Sunday 21 November 2010

GREED IS GOOD?

Her Indoors is engaged with a Company whose mission is to assist women raise their corporate game and, specifically, aim to and realise ambitions of entering the Boardroom.

Nothing wrong with that, you may say, and on the whole I might readily have agreed with you.

Recent Government proposals, though, have kindled huge debate at Berry Towers over the above, in ways which have surprised me, and shaken my prejudices. The government has suggested (and it is a suggestion only at this point) that there should be quotas placed upon appointing women directors. Whereas, therefore, my prejudice would have been that women in the Boardroom are "a good thing", this positive discrimination has placed a magnifying glass against my former prejudices, and enlarged views I didn't think I held, but find I do.

My first response was "should there be a quota on male midwives?"

The response I got was "I'm not sure I want a man doing that job."

Fair enough, you might say.

But do markets want more women as Directors doing that job?

A while ago, our next door neighbour was one of the few female PLC Directors in the country. And very effective she is. As well as being a very charming person. I feel not the slightest anxiety about her stewardship of a public Company. But she has got there without positive discrimination. She has been determined. She has set her ambitions and realised them. She has made, I know, considerable sacrifices to do so. I don't doubt she has had to compete with the most testosterone- fuelled competition. And she has got there. Against all of that competition.

And at the end of the day that is what markets want. You can make all the arguments you like about female values being of use in creating more supportive, more creative and more people-valuing organizations (and therefore justifying the greater presence of female directors). But markets don't care. When, as I very frequently do, I buy and sell shares, I honestly don't give a toss about the politically correct makeup of the Board. I look at one thing and one thing only - metrics. Markets exist on naked and unstoppable greed. They don't give a damn about anything wetter.

There are a myriad of reasons why more women don't make it to the very top of corporate life. Only someone extremely sexist, or with a deeply ingrained victim mentality would believe that women are less capable. I for one don't. But do most women want that power as much as men? Are they willing to give up the other rewarding aspects of life to get it? Are they as manically driven by the need to gain power over their fellows and rise to the very top of the pile? Are they as fuelled by the extreme levels of ambition, drive and - lets face it - greed, that are needed to get you there in most organizations?

Some are. Good luck to them. Many aren't. Good luck to them.

As an economy, we need in Boardrooms those who are in the positions they can take for themselves. We need to be very wary indeed about offering an artificial leg up to those who naturally couldn't or wouldn't claim their place in the Boardroom anyway. Quotas on this will breed tokenism, and will ultimately undermine individual female confidence in the validity of the posts. And it will thrust into those posts individuals who, regardless of their gender, are ill suited to the markets' raw ambition.

Markets themselves aren't sexist. Markets simply want winners. Male, female, in between. They just don't care.

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