A cornerstone of initiatives aimed at persuading companies to appoint more women to their boards is the claim that by doing so, companies can expect their financial performance to improve. This laughable assertion of a business case for more women on boards conflates correlation with causation. But correlation does not imply causation.
In 2012 Mike Buchanan – on behalf of our associated website Campaign for Merit in Business – presented evidence (from numerous longitudinal studies) of a causal link between increasing gender diversity on corporate boards and financial DECLINE to House of Commons and House of Lords inquiries. The video of his oral submission to the House of Commons inquiry is here (56:50).
We recently posted a piece with the snappy title The Diversity Project (chair: Helena Morrissey) commissions a study (leader: Professor Alex Edmans) to assess the investment impact of diversity of thought and have since researched the online output of Professor Edmans, an economist who is professor of finance at London Business School and Mercers’ School Memorial Emeritus Professor of Business at Gresham College. If you take nothing else from this blog piece, you should catch a fascinating podcast interview, Is DEI built on dodgy data? (October 2024, 58 minutes).
The biography on his website is here (is it just me, or are professors looking very young these days, like policemen?). The Policy and Practice page is here, with links to some of his articles including Is There Really A Business Case For Diversity? (Medium, 2021) and No, boardroom diversity does not mean higher profits (Telegraph, 2021) and Is diversity actually good for business? (Spectator, 2024).
Edmans is the author of May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It. The hardback edition (£14.99) and Kindle edition (£9.99) were published last April, the paperback edition (£10.99) will be published next April.
There are plenty of video and audio files on YouTube of the good professor, here. They include Do Diverse Companies Really Perform Better? (Sacred Cows, 2024) and May Contain Lies (Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2024).
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Though it’s too much to hope any part of the opposition will take this up, but its encouraging to see the consequences for efficiency and economic growth laid out if we continue with UK style DEI. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2033228/raf-leaders-twisted-white-male With councils in debt and private businesses ( Asda et al.) facing similarly huge “equal pay” it should be obvious letting generous judges decide on pay rates rather than the businesses themselves, stifles economic activity and growth. It in effect brings another level of tax to employment. In many other countries there appears a genuine debate about such impacts but here very few politicians appear to grasp this set of issues. As a result our flatlining economy and stagnant productivity is presented as a sort of “mystery”.
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Unintentionally funny this from the Guardian shows the problem, wimmin only want the “top” jobs when its easy. Given some of the key jobs in the Government, high profile in every way. Suddenly its all “unsafe” for those women because the jobs are hard and attract media attention. The logic appears to be women should get ministerial jobs that will be easy to do and where only praise will be directed at them! ‘Cabinet no longer feels safe’: Labour MPs criticise briefings against female ministers | Labour | The Guardian I presume the Guardian is so up itself it can’t see the irony of this or the admission that the women are assumed to be not up to the cut and thrust of a high profile job. Possibly Starmer now regrets his DEI “hiring”. I see also Wes Streeting is demonstrating his “toxic masculinity” by working 7 days a week on his brief.
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An Oxbridge Educated Historian trundles around the world chatting to people and becomes a “guru” on economics. At the core of her supposedly insightful opus is:
“Another on the list of six is “time”. She wants to see more flexible working hours, not the four-day-week promised by Jeremy Corbyn in his 2019 election manifesto, but the opportunity to work a focused, more effective 32-hour-week (rather than the standard 40) over five days for a full-time salary, that will appeal to those with caring and other responsibilities.
“I’m saying a 32-hour week [for the same wages now paid for five full days] because women don’t want a four-day week. If they are doing the caring, which many still are, having flexibility over five days around child and other caring responsibilities is really important.””
Now of course there are in fact lots of jobs in industries that require flexibility that are flexible. But oddly enough the pay is generally less than “full time” jobs. Except of course in some Public Services. And the reason is of course because working less means less production. I recall the research in Sweden that pointed out that in their private sector “full time” was 6 hours a week longer than “full time” in their massive public sector. The former really needing to be hard working to pay the taxes for Sweden’s huge public sector. And of course this is the point, in a real sense it doesn’t matter what people find “appealing” in a job if the job doesn’t exist because the industry doesn’t exist. A good example the desire for the high paying “male jobs” that were the mainstay of the “Red Wall” which can’t be magicked up because those industries went to the far east and eastern Europe. In a country like ours, reminder stagnant productivity for 15 years now and falling real wages, reducing productivity because “women don’t want a four day week” shows the idiocy.
The government adviser who says everyone should work less for the same pay
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Sainsbury’s manager Darren Cooper awarded £12,000 for being left off International Men’s Day post | The Independent This caught my eye. Firstly because it is a media mention of IMD and secondly as an example of a storm in a teacup. But then I read it fully and felt Mr. Matt Hourihan had truly caught the spirit of IMD despite the delicate sensibilities of Darren Cooper.
Matt Hourihan wrote: “I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the male leaders in my team and say thank you for all that you do to help make our stores across South Wales, Gloucestershire and Worcester places where colleagues love to work and customers love to shop. “All of you do this whilst leading busy lives outside of work too, dealing with health, family and personal issues in the same way that everyone else does, yet you all show up for work each day, put on a name badge and provide support, guidance and leadership to the thousands of colleagues that work on our region.“
Sadly it seems all too rare to read a thanks to men for dedication to work and going the extra mile. While all the time having, as he says, lots of competing things in their lives. So I want to say three cheers to Matt Hourihan for celebrating the hard work of his male managers on IMD. For of course in the real world or collective prosperity relies on such hard work. Not 4 Day weeks in Councils, P/Timers, “work/life” balancers and bunk off early types.
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And yet another thing to add to the long list of reasons women need so much more help than men, just to turn up and do their job! Hot on the heels of all the campaigning about “menopause” along comes “burnout” Women in eight jobs face highest risk of health issue, expert warns – The Mirror Now the actual figures don’t seem so dramatic as its 2 in 5 women and one in three men who report getting “burnout” over all occupations. However in the overwhelmingly female occupations listed, its higher. Having worked in three of them retail, social care and healthcare I’d suggest this is because these also tend to have a lot of workers not pulling their weight! Burnout could be inevitable if they are busy covering all the other reasons female colleagues can’t concentrate on their work and need “flexibility”, lighter workloads, attention to mental health, assistance with menopause,.. the list goes on. “Your employer may also be able to adjust your workload or provide flexible working and temporary reasonable adjustments” which means of course somebody has to cover the work. Frankly taking all this into account the feminists make a very good case for employers to be careful not to end up with a largely female workforce. Specially those in competitive industries.
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