Professor Susan Vinnicombe has probably been the most influential “academic” in the world driving the “women on boards” scam over the past 20+ years. A new piece by her – Women in executive roles on FTSE 250 boards has fallen since 2022, despite 70% of companies meeting targets – is typical of her risible output. An extract:

“With the percentage of women in director roles meeting the Women Leaders Review targets, the headlines look great – but the persistent reality remains, that the glass ceiling for women in executive level positions is still stubbornly in place. An ‘executive gender paradox’ across FTSE 250 boards has emerged, as the gap between the number of women in NED roles and executive roles grows.”

But this extract really takes the biscuit:

“There is a major issue at play here, and we risk having too much optimism when we just look at the numbers,” commented Dr Michelle Tessaro, Visiting Professor at Cranfield School of Management who led on the special CFO research project. “The most vulnerable part of the talent pipeline is the mid-career point, where women drop off their planned career trajectories as policies are stacked against them [J4MB emphasis: Er, what policies might those be?] and assumptions made about their attitudes to work [J4MB emphasis: Assumptions based on experience of women in senior positions, no doubt.]. This leaky pipeline needs fixing, and women need supporting, [J4MB emphasis : Why do women always need “supporting” when men don’t?] otherwise the Executive gender paradox will not change.”

Of course there is only a “gender paradox” in feminist ideological terms. The “paradox” was comprehensively explained in Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap (2009). Long story short, the “paradox” was (and remains) wholly attributable to the freely-made choices of women who prefer “work/life balance” – almost always enabled by male partners – to the grinding responsibilities and pressures of senior executive positions.

Professors Vinnicombe, Tessaro, and their like would be better employed at something useful e.g. garbage collection, street cleaning, burger flipping, mine clearance…