Right Management is a division of an American multinational, ManpowerGroup, dealing with executive recruitment. Ian Symes is the General Manager of Right Management (UK & Ireland). We’re about to send him our latest public challenge.

Interesting.

Ann Francke is the CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, which has increasingly become a feminist campaigning organization under her leadership.

Our thanks to Ian for pointing us to a newspaper story concerning a CMI report about the gender pay gap among managers. Ms Francke is quoted as saying:

Working for free two hours a day is unacceptable. While some progress is being made, it’s clear from our research that Lord Davies is right to target the executive pipeline. Having more women in senior executive roles will pave the way for others and ensure they’re paid the same as their male colleagues at every stage of their careers.

No mention is made in the newspaper report (or in the feature on the matter on the CMI website) of gender-typical differences or freely-made choices in areas such as the following, which could account for most if not all of the observed gender pay gap:

• work ethic. Dr Catherine Hakim, a renowned sociologist, published a paper in 2000 showing that four in seven British men are work-centred, but only one in seven British women is. Details here.
• allied to the above, women’s relative preference (compared with men) to work part-time
• professional discipline e.g. managerial positions in Finance tend to pay more than in female-dominated Human Resources, because the supply/demand position tends to be tighter for Finance positions
• degree of experience and expertise, which correlates with age. The report states, ‘The research showed there were fewer older women in executive positions.’
• sector – public or private? Two thirds of private sector employees are men, two-thirds of public sector employees are women
• firm size
• firm market sector
• individual scope of responsibility e.g. a ‘manager’ may have responsibility for one member of staff or 500, an annual budget of £1 million or £500 million…
• job characteristics leading to higher pay e.g. extended periods spent away from home, unsocial hours, unpleasant and/or dangerous working conditions…

And so it is that Ann Francke is the latest in a series of feminists to win our Lying Feminist of the Month award following comments about the gender pay gap. Her award certificate is here:

The full list of award winners is here.

Our thanks to Chloe for pointing us to an interesting organization, Ageing Without Children. It is open to both men and women, and of course far more men than women will enter their later years estranged from their children. The following excerpt from the ‘About’ webpage takes up the remainder of this post:

1 in 5 people over 50 have children and by 2030, there will be 2 million people over 65 without children.

Ageing without Children aims to help people ageing without children live a later life free of the free fear of ageing alone and being without support.

We want to:

Set up local groups where people ageing without children can meet together to get support

Ensure that people ageing without children admitted to hospital or residential care have someone to speak up for them if they need it or are unable to do so themselves

Work with other organisations, the NHS and local government to ensure that people ageing without children are not forgotten or ignored when services for older people are being discussed and planned

Today a promising new website came to our attention. We assume it to be the brainchild of a mother in either the United States or Canada – moms4dads. The start of the ‘About’ section should give you a flavour of the site’s contents:

This blog is a mom’s attempt to support dads around the world and show men and boys the love, gratitude and respect they all deserve. This is my way of supporting males in their war against a world that constantly vilifies, dehumanizes, abuses and enslaves them.

Males

At the moment, males are the weak sex and second-class citizens. There is no equality and males’ human rights, as well as free speech and democracy, are in serious danger.

The unfair treatment they face can be seen in the following examples:

genital mutilation: despite being a type of genital mutilation, it is still legal. No matter what your religion is, circumcision, unless it’s done for irrefutable necessary medical reasons, is a violation of humans’ rights, just as female genital mutilation and as such should be illegal. A baby cannot make this decision, which is irreversible, so I think it should be illegal.

unfair treatment in court: divorce laws are totally against husbands and fathers, who often lose custody of their children and all they have honestly earned by working hard for years and their lives are ruined by alimony and often can be sent to jail: also, there are huge double standards in how the law works for men and women who have committed the same crime. Men are punished more than women.

In a moment we’ll add the site to our lengthy list of recommended websites.

We’ve received an interesting 36-page publication from Men’s Health Forum, Beat stress, feel better. Their announcement on the report is here and the publication itself here.

While there’s plenty of good advice in the report, which includes sources of support for men suffering from stress and depression – pp 32,33 – we were disappointed (but not remotely surprised) at the lens through which male suicide is viewed, mental health issues, while not considering some of the major issues known to be driving large numbers of men to suicide, including:

• denial of fathers’ access to children following family breakdowns
• denial of support to male victims of domestic violence

It’s the feminist lens through which the male suicide charity CALM critiques male suicide – hardly surprisingly, given that the organization’s Chief Executive, Jane Powell, described herself to me as a ‘fervent feminist’. I asked her what support her organization could give to suicidal men facing either of these two problems, and she stared sullenly at the table, saying nothing.

Unlike women, men are disinclined to talk about problems for which they know there is no solution. In part this is due to stoicism – a fine quality which keeps huge numbers of men from committing suicide, and is accordingly decried by feminists as an example of ‘toxic masculinity’ – and in part because men may have previously learned they won’t receive the sympathy that women can reliably expect, from friends and family members in particular.

My article for the International Business Times on reactive depression – the form brought on by distressing life events – as a major driver of male suicide is here.

To illustrate the point about the report’s ideological bias, let’s look at a section starting on page 6, ‘What causes stress?’ A sub-section at the bottom of the page is titled, ‘Why understanding stress matters’, and its content is this:

Stress causes mental health breakdowns.

One in four of us will have a mental health problem this year. They’re responsible for half of all long-term absences from work. Unchecked mental health problems can be very serious indeed.

About three quarters of the people treated for depression are women but about three quarters of the people who commit suicide are men.

Since depression is a major cause of suicide, something doesn’t add up. Is it us?

‘Is it us?’ Full marks there for victim blaming. A classic conflation between suffering from depression, and propensity to seek help for it, despite what’s been known for many years about gender-typical differences in this area. No recognition that more men than women commit suicide due to unbearable reactive depression brought on by life events over which they’re powerless e.g. denial of access to children following family breakdowns, denial of support as victims of domestic violence…

The sub-section ends:

Talking about depression is not a sign of weakness. It takes balls.

On page 7 we find a section on ‘Endings’:

Don’t under-estimate the impact of grief on your well-being. The death of a loved one brings stages of grief for which there are recognized treatments such as grief counselling.

But it’s not just deaths. Other life changes which shock and to which we need to adjust include moving house, splitting up with a partner, changing job, or children leaving the family home.

Moving house, splitting up with a partner, and changing job, are among the ‘shocks’ deemed worthy of merit in this report, unlike denial of access to children, or denial of support to male victims of domestic violence. In my lifetime I’ve experienced maybe 15-20 examples of the first three ‘shocks’, and wouldn’t consider them collectively as being remotely comparable with one example of the last two ‘shocks’, which I haven’t experienced. Men don’t commit suicide because they’ve had a stressful house move, do they?

We know from an American study that if the number of DV-related suicides are added to DV-related homicides, more men than women die as a result of DV. How can this fact not be worthy of merit in such a report? Because to mention such a thing would point a finger of blame at the state, and Men’s Health Forum won’t criticise its prime paymasters, even indirectly.

Finally, none of the four case studies of individuals (pp 26-29) concern reactive depression.

A recent review highlighted the need to build the capacity of J4MB, given the ambitious scale of our objectives. Since the party’s launch in February 2013 we’ve been reliant on some outstanding individuals to provide support, analysis, and advice. They’ve committed to working for us into the foreseeable future, and we now plan to supplement them with a team of volunteers, each volunteer working in one or more of the following roles:

Media monitors – we wish to systematically monitor media output on matters relating to men’s and boys’ human rights, to supplement supporters’ ad-hoc reporting of these matters.

Researchers – we wish to develop our knowledge databases in the 20 areas of interest to us. This will lead to an increase in the quality and quantity of our challenges of politicians, civil servants, and others, including FoI requests.

Policy champions – we wish to appoint policy champions for as many of our 20 areas as possible. They will be our ‘eyes and ears’ with respect to the areas, helping us challenge politicians, civil servants, and others, developing policies, and more. The areas are:

Abortion
Foetal alcohol syndrome
Genital mutilation
Fatherlessness, restoring strong families
Education
Employment
Access to children after family breakdowns
Domestic violence
Sexual abuse
Armed Forces veterans’ mental health issues
Homelessness
Suicide
Criminal justice system
Paternity fraud
Anonymity for suspected sexual offenders
Divorce
Healthcare
Political representation
State interference in director appointments
Expectation of retirement years

If you are able to commit time on a regular basis to any of these roles, please contact me mike@j4mb.org.uk. Thank you.

It’s time for us to introduce a new award, ‘Whiny Actress of the Month’, in addition to our Whiny Feminist of the Month awards, such as the one we presented to one of the foremost whine merchants in the UK, Caroline Criado-Perez.

Can there have been a British actress more continuously in employment over the past 30 years, than Amanda Redman? I very much doubt it. And yet we have this whinefest in the weekly TV guide in today’s Daily Mail. Among her idiotic self-serving comments:

What they (‘people in TV’) forget is the demographic of people watching TV is women of our age who’d like to see themselves represented on screen…

I’m actually fine with the ageing process; it’s the way other people regard those of a certain age – especially actresses – that bothers me…

Acting is a love, a passion, it’s not a job, and unless that passion dies, it’s something you’re going to want to do all the time. To be denied that opportunity, simply because you’re female and of a certain age, is unfair – and needs to change.

The woman’s an older version of Special Snowflake, aka Laura Bates, whose relentless witterings can be boiled down to, ‘Life’s not fair – Wah! Wah!! Wah!!!’ Pathetic.

In October, the government is expected to publish another report on ‘women on boards’. It has been widely trailed in the media that it won’t demand an increase in the infamous Davies Report (2011) target of 25% female representation on FTSE100 boards by 2015, a target which was recently met through the appointment of many female directors, almost all as non-executive directors. Tellingly, the target applied to FTSE100 boards on average, not to individual companies.

It’s understood there will be demands in the forthcoming report for more women to be appointed to the executive levels immediately below board level, in an effort to ‘solve’ the mythical ‘pipeline problem’. So another legion of poorly qualified women will be given positions they couldn’t have attained without government interference – a Conservative government, come to that. Shame on the women, and shame on the Conservative party, and Sajid Javid MP, Business Secretary, in particular.

In June we mailed a letter with three FoI requests (about the impact of increasing female representation on corporate boards, on financial performance) to Sajid Javid. This was the first opportunity a Business Secretary in a Conservative administration had to consider the matter, the last government having been a Conservative-led coalition. DBIS claimed not to have received the letter, so we emailed it to them, and yesterday afternoon we received a response.

It contains some predictable ideologically-driven nonsense, easily dismissed as such, but for the first time a government department has made an effort – at our request, it should be said – to challenge the five longitudinal studies we’ve been citing since 2012 as evidencing the negative impact of increasing female representation on boards. Well, three of the five studies, anyway, and they’ve made a poor job of that. We’re about to email our response. To make sense of parts of it you’ll need to look at our marked-up version of the DBIS response.

In our response we’ve demanded an internal review of the response, and we look forward to the outcome.

I’ve had a soft spot for the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) – a London-based think tank – for many years. It was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think-tank, which is a fine start, and in 2012 the IEA kindly hosted my presentation on the impact of artificially increasing female representation on boards – whether through legislated quotas, or the threat of them, as in the UK – which leads (on average) to corporate financial decline. Anyone doubting the assertion might like to read our short briefing paper on the matter.

The IEA has just published a piece by Mark Littlewood, Director General, on smoking. Enjoy. The next time you see someone smoking, thank them for subsidising your healthcare. If that doesn’t make them splutter and cough, nothing will.