Our thanks to Patrick for this. Two paragraphs in the FT briefing paper will tell you all you need to know about Helena Morrissey, the mother of nine children between 6 and 23:
Helena Morrissey, who chairs the UK’s fund association, would like a woman to fill the vacant post at the head of the embattled trade group and will speak to “one or two women” about the role.
When Ms Morrissey took over as chairwoman of the IA (Investment Association) last summer, its board was made up of just one woman and 14 men. She told FTfm at the time: “It is clear we need more women.” There are now five women on the board, including Ms Morrissey.
Ms Morrissey is the Chief Executive of Newton Investment Management, a £50+ billion fund management company. In 2010 she launched the 30% club, members of which – mostly men, FTSE100 chairmen and the like – commit themselves to greater board gender diversity. Our associated organization Campaign for Merit in Business has presented Ms Morrissey with evidence of a causal link between increased gender diversity on boards and corporate financial decline, and – needless to say – they have made no difference to her relentless campaigning. A public challenge sent to her in November 2012 remains unanswered to this day.
The capitulation of the business sector – and businessmen in particular – to these social engineering agendas is a matter of shame. It’s known that the government’s longer-term target is gender parity on FTSE350 boards. On the basis that one in three private sector employees are women, four in seven British men are work-centred but only one in seven British women is (Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory), and men still dominate the upper reaches of the Finance profession, we would expect fewer than 5% of FTSE100 board directors to be women. In the FTSE100 the figure has just reached 25% – the proportion has more than doubled since 2011, in response to the government’s threats of legislated gender quotas – and the 50% target on FTSE350 boards will require a tenfold preferencing of women to be achieved.
The capitulation of the business sector has the advantage that what has not been legislated for can very easily be abandoned without the tediously drawn out and far from certain process of repeal when economic collapse forces people to admit that the emperor is wearing no clothes. That thinking may be behind the apparent alacrity with which level headed businessmen have acceded to this insanity.
Also, as I understand things, many of those women appointed are simply non-executive directors, which is all most women want – a title, status, personal parking place, free lunch, financial remuneration and no responsibility.
Thanks. These whiny harpies aren’t seeking credibility, they’re seeking power and/or cushy well-paid numbers. And men in all spheres – including FTSE chairmen – are handing them what they demand, on a plate. The overwhelming majority of the women appointed to FTSE100 boards in the past four years have been appointed as non-execs – something they have in common with the overwhelming majority of existing FTSE100 directors back in 2011.
Once again the idealogues shoot themselves in the foot by hissing, spitting and demanding parity – or perhaps even advantage – in only the warm, cozy, well-paid and safe sectors of employment. Do they seriously not realise that credibility, of intent at least if not methodology, could be theirs simply by campaigning first for road-sweepers, miners, trawlermen, steel-workers, sewage-workers, hospital porters and similar? We ought really to rejoice in the ineptitude of these harpies.
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