligent. I’m not boasting, I am very intelligent.

Well, if she’s intelligent, she’s living proof that intelligent people can say (and write) some very stupid things. She excelled herself today in her Daily Mail column, more specifically in the first section:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2447296/JANET-STREET-PORTER-Do-favour–ditch-soundbites-DO-something.html.

The gender pay gap commentary is so uninformed and erroneous that I can’t be bothered even to comment on it, let alone challenge it. Life’s too short. Many people have shown the ‘gap’ to be fully accountable by issues such as lines of work, industry sectors, levels of seniority, unsociable working hours and conditions, danger of risk to life and limb (126 of the 128 workplace-related deaths last year were of men) and the like. Yet the myth rolls on, year after year.

Our public challenge relates to something she wrote in the piece, which is equally uninformed and erroneous. She wrote:

I want both sexes to be treated equally and  given the same chances, because research shows that more women in charge  produces better results for business.

The first part of the statement is itself uninformed and erroneous – women are treated equally and given the same chances – and anyone who doubts this is invited to read Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox or my own The Glass Ceiling Delusion. Our public challenge relates to the second part of her statement:

 … research shows that more women in charge produces better results for business.

Campaign for Merit in Business (‘C4MB’) has been in existence since May 2012, and we know of no such ‘research’. Professor Susan Vinnicombe, the head of the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders, for many years the most prominent academic proponent of increased female representation on corporate boards, admitted before a House of Lords inquiry in July 2012 that she knew of no such research:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/a-remarkable-statement-by-a-leading-proponent-of-improved-gender-diversity-in-the-boardroom/

She stated to the inquiry:

… there has been quite a push in the past – indeed, we ourselves have engaged in such research – to look at the relationship between having women on corporate boards and financial performance. We do not subscribe to this research. We have shared it with chairmen and they do not think that it makes sense. We agree that it does not make sense. You cannot correlate two or three women on a massive corporate board with a return on investment, return on equity, turnover or profits. We have dropped such research in the past five years and I am pleased to say that Catalyst, which claims to have done a ground-breaking study on this in the US, officially dropped this line of argument last September.

We’re not aware of a single study or report, from anywhere in the world, which shows a causal link between more women on boards and improved corporate financial performance. All reports of which we’re aware, which show correlations, make it perfectly clear that correlations aren’t proof of causation, and they don’t even imply causation. There are far more plausible explanations of those correlations than some ‘gender effect’ fantasy’.

C4MB, on the other hand, has given a lot of exposure to five longitudinal studies (analysing companies in the United States, Germany and Norway) which clearly show a link between increased female representation on boards, and declines in corporate financial performance. Our short briefing paper on the studies, with their full Abstracts:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

Over the course of 17 months we’ve invited the government, CBI, Chartered Management Institute, and dozens of other organisations (and hundreds of individuals) who support increasing the proportion of women in boardrooms to challenge these five studies, or to provide evidence of a causal link between increased female representation on boards and improved financial performance. Collectively they’ve provided us with nothing.

By her own estimation Janet Street Porter is a very intelligent woman, so I’m sure she’ll be able to provide the evidence to back her assertion that ‘… research shows that more women in charge produces better results for business.’ I’m about to email her a link to this public  challenge, and I’ll ask her to respond by 5pm on 14 October 2013. If she fails to do so, I look forward to adding her to our ‘Hall of Shame’ which consists of proponents of increased female representation on boards who’ve failed to respond to similar public challenges in the past. A small selection:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/our-public-challenges-of-high-profile-proponents-of-improved-gender-diversity-in-boardrooms/

Now this is definitely one for the ‘You couldn’t make this stuff up!’ file.

My thanks to Ken for forwarding me a couple of Bloomberg links a moment ago. The first is a profile of the French multinational, Sodexo, the second a profile of Michel Landel, the company’s CEO:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/people.asp?ticker=SDXOF

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=327974&ticker=SDXOF

Monsieur Landel’s estimated annual compensation is around £2.7 million – fair enough, Sodexo is a very large company. But the detail in the profile which struck me most forcefully was that he’s also a director of Catalyst Inc. My first thought was, ‘Well, that’s surely not Catalyst, the feminist organisation which campaigns for more women on boards, and whose reports showing a correlation between more women on boards and improved financial performance are still used to this day by people misrepresenting correlation as causation?’

To my utter astonishment, it is the same organisation. Bloomberg’s profile of Catalyst:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=24914518

I see Ilene Lang (‘Ms’ Ilene Lang, needless to say) remains the CEO of Catalyst Inc at the age of 69. She has yet to respond to a public challenge we made a year ago:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/our-public-challenge-of-ilene-lang-president-and-ceo-of-catalyst-an-american-organisation-campaigning-for-increased-female-representation-in-boardrooms/

Does Monsieur Landel, a leading businessman earning £2.7 million p.a., not understand the difference between correlation and causation? Or is he supporting the drive for more women on boards because he’s unaware of the evidence that this policy direction must harm his company’s financial performance in time, at the expense of Sodexo’s shareholders? Our briefing paper on the matter:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

Senior business executives, both men and women, are actively destroying a cornerstone of capitalism – the right of companies to appoint board directors as they see fit. What times we live in. We look forward to the Left finding a wealth-generating system to replace capitalism when the feminists have finally destroyed it, with the keen support of men such as Monsieur Landel, David Cameron, Vince Cable, Sir Roger Carr… too many to name.

[Update 1.10.13: this blog post has just been emailed to Debbie White’s PA.]

Ms White, good afternoon. I lead the political party Justice for men & boys (and the women who love them) http://j4mb.org.uk and Campaign for Merit in Business https://c4mb.wordpress.com which campaigns against quotas (and the threat of quotas, as we currently have in the UK) to increase female representation on corporate boards. The reasons for the latter campaign is simple. There’s no evidence of a causal link between increasing female representation on boards and improved corporate financial performance, but plenty of evidence of a causal link with a decline in performance. Our briefing paper on the matter:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

We’ve challenged the government, CBI, dozens of organisations (and hundreds of individuals) to provide evidence of a casual link between increased female representation on boards and enhanced financial performance, and they’ve collectively come up with NOTHING. Even Vince Cable has stopped making claims of a link, in public at least.

Proponents of ‘more women on boards’ tend to offer studies and reports (Catalyst, McKinsey, Credit Suisse, Reuters Thomson…) which show correlations, but on closer inspection all these studies and reports (to the best of our knowledge) make it clear that correlation isn’t proof of causation, nor does it even imply causation. Even Ilene Lang, President/CEO of Catalyst, was unable or unwilling to rise to a public challenge we made in October 2012:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/our-public-challenge-of-ilene-lang-president-and-ceo-of-catalyst-an-american-organisation-campaigning-for-increased-female-representation-in-boardrooms/

We understand from articles in HR Magazine and Mail Online that you favour the introduction of quotas for women on corporate boards, so we are today making the following public challenge to you:

Campaign for Merit in Business is unaware of any reports or studies showing that companies can expect to improve corporate financial performance as a result of increasing female representation on their boards, and we’ve supplied you with details of five longitudinal studies showing that the result is declines in corporate financial performance. If you challenge these assertions, could you please explain why, and provide evidence of a positive causal link if you have any such evidence? If you don’t challenge the assertions, could you please explain why you support quotas for women on boards, given one consequence will be lower returns for shareholders? Do you believe a declines in financial performance, and lower returns for shareholders, are acceptable prices to pay for increasing female representation on corporate boards?

I look forward to a response to this challenge by 5pm next Monday, 7 October. Thank you.

You may be interested in a piece we posted a little earlier this afternoon:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/another-day-another-piece-of-women-on-boards-nonsense/

Best wishes,

Mike Buchanan

mike@j4mb.org.uk

07967 026163

Will the insane policy direction of driving up female representation on boards, despite the strong evidence it will damage companies, never cease? It would seem not. A supporter has pointed me to a piece in ‘HR Magazine’ concerning Debbie White, CEO of Sodexo UK & Ireland, publicly coming out in favour of quotas for women on boards:

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1078048/ceo-sodexo-uk-introduce-quotas-women-boards

Mail Online has covered the matter in a very superficial manner:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438150/More-female-bosses-mean-profits-Companies-boards-women-make-42-cent-more.html

The journalist Louise Eccles louiseeccles1@hotmail.com cites a ‘new report’ but fails to say what it is. She then quotes data from Catalyst whose reports have been widely misused by proponents of more women on boards.

I’ll now write and send a public challenge to Debbie White, asking her why there should be more women on boards when the evidence base shows this policy direction will damage Sodexo’s performance and in turn the shareholders’ returns. I’ll give her a week to respond, and if she doesn’t, we’ll add this  to The List of Shame:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/our-public-challenges-of-high-profile-proponents-of-improved-gender-diversity-in-boardrooms/

Good morning. I’m writing to ask you for a donation to help fund our fourth candidate for the 2015 general election. We plan to field 30 candidates in total. Generous donors have already sent in £830 in the past 23 days, so there’s just £170 left to raise in the next 7 days. If we don’t hit the £1,000 target, your money will be returned in full.

Please donate whatever you can afford to help provide a better future for men and boys (and the women who love them). Thank you.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-j4mb-raise-gbp-1-000-to-fund-its-fourth-2015-general-election-candidate

About an hour ago we were pleased to receive a donation of £20 towards our campaign to fund the fourth candidate for the 2o15 general election. We were intrigued to see the donor entered as ‘Albert and Bill’, and as usual sent an email by way of appreciation, pointing out we haven’t had a ‘dual donation’ before, and could they explain why they’re supporting us? We received the following email from Albert in response, and in a separate email, agreement to our publishing the content:

Bill and I are both pensioners, now in our 80s, and we think the country’s gone to the dogs with the state’s incessant efforts to pacify feminists – a pointless exercise, since feminists won’t be happy until and unless women (and girls) attain supremacy over men (and boys) in all fields – the desirable fields anyway – regardless of the cost to civilised society. Not long to go now before we reach that point, mainly thanks to spineless male politicians such as Blair, Brown, and Cameron.

Bill and I usually go to the local Toby carvery for lunch every Monday, leaving our wives to do whatever wives do when their husbands are out of the house. With a pint or two of bitter the cost is around £10.00 – £12.00 – good value these days – but this time we decided we’d skip the lunch tomorrow, and send your party the money we’ve saved. My wife wasn’t very happy at this, especially after I told her where the money had gone. She told me I can make my ‘own bloody dinner’ tomorrow!

Albert and Bill, we thank you warmly for your generosity. If you’d like to join them in donating what you can afford, we invite you to do so through the following link. With only nine days to go in the current 30-day campaign, we need to raise a further £385 to reach our £1,000 target for another candidate in 2015. Thank you for your support.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-j4mb-raise-gbp-1-000-to-fund-its-fourth-2015-general-election-candidate

Good afternoon. I hope this finds you well, and enjoying a restful weekend.

I’m writing in connection with our current fundraising campaign, which aims to fund the fourth J4MB candidate for the 2015 general election:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-j4mb-raise-gbp-1-000-to-fund-its-fourth-2015-general-election-candidate

If the £1,000 target isn’t met by 30 September, your donation will be refunded in full.

We’re halfway into the 30-day campaign. Generous supporters have already donated £535, a sum which includes a £100 donation from a student. Our blog post on that donation:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/a-student-donates-100-to-j4mb/

The number of people visiting the J4MB website is almost as high as those visiting the Conservatives’ website – link below – which is surely an indicator of public interest in what our party stands for. We confidently expect to overtake the Conservatives with respect to website visitors in the next month or two.

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/bedford-times-citizen-mikes-party-is-catching-up-with-the-conservatives/

Please bear with me, then, for asking you to donate what you can afford to the current campaign. I exclude, of course, those who’ve already kindly donated to it – my warm thanks to them. The more candidates we can fund in 2015, the more credible we’ll be as a party, and the more media exposure we can expect.

Thank you for your support. Without you, the party wouldn’t exist. It really is as simple as that.

Best wishes,

Mike Buchanan

E: mike@j4mb.org.uk

T: 07967 026163

I’ll be contesting the Bedford & Kempston seat at the 2015 general election, a Conservative marginal seat which Richard Fuller won for them in 2010 (with a majority of just 1,353 votes) and will lose for them in 2015.

The local paper, Times & Citizen, has been giving J4MB welcome exposure since we launched the party six months ago. Recently the paper printed my letters on abortion law reform and the numerous crises in the NHS (including the local hospital) caused by the 30+ year old policy of driving up the proportion of female doctors. The writer and campaigner Dr Vernon Coleman was writing 30 years ago that the policy would bring the service to its knees, regardless of the amount of taxpayers’ money thrown at the service, because female doctors are far more likely than male doctors to:

– quit the profession altogether

– work part-time rather than full-time

– refuse to work unsocial hours

– refuse to work in the most stressful environments, e.g. A&E.

As usual, Dr Coleman has been proven right.

70% of medical students today are female, and over 50% of GPs. My local GP service is closed at the weekend. The average GP earns £104,000 p.a., won’t be sacked unless found guilty of gross misconduct (incompetence is perfectly acceptable) and is reluctant to work at the weekends. So much for work ethic and concern for patients. The feminisation of the NHS has proven a complete disaster for patients and taxpayers.

We recently posted a piece about the number of visitors to the J4MB website being almost as high as the number visiting the Conservatives’ website, according to independent evidence:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/j4mb-has-almost-caught-up-with-the-conservatives/

The good folk at Times & Citizen have covered the story:

http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/news/local/mike-s-party-catching-up-with-conservatives-1-5467100

Earlier today we received a donation of £100 towards our £1,000 target to fund our fourth candidate for the 2015 general election. This was obviously pleasing, but the individual asked to remain anonymous. The gender of the donor wasn’t deducible from the his/her email address, so we emailed him/her to ask for his/her motivations behind the donation. We’ve just received this email in response:

I’m a male student, 19, at a university in the North of England, but I don’t want to identify myself beyond that. There’s a growing realisation among young men – and young women, come to that – that men and boys are demonised, and it’s time this demonisation STOPPED. We’ve all seen the carnage wrought by that demonisation – fathers crippled by divorce settlements, denied access to their children, male relatives committing suicide, and in my case, an uncle assaulted by a wife who was never charged for beating him black and blue with a hammer, although she knocked out several teeth in the process. But hey, she was drunk, so you shouldn’t blame her, seemed to be the consensus. Somehow I think he wouldn’t have been excused for beating her up, if he’d been drunk.

As a student I don’t have a lot of money, but I worked in the summer, so here’s £100 to help you fund another candidate.

Along with some other students I’m planning to establish a Men’s Rights group soon. The Students’ Union will go APESHIT. Good. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to travel here to give a speech to launch the group?

I’ve responded as follows:

Thank you both for your generous donation and your email. I should be delighted to give the speech you ask for, and to meet with you and other people who care about the human rights of men and boys (and the women who love them).

We have a target of £1,000 to fund our fourth candidate for the 2015 general election. Generous men and women have donated £305 so far, can you donate anything? Even £1 would be welcome. Thank you for your support:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-j4mb-raise-gbp-1-000-to-fund-its-fourth-2015-general-election-candidate/x/3529111

My heart sank a few minutes ago when an email arrived from the DBIS, with a link to a press release from our Anti-Business Secretary, Vince Cable:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cable-announces-review-of-executive-search-code-of-conduct

One strand of the government’s bullying of companies into appointing more women to their boards consists of a ‘voluntary’ code of conduct being adopted by executive search firms. You’ll see the narrative has now moved on from the FTSE100 to the FTSE350, as we predicted some time ago. The whole ‘more women on boards’ initiative is a gravy train for executive search firms – as well as the poorly qualified women they try to persuade major companies to appoint – so of course the search firms are supportive of this insane direction of travel.

At one time David Cameron, Vince Cable and others claimed a business case for increasing the representation of women on boards, i.e. corporate financial performance could be expected to improve. C4MB have conclusively blown that fantasy/lie/delusion/myth (call it what you will) out of the water, and even Vince Cable hasn’t made such nonsensical claims publicly for some time – to the best of our knowledge, anyway.

Our briefing paper on the evidence showing that increasing female representation on boards leads to corporate financial declines:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

The press release informs us that Charlotte Sweeney – I don’t have an email address, but her Twitter address is @charlottesweene – has been appointed to review the voluntary code of conduct of the executive search industry. It continues:

Charlotte has over 20 years experience of equality, diversity, inclusion, health & wellbeing, change management, employee engagement and corporate culture shift at a global and local level, with a clear link to business performance.

From 2009 – 2012 she was the International Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Nomura International PLC. Within that time she developed and implemented Nomura’s first Diversity & Inclusion Strategy.

Before Nomura, she joined HBOS plc as Head of Diversity in 2005 – 2009 and developed the first group wide diversity strategy, including regular diversity reporting within business planning and developing the Diversity Steering Group chaired by the CEO.

Prior to this role she was the diversity manager at Barclays PLC from 2000-2005 specialising in diversity, culture change, change leadership and executive coaching. She won a number of awards including the Personnel Today DWP Age Positive at Work Award.

So, who better than Charlotte Sweeney to supply us with evidence of ‘a clear link to business performance’, that improved gender diversity on boards leads to improved corporate financial performance, the elusive Holy Grail of the diversity, equality, and inclusivity gravy train? A contact at the DBIS has kindly agreed to forward this blog piece to her.

Our public challenge to Ms Sweeney:

Charlotte, good afternoon. We have five longitudinal studies showing that when more women are appointed to major corporate boards, financial performance declines:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/improving-gender-diversity-on-boards-leads-to-a-decline-in-corporate-performance-the-evidence/

If you refute these studies, could you please outline why? And if you know of any reports or studies showing a causal link between increased female representation on boards and improved financial performance, could you please email me at mike@j4mb.org.uk with directions to them? Please don’t send me reports (e.g. McKinsey, Credit Suisse, Reuters…) which make it perfectly clear they’re reporting correlation, not causation, and that correlation neither proves nor even implies causation. Thank you.

I wonder if Ms Sweeney will have the integrity to respond? I won’t hold my breath.