Pathetic. The writer is a female ‘expert in personal branding and marketing’, and she writes:

Don’t get me wrong, I still fully believe in the value of women working with one another, through mentorship and sponsorship, to help build one another up and advance their careers. There are a number of companies that do great work helping women in business to grow professionally, take on new challenges, and shatter the so-called glass ceiling. [Note: why do women, and women alone, need ‘helping’, decade after decade? When will companies start to treat them equally, not preferentially?]

But I think more senior leaders – which today are largely men – can play a more active role. My question back to the gentleman at my talk was ‘when was the last time you nominated a high performing female executive for an award? Advocated on her behalf at the senior leadership meeting?’ It must always be based on merit and performance, [don’t you just love that weaselly rider?] but sometimes women need an active sponsor to help reinforce they are worthy of that kind of recognition.

Nominating high performing female executives for an award. Why do women always need celebrating for what a man will do without needing such recognition? It’s a sign of emotional neediness, along with women’s need for role models (and who will be the role models’ role models, anyway?). We return, as always, to Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000). Four out of seven British men are ‘work-centred’, only one in seven British women is.

My experience over 30 years in business was that of the people who were not keen on self-promotion, the women were more likely to be promoted than the men. The writer of the article is arguing for yet more female privileging, because women’s appetite for privilege is insatiable.