Harriet Harman: 'If only it had been Lehman Sisters'
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Independent Minds
Harriet Harman yesterday laid the blame for the financial crisis on the male domination of the top jobs in banks. The deputy Labour leader suggested that the presence of more women in the boardrooms of financial institutions could have eased the impact of the meltdown.
Ms Harman, who is in charge of the day-to-day running of the Government while Gordon Brown is on holiday, was defending her call for one of Labour's top two jobs to be filled by a woman.
Asked whether the turmoil would have been avoided if more women were in senior positions, she referred to the US investment bank whose collapse triggered the crisis. "Somebody did say ... that if it had been Lehman Sisters, rather than Lehman Brothers, then there may not have been as much," she said.
"I do seriously think half the financial services industry is women now," she told GMTV. "Women make up half the workforce of insurance companies and banks. Why shouldn't they have a say on boards as well?"
Just five of the 61 board places in Britain's "big four" banks are occupied by women and the boards of Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland are entirely male. One senior banking source admitted: "There is a poor representation of women but that is true in many walks of life."
Ms Harman's comments came a day after she said that men "cannot be left to run things on their own" in the Labour Party. Ms Harman, who is also the minister for Women and Equality, refused to back down from her stance.
Females on the board: The 'big four' banks
0: Number of women who sit on the 15-member board of Barclays Bank
3: Women, alongside the 15 men, who form the board of HSBC Holdings
2: Female directors at Lloyds TSB: one non-executive and one executive from a total of 15
0: Women in director roles at Royal Bank of Scotland from a total board of 10
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Comments
Growing up with the influence of only one gender is a very very harsh course and I warn anyone who thinks otherwise. Nature created both genders for reasons that we still don't yet fully comprehend, but it's generally the case that nature creates the best solution. We should take note of that and meddle with extreme caution only.
the 'equalities' and 'racism' industries flourish as one of the few remaining generators of safe employment and fat pensions in the bankrupt banana republic of a de-educated and de-industriaised blatcherist Britain that could very easily find itself 'led' by bird-brained champion of political correctitude number one, Lord Sub-Prime Mortgage, or a slippery toff Blair lookalike
Harriet Harman says: "I do seriously think half the financial services industry is women now ... Women make up half the workforce of insurance companies and banks. Why shouldn't they have a say on boards as well?"
This is the usual, flawed, proportionality argument: 50% of the finance industry are women, therefore 50% of its board members should be women. To see why this is a bad argument, consider the following argument with the same form: 50% of the population are men, therefore 50% of mothers should be men.
If women are not equally represented on boards, then either there is discrimination or there is a lack of ability. If there is discrimination, then it should be stamped out on both moral and financial grounds (since the company benefits financially by appointing the ablest people it can). If there is lack of ability, then we should accept the fact. I suspect that many able women don't make it to board level because they lack the mental toughness and single-mindedness that is needed or because they have other priorities (family, other interests).
Another form of argument that Harriet Harman is fond of involves the use of counterfactuals such as: "if it had been Lehman Sisters, rather than Lehman Brothers, then there may not have been as much [of a disaster]". We are supposed to simply accept this as being true, since there was indeed a big failure of the banking system. But *why* should we think that if women were running things they would have been any better at it. If women were running Lehmans, it might never have become a major bank, or it might have collapsed long ago, or there might have been an even bigger failure. I believe that the real cause of the failure of the financial system is that it rewards success but does not punish failure. So to claim that women would have done better is to claim that they are less greedy than men. I, for one, don't find sugar-and-spice claims of this form credible.
Why would you suspect this? There are surely many reasons other than 'single-mindedness' for choosing a man for a position on a board over a woman, not least of which I hope would be his competence in economics, as well as his suitability for the financial sector. Should we then not be asking why these positions are not more suitable for women, who as you rightly say have different priorities to men?
But need I point out that families and 'other interests' are not exclusive to the female sex?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfh6gEHF
That Harman does not appreciate this (or cannot work it out for herself) indicated she is not really a thinker and really unsuited to holding office. Comments like that would have her off the board of any major company pretty quickly. She should maybe think before opening her mouth.
Bt then I suspect this is more about trying to maneuver for the party leadership when Brown goes which is going to be within 12 months - after the next election at the latest).
Some men push the limits of acceptability because they are pushed to do so by greedy wives. Big house, kids at expensive schools, fancy holidays, lots of shopping trips and lunches with the other rich wives.
That is not to say that all wives are like this. Quite clearly not. It's simply that highly successful men tend to have wives with a high "running cost". This is just a tendency of course, not an absolute, but it's as natural as day follows night.
So to suggest that women aren't prone to the same "push the limit" impulse is a very shallow argument.
Both men AND women are prone to greed.
Gender-based arguments aren't just out of place, they are out of date. We stopped fighting the battles of the 70's some time in the 80's or 90's. Sure there's more to be done on the implementation side, but the ideological argument was mostly over by the time that Thatcher came to power. Love her or hate her (I'm sort of half-way), she was one of the greats and sealed the idea that women can get to the top.
We know that men and women bring different qualities and that the difference is not just great, but vital. Long live the difference and the difference that we contribute. Just go easy on the man-hating.