From the authors of “Womenomics”: Relax, everything is going to be better than ever..
That’s what Claire Shipman and Katty Kay assure us in this Washington Post Outlook piece. Women running the economy is not just a good thing — it’s more profitable, they tell us. I’m there. I mean, there’s no way female money managers would have dreamed up all those bizarre financial “instruments” that got us into so much trouble. From my perspective, the more female politicians the better, as well.
Here’s my caveat: I was just looking through the alum report of what is probably the most prestigious girls school in the country — checking on the who’s-doing-what notes — and realized that I was reading about women going to the best law schools in the country, taking on clinical psych careers, working at the top levels of Congressional offices, engaging the world’s most dangerous place through the Foreign Service and Peace Corps…but not a single graduate pursuing the hard sciences or starting an entrepreneurial business career.
If women are going to eclipse men in the workplace, which is already taking place (based on their greater educational attainments) I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I saw more women engaging lifelong careers in the sciences.
Um, Claire and Katty are in the media…not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you!
Let’s see where their daughters end up. If they polish off 40-year careers as chemical engineers, I’m on board. If that doesn’t happen, there’s a reason to be a little less ebullient about these changes. Our nation’s competitive edge is at stake.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Yeah, That is it - Hermes Outperformed expectations, and its mgmt structure is dominated by women !! Super…
“By sector, sales growth was driven by silk scarves, fashion accessories and the Leather Goods & Saddlery division, with persistently brisk demand for leather bags. In the other sectors, sales receded, with a more pronounced downturn in Perfumes despite the success of Terre d’Hermès, Watches and Tableware,…”
I’m shocked - a company that concentrates on female buyers and female oriented products has a mgmt structure dominated by women. Oh, and the buyers of its products appear to have retained their purchasing power nicely!! Good on ‘em.
Two of your media colleagues are promoting their book, Hmmm I think we should just insist that all male mgmt types should simply take early retirement and make way for their betters. After all, that is the education trend anyway isn’t it?
Good thing plumbers are still likely to be in demand… Although, come to think of it, women’s greatly enhanced collaborative and inter-personal skills would be a competitive game changer in that field too! Ah well, garbage person isn’t too bad, after all.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Yeah, That is it - Hermes Outperformed expectations, and its mgmt structure is dominated by women !! Super…
“By sector, sales growth was driven by silk scarves, fashion accessories and the Leather Goods & Saddlery division, with persistently brisk demand for leather bags. In the other sectors, sales receded, with a more pronounced downturn in Perfumes despite the success of Terre d’Hermès, Watches and Tableware,…”
I’m shocked - a company that concentrates on female buyers and female oriented products has a mgmt structure dominated by women. Oh, and the buyers of its products appear to have retained their purchasing power nicely!! Good on ‘em.
Two of your media colleagues are promoting their book, Hmmm I think we should just insist that all male mgmt types should simply take early retirement and make way for their betters. After all, that is the education trend anyway isn’t it?
Good thing plumbers are still likely to be in demand… Although, come to think of it, women’s greatly enhanced collaborative and inter-personal skills would be a competitive game changer in that field too! Ah well, garbage person isn’t too bad, after all.
July 13th, 2009 at 7:35 am
First, welcome back. I have to admit that I am totally confused about where and why you are placing your contributions. But I’m glad that the direct WhyBoysFail.com is not dead yet! As for this article, in this case I disagree with you. Considering that 50% of the technical PhD students aren’t US citizens, I don’t expect any lack of technical know-how if women opt out. And if it ever becomes a problem, you can bet that the sisterhood will start to put pressure on their more mathematically and technically capable sisters to pursue those types of careers.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
“I am totally confused about where and why you are placing your contributions.”
I check your blog daily, and thank you for providing a repository of some of the more useful and pertinent links on the issue. As to my commenting, I rarely comment, as many of the daily items, to me, are either confirmatory or explication (which is fine and reasonable).
This article (rather than your comments which launch from it) deals with the question of female management style (they assume there is one), and its supposed superiority to male management style ( again assuming …).
The article replicates an argument that has been advanced in management circles for nearly 20 years - women’s ethic of care and their greater ethical grounding leads to better results - the “business case” for affirmative action.
The supposition that it is male aggressiveness and greed that caused this problem (see Iceland, as well as the Ernst study and the Davos economists cited) is bogus, and asserted by people with grasp of neither the causes of the problem, nor the constraints on those held to be participating. Consider the reaction of the investing public (let alone the institutional finance managers) to an equity issue whose management signficantly underperformed its market sector due to an aversion to risk, an over-relaince on ‘collaboration’ and a preferencing of caring to value added internal investing. Those women who had adopted such tactics would have been forced out by the investors. Those investors are both men and women.
Their comments on the Norway solution reflects no grounding in the genesis of that decision, nor the preliminary consequences, nor any concerns on the longer term implications.
This is politics and ideology in the service of marketing their book, and nothing more. I had this stuff shoved down my throat while gaining my MBA.
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As to the question of STEM and female participation, your point about the high percentage of foreign nationals in the USA PhD STEM stream is well taken. You imply that the USA has no problem since such graduates replenish the US supply. This is not at all clear. The knowledge and technology transfers underway from this erodes US competitive advantage, not protect it.
I say this based in part, on the carrer plans of the chinese, korean, and indian nationals that I did my post-grad work with. The same pattern played out in the IT workplaces I was involved with. All of these people had the fixed intent of returning to their country of origin after acquiring the education, workplace experience and contacts from their apprenticeships in North America. All of them not only saw higher standards of living relatice to their culutres of origin, but much higher status and opportunity. This is on top of the number whose particpation in north america was funded by and arranged by the governments of their countries of origin.
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Your assertion that the sisterhood will exert any pressure is not clear, and still less, that such pressure will have any positive effect. Does the sisterhood have the ability to dictate that such “mathematically and technically capable sisters” will take such careers? I’d say no, based on the results so far.
What they do have the ability and influence to accomplish is the extension of Title IX type regulations on STEM faculties and depratments, and to generate preferential affirmative action tools such as scholarships, tenure preferences, and group funding that effectively discriminate against men.
[note that the you pronoun I have used assumes that I am addressing the author of the piece, based on the welcome back and the death of the site etc]
How this amounts to, or relates to a concern about failing boys, either in north america, or in the broader anglo-sphere eludes me, frankly.
So - interesting, but worth some criticism.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Read it carefully. The Outlook article really says that women’s cautious approach works just fine in mature industries and business. Organizations they manage are never at the bottom and never at the top. There is plenty of room for that approach. But, is slow and steady all that we need? Would the internet revolution (and for that matter the personal computer revolution that enabled it) have happened in large companies under prudent female management? In fact both were created by risk-loving young men, with hardly any women involved. Some failed, many prospered and a few became very rich. And we are much better off for what they did.
Beyond attention to the obvious problems (better schools, better health care, better infrastructure, reduced dependence on fossil fuels, etc.) it isn’t clear what the country should do to replace lost industries and build a strong economy for the coming decades. I certainly don’t know, but I am placing my bets on young men who will try all sorts of things. Some of them will get it right.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Thanks, I can read - most of the article is the kind of breathless political advocacy along gender lines that is worthless.
The mature sectors you refer to are far more vulnerable to foreitgn competition than ever before. There is NOT plenty of room for that approach. Deloitte’s recent contribution of a “Shift Index” methodology to dynamically analyse business environments indicates that ROA has fallen to 25% of 1965 levels (which were not sustainable, but still), and that the topple rate of mature sector leaders has doubled.
Their prescription is, as you suggest, entrepreneurial activity, combined with deep restructuring of firm economics, and cutting the timeline for knowledge introduction. All of these things are destabilizing and risk embracing. Yet the supposed standard model of female management advanced in the article describes female management as cautious and risk aversive.
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Personally, I disagree with their model of female management. There is a wide array of risk embracing women - after all, most men are NOT risk embracing either. They may not all be in banking and insurnace, but …
My dislike of the article is that it is gender essentialist without any strong evidence, and for politicla reasons, pushes a women superiority line of nonsense.
But again, what this has to do with boy’s education, beats me.