A ridiculous piece by Rebecca Marston, Business Reporter, BBC News. Who does Ms Marston ask to comment on the number of women in the senior reaches of the Bank of England? Why, the obvious choice, an acknowledged expert on the financial sector – Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society. The start of the piece:
Despite being an Old Lady, few real senior women seem to find the Bank of England’s company congenial.
Friday marked deputy governor and Monetary Policy Committee member Charlotte Hogg’s last day there. She’s the second woman deputy governor out the door this year. And it’s only April.
Another executive director, Jenny Scott, is also leaving and in June, fellow MPC member Kristin Forbes goes.
Fair enough, Ms Hogg’s departure is not a sign of mutual antipathy. She resigned for failing to stick to the letter of the rules on disclosing family connections within the industry. [Note: the ‘letter’ of the rules, implying a trivial breach. Not just the ‘rules’, then? Apart from which, Hogg authored those rules!]
But these departures will leave no women at all on the nine-member MPC – arguably the most public of the Bank of England’s faces as it sets interest rates – and only one woman on its three main policymaking committees.
There will be none among the five deputy governor ranks and just four among 16 executive directors.
Goodness, what will happen to interest rates if the Bank has no women on the nine-member MPC? The risks to the country’s financial stability don’t bear thinking about.
Three months ago we posted a piece, Two more blithering idiots: Mark Carney (governor, Bank of England) and Rebecca Hilsenrath (chief executive, Equality and Human Rights Commission). Ms Hilsenrath leads an organization with 11 Commissioners, nine of whom are women. Gender equality is a fine thing.
Campaign for Merit in Business has been reporting on the Bank of England for almost five years, starting with a piece in June 2012, Positive discrimination for women at the Bank of England.
The governor, Mark Carney, is a mangina, and you can be very sure the next senior appointment will be a woman, even if there are 100 men who are notably better qualified. In feminist terms, appointing an incompetent woman is infinitely preferable to appointing a competent man. None of the men passed over for promotion will complain about the matter publicly, all being turkeys who vote for Xmas.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
The only one who will challenge these young women/mothers is a woman in her fifties. None of these beneficiaries of positive discrimination (aka one of the 6/7) are greying dreadnoughts; we terrify them in a way a man can’t.
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‘ … we terrify them in a way a man can’t.‘
I doubt that but I think I understand what you’re aiming at. Women’s confidence in dealing with men comes from their unshakeable conviction that they can always control us and we will never do them physical harm. However, all women are terrified of men when womanly wiles are not sufficient to control us. Unfortunately for headstrong and wilful young women well able to twist most men round their cocked fingers, womanly wiles do not work on ‘greying dreadnoughts’, except lesbians of course. I think that’s what you’re aiming at.
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I dare say The Bank of England has ‘kept’ quite a few women…
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In the post-war economic history of Western Europe the years 1945-75 are by common consent recognised as the best, with strong economic growth and a strong welfare state. The French refer to those years as ‘les trentes glorieuses’. It’s been slowly downhill ever since. Do I have to point out that also, in those years, politics and business were dominated by men? So they must have been doing something right. If ‘diversity’ brings such benefits to large companies, why do the tremendous effects never filter through to UK plc?
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