An excellent new article by Peter Lloyd:
Month: June 2013
Third BBC Three Counties Radio interview
Last Friday I was in a lengthy discussion on BBC Three Counties Radio with presenter Jonathan Vernon-Smith and four others (the others were all of the female persuasion) on the topic of women (and men) in the workplace. It was good (for once) to have enough time to explore some of the nuances around this topic. All too often I (in common with other MHRAs) am given only 5-10 minutes to cover a host of subjects relating to men’s and boys’ human rights. So I thank BBC Three Counties Radio, and Jonathan Vernon-Smith, for this rare opportunity:
Second BBC Three Counties Radio interview
Last week I had three interviews / discussion on BBC Three Counties Radio. Here’s the second, with Roberto Perrone:
Double standards
An interesting new piece by one of my favourite American lady bloggers:
Woman’s Hour: Laurie Penny and Finn Mackay debate radical feminism
Last Wednesday, 5 June, Jenni Murray hosted an intriguing discussion between prominent British feminists Laurie Penny and Finn Mackay on Woman’s Hour. Try to listen to this if you can. The piece is a little over 10 minutes long, running from 0:59 – 11:10.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0214318/Womans_Hour_Radical_feminism_Children_and_bereavement/
Woman makes false rape allegations against two men she never met, is sentenced to community service
How many more cases like this do we need, before women who make false rape allegations receive the lengthy prison sentences they deserve?
I was particularly struck by comments from the woman’s former partner:
I feel sorry for the two guys on Facebook. I don’t know who they are, she just picked them off Facebook. They didn’t deserve that, no one deserves that. These poor guys were tormented. They won’t get any compensation for this… She didn’t think about anyone else or the consequences of her actions. She should have been locked up.
First The 30% Club, and now… The 2% Club
Followers of the blog of our associated Campaign for Merit in Business http://c4mb.wordpress.com are well-informed about The 30% Club. Founded and still chaired by Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive of Newton Investment and mother of nine children, it recruits as ‘members’ chairmen of major British companies, professional services firms etc. to drive up the proportion of women on their boards, regardless of the compelling evidence which shows they’re damaging their organisations’ future financial prospects as a result. Here’s the current list of these despicable men http://30percentclub.org.uk/members.
I’m grateful to a supporter, DN, for recently informing me of an organisation formed in London earlier this year, The 2% Club http://thetwopercentclub.com. Their website contains some of the discredited claims still made to this day on the website of The 30% Club, so four days ago I emailed the club’s founder, Heather Jackson, with a simple challenge. I haven’t heard back from Ms Jackson, but if and when I do, you’ll be the first to know. Don’t hold your breath. The content of my email:
Heather, good evening. A supporter has pointed me towards your website. I was particularly struck by the statistics on this page:
http://www.thetwopercentclub.com/issue.html
The claims of improved performance (66% higher ROCE etc.) are, I believe, those made some years by Catalyst, an American militant feminist campaigning organisation. If so, you might be interested to know Catalyst have stopped making such claims, according to a leading academic proponent of more women in boardrooms, Professor Susan Vinnicombe, contained in her evidence to a House of Lords inquiry last year:
If you look at Catalyst’s ‘Bottom Line’ series of reports you’ll see they’re reporting correlation, not causation, and the reports’ editors make it clear causation cannot be concluded (or even inferred) from correlation. The reasons for correlations are well understood, and have nothing to do with corporate performance improving after more women reach boardrooms.
The reasons men outnumber women in boardrooms etc. are perfectly well understood, and discrimination against women isn’t one of them. I detailed them in my book The Glass Ceiling Delusion: the real reasons more women don’t reach senior positions. The most important reason was outlined by a renowned sociologist, Catherine Hakim, in 2000:
http://c4mb.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/dr-catherine-hakims-preference-theory/
There’s compelling evidence that driving up female representation on boards leads to declines in corporate financial performance:
If you know of any longitudinal studies showing that increasing the number of women on senior teams (including boards of directors) leads to improved financial performance, would you be so good as to point me to them? Nobody else has been able to supply even one such study worldwide. Thank you.
Feminism against science
My thanks to Chandrapal S Bhasker for bringing this outstanding article (by Professor Steven Goldberg) to my attention:
Ex-troops to train as teachers
One of the few areas in which the government is doing some intelligent things – from a gender perspective – is education. The gender balance in the teaching profession is a national scandal, as has been the decline in academic standards over many years, albeit hidden by another national scandal over the past 30 years, grade inflation (‘All shall have prizes’).
Virtually all primary school teachers, and over 80% of secondary school teachers, are women. For every three women registered as unemployed, four men are. We know unemployment is a bigger driver of suicide among men than among women, contributing to the male suicide rate being three times higher than the female suicide rate. And there’s a particular problem with ex-Forces people struggling with life after leaving the Forces, often ending up homeless, and in time committing suicide.
So I was delighted to read the following story on the BBC website today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22798200
A rare piece of common sense from our woefully anti-male and pro-feminist government.
My hour-long discussion on BBC radio
This morning I was in one of the BBC Three Counties Radio studios for an hour-long discussion with Jonathan Vernon-Smith (‘JVS’) on the topic of women in the workplace. The discussion was prompted by a recent report by the Women’s Business Council. When the file has been edited by http://youtube.com/manwomanmyth he’ll post it on our YouTube channel along with more commentary, but I thought the followers of this blog might like to hear the discussion first. Here’s the iPlayer file, which should be accessible for seven days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018z8jw
Four ladies contributed to the programme at various points – gender balance is a fine thing, isn’t it? – as you can see from the following timeline:
1:02:04 – 1:03:20 Introduction by JVS
1:05:58 – 1:13:26 Discussion between JVS and Ruby McGregor-Smith, chief executive of Mitie plc (a FTSE250 company) and chairwoman of the Women’s Business Council
1:13:27 – 1:20:21 JVS discussion with myself
1:21:19 – 1:28:33 We were joined by Caroline Criado-Perez, a journalist, feminist campaigner, and co-founder of http://thewomensroom.org. Two further sections of the discussion at:
1:30:14 – 1:31:03
1:33:50 – 1:43:11
1:43:12 – 1:53:50 We were joined by Amanda Murrell http://www.amassocs.com/ who is the President of ‘Bedfordshire Businesswomen’. Part-way through this discussion, at 1:49:10, we were joined by a lady phoning the programme, ‘Ann from St Albans’. Ann spoke a great deal of common sense, and said that – given the chance – she’d vote for Justice for men & boys (and the women who love them). A fine woman.
I should like to thank JVS and BBC Three Counties Radio for giving me this opportunity to articulate some of our key arguments about the genders in the workplace. I thank the ladies for their contributions too.
If you’d like to know about our work in this area, please visit the blog of our associated campaign: Campaign for Merit in Business http://c4mb.wordpress.com.
Justice for Men & Boys 