Why oh why quality papers fall for sensational titles or are women still fair game?

I am really angry, sad and ready to pounce -all 3 at once due to media fueled attacks on professional women.

Latest in the line of summer games aimed at senior and professional women is the article in FT today (link coming later from computer). The title claims that WOMEN DAMAGE PROFIT of companies on whose Boards they sit (the print copy of FT has tthe same article on p.16 under the title Doubt cast on women in boardroom). When you read the article it says nothing of the sort. The researchers observe that women sit on the Boards of companies that HAVE lower profit and smaller market capitalization. There is no indication of whether the profits ACTUALLY fell since appointment of female directors or where they like that before they were brought on board. Similarly, we are not told if market capitalization was lower at the time of appointment. Boo to FT!

Since the beginning of the week Harriet Harman has been piloted from all sides. It started with a ridiculing her comment that more women at the top reaches in the banks would have made a difference to male driven competitiveness of winner takes all variety. It then moved onto her comment that Labour should have a woman in one of the top two jobs – hang on everyone, she was not asking for men to step aside and give both jobs to women for a change! That could have been noteworthy. When pens and daggers came out relating to Harman’s decision to get Rape Bill tightened, it all became too much, at least for me.

So, could all this be the result of mysogeny of journalist profession which according to Richard Reeves, Director of Demos, has the highest proportion of private school educated members of all professions -boys rebelling against a Headgirl.

Time to grow up me thinks.

PS. In the weekend FT Emma Jacobs rounds up on Harriet Harman critics in Sisterly suggestions cause hysteria. However, she conveniently forgets to mention her own paper and Brotherly uproar about female directors misreporting of the research.

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25 years on -and that from one of Tories leading thinkers

On Wednesday 20th May Daniel Finkelstein wrote a well argued article in the Times entitled Will the next Mr Speaker get the new era? He argues that large political parties arose in the era of mass media and that the information revolution is changing all that. The thesis is that the shift is thus from closed politics to open politics.

About time someone noticed. This is exactly what Norman Strauss argued 25 years ago, among other places in the Article “State of Mind that Can Stop Decline” He pointed out that government is not well designed for building a bridge from values to policies and legislation- as we so graphically see now! In the days well before Barack Obama went to his graduate studies at Harvard and much before Lord Layard from LSE recognised the need for lifting UK dismal levels of life satisfaction, Norman wrote:

Building a positive ‘can do’ altruistic ‘mental-welfare state’ is what modern politics should be about.

Any of the major parties doing anything about it? If not, why not?