A truly pathetic article from a recent Mail on Sunday. An extract:

A report from the Federation of Small Businesses last week argued that while women-led firms face many of the same challenges that all small businesses encounter, ‘there appear to be issues which are more acute for women business owners’.

Its survey of more than 1,900 women business owners found key challenges included balancing work and family life, achieving credibility for the business, and a lack of confidence.

One of the comments hits the nail on the head:

Why must we do more for women entrepreneurs? Who is the ‘we’? If people can’t do it for themselves, men or women, they are not entrepreneurs.

My thanks to The Conservative Woman for publishing my latest article on the topic of gender diversity on corporate boards, inspired by a lengthy and absurd EHRC report, nothing less than a taxpayer-funded feminist propaganda piece.

Another good piece from Laura Perrins. Of course mediocre women haven’t the slightest reservation about advancing in preference to better-qualified men. They are utterly shameless, as are the men and women who facilitate all the damnable social engineering which has had such a ruinous impact on the public sector, and will in time have the same impact on the private sector.

The government is threatening to introduce gender quota legislation for FTSE350 companies in 2020 if the companies don’t ‘voluntarily’ achieve 33% female representation on their boards by then. Doubtless they’ll cravenly capitulate in the same way FTSE100 companies did in the wake of the ridiculous Davies Report (2011), which resulted in a doubling of the female representation on their boards in the space of four years to 25% in 2015 (average across the FTSE100). 96% of the new female directors were appointed as Non-Executive Directors – prestige, no executive responsibility, and good money for little effort. No wonder feminists are so keen on such initiatives.

Peter Cheese is the Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD). Three months ago he won one of our Toady awards – here. The capitulation of CIPD to feminist narratives in recent years is appalling, and nowhere more so than in the area of the ‘gender pay gap’.

Our thanks to Chloe for this. An extract:

Dianah Worman, diversity adviser for CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, comments: “The survey findings demonstrate the need for employers to act expeditiously to be able to deliver what will be expected of them, or risk damaging their public reputations as progressive employers of female talent and undermine their competitiveness in attracting and retaining it…

“We welcome the additional focus on publishing information on the bonus gap and quartile salary bands which will give more detailed insights to employers on where and how pronounced gender pay differentials exist and what needs to be done to address them…

“To stimulate employers to act willingly, it is vital to raise awareness about the reasons why addressing the gender pay gap makes good business sense and the good practice that can be adopted to put things right.

Hmm. Why might it be necessary to ‘stimulate employers to act willingly’? For the same reason the Davies Report (2011) felt it necessary to threaten gender quotas for FTSE100 boards in 2015 if the companies didn’t ‘voluntarily’ reach 25% female representation on their boards by then (which the spineless companies duly did). It’s more of the same old, same old… feminist manipulations of deferential men, regardless of the cost.

Another extract:

The most commonly cited ways in which organisations have tried to improve equal opportunities in the last two years are:

• improving the range of flexible working opportunities available to staff (26% all employers; 34% large employers

• developing more inclusive recruitment practices (16% all employers; 21% large employers

• through greater use of mentoring in the last two years to help women progress into the most senior levels in the business (13% all employers; 19% large employers

• improving the childcare package they offer staff (10% all employers; 14% of large employers)

These amount to nothing less than special treatment for women, at the cost of the efficiency and effectiveness of employing organizations. I’d like to pick up on ‘greater use of mentoring’. When I started work in the private sector in 1979, as a graduate trainee with Beecham, the term ‘mentoring’ was unknown. It’s shorthand for experienced people transferring their hard-won knowledge and experience to others, meaning the latter don’t have to put in the time and effort expended by the former. We can replace ‘experienced people’ with ‘men’, and ‘others’ by ‘women’.

In the world of work, all roads lead to Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000):

Four out of seven British men are work-centred, while only one in seven British women is.

Ruth Sunderland is a business journalist with the Daily Mail. In January 2014 we posted a blog piece critiquing her article on the financial returns in 2013 of FTSE100 and FTSE350 companies with female chief executives, here. An extract:

So, just one of the four female FTSE100 CEOs performed more strongly than the average male FTSE100 CEO in 2013. The article’s downplaying of female failure is breathtaking:

‘Cynthia Carroll left the top position at mining giant Anglo American earlier this year after disappointing investors and has been replaced by a man.’

‘Disappointing investors’? They lost their shirts. In the course of Cynthia Carroll’s five-year tenure at Anglo American £9 BILLION was wiped off the company’s value. The following is a link to our piece on the matter, along with further information on the performances of other female CEOs:

https://c4mb.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/womens-performances-as-ceos-of-major-companies/

Six months later, in July 2014, we posted another blog piece on Ms Sunderland – here – with the snappy title, ‘Is Ruth Sunderland (Daily Mail journalist) willing to engage with evidence showing that placing more women on corporate boards leads to financial decline?’ It was, of course a rhetorical question, and the answer was, ‘No’.

My thanks to Chloe for pointing me to a piece by Ms Sunderland in today’s edition of the Daily Mail – here. It’s titled:

Female success isn’t at the expense of men, so why does equality still look like a distant dream?

She may not have written the silly title, but she wrote the silly article. Excerpts:

The gender pay gap in this country is higher than the OECD average and we still have only a small handful of women in chief executive roles at top companies…

Many companies have made serious efforts to get more female directors into the boardroom, and to help women with children navigate work and home. So why does equality still look like a distant dream?

My personal theory is ‘the snowball effect’. [Will this morph into ‘the glass snowball’ in time, to join all the other glass-related myths?] While outrageous sexism is relatively rare these days, for fear of lawsuits if nothing else, many women experience small, but repeated episodes of discrimination – of being overlooked, not listened to, assumed not to be ambitious and so forth…

Despite the nonsense spouted by the ‘men’s rights’ brigade, female success does not come at the expense of male failure.

I shall email Ms Sunderland a link to this blog piece, and ask her if she’ll EVER be prepared to engage with the evidence – here – demonstrating a causal link between appointing more women onto corporate boards, and financial decline. Don’t hold your breath.

Our thanks to Jeff for this.

Earlier this afternoon I received an email with a government press release. I’ve taken a few comments from some of the people mentioned in it.

Idiot #1

Business Secretary Sajid Javid said:

The employment rate for women has never been higher and there are now more women on FTSE boards than ever before. But we need to go further, particularly when it comes to paving the way to the executive level. Companies cannot afford to miss out on the skills and talent of the whole population if the UK is going to compete in a fast-moving global economy. This is not just about diversity for diversity’s sake, but about improving performance and productivity. [C4MB emphasis.]

It surely doesn’t need stating again, does it, that no evidence exists of a causal link between increasing the proportion of women on boards, and financial performance improvement? The only causal link we’re aware of – from longitudinal studies – is with financial performance decline.

For the past four years Campaign for Merit in Business has been challenging the government and in particular Javid’s department – DBIS – to provide evidence for the causal link he and others keep implying. No evidence has ever been provided for the link, and Samantha Beckett, a senior civil servant in the department, recently won a ‘Lying Feminist of the Month’ award over the issue – here.

Idiot #2

Women and Equalities Minister Nicky Morgan said:

Having more women on FTSE boards allows companies to benefit from the enormous wealth of talent these women offer, and means these women can act as powerful role models for the next generation of girls.

We have come a long way but we must do more to make sure women everywhere are able to fulfil their potential. I want to see an end to all male boards anywhere on the FTSE 350, and much more progress at the executive layer where we know progress has been slowest to date. [C4MB emphasis.]

Progress has been slowest to date in that area, because companies still appoint into the executive layer on the basis of merit, and one element of merit is a strong work ethic. Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000) perfectly explains why ‘progress has been slowest to date’ in this area.

Idiot #3

Sir Philip Hampton said:

I am delighted to take on Lord Davies’s great work [C4MB: bullying FTSE100 companies into ‘voluntarily’ appointing more women to their boards, with the threat of legislated gender quotas] around Women on Boards and I want to now turn my attention to the FTSE 350. I will focus on improving representation in the executive layer of companies, as well as maintaining the momentum on boards. This means looking at the talent pipeline for female executives and emerging non-executive directors to ensure we create opportunities and the right conditions for women to succeed. [C4MB emphasis: what would those ‘right conditions’ be, other than yet more anti-male discrimination?]

Idiot #4

Corporate Governance Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe, said:

As a former director of several companies, I know that business needs to do more to ensure that female talent is harnessed and not wasted. Encouraging progress has been made, but we now need to focus on the talent pipeline of capable women to ensure they can see a viable way ahead into leadership positions.

This will ultimately make companies more innovative and more competitive; a leadership team made up of men and women better represents the employee and customer base giving firms an edge in the products and services they offer. [C4MB emphasis.]

A leadership team made up of men and women with a wide spectrum of IQs would also ‘better represent the employee and customer base’, so would logically also ‘give firms an edge in the products and services they offer’, given this line of thinking. It’s outrageous, how few genuinely stupid people there are on FTSE350 boards. These people are, however, severely over-represented in initiatives aimed at advantaging women over men in the workplace and elsewhere.

Will the mainstream media never expose these people such as the four I’ve highlighted, for their demonstrably idiotic statements?

This month’s Lying Feminist of the Month award has been presented to Jane Humphries, Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford, for a ridiculous assertion on the Today programme about the ‘glass ceiling’. Her certificate, with details of why she deserved the award, is here.

One of our most valued sources of leads is Chloe, who happens to be a member of CIPD. She alerted me to a piece published on the CIPD website yesterday, which has resulted in Peter Cheese, Chief Executive, winning a Toady award. His certificate, explaining why he’s won the award, is here. Well deserved.

Well deserved.