Best man for a job in finance is a woman?

They could not have done a worse job than the soft-landing brigade.

Well I’m not a woman.. but to be honest I’v grown tired of being lectured to this past decade by a collection of middle aged white men (i thought this would end after adolescence) with graduate degrees in economics, and so allow me to add my support to the filling of all posts, everywhere by the anyone that doesnt fit the above description..and, FWIW, the end of Pat Kennys TV career (he can see out his contract on radio)

I disagree – the main problem with western society is that man has become too feminized , he is not prepared to bang tables , to take risks (Not credit risk I mean real risks involving his life & limb)

You have to be good enough – thats the quota baby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KezwDfFcFhU

Yes – woman reader here Stephen.

Very interesting article – supports a few read over past few months about success of companies where woman are controlling or influencing financial performance.

Interestingly, ‘good men’ seem to be pushing this information ‘out there’.

I read Brian Lucey’s blog every now and then. He writes well, he’s very entertaining and his perspective on a whole range of things is often refreshing.

On male/female differences, I find most of those frequently quoted studies a complete turn off. They remind me of the ‘butter is good for you/butter is bad for you’ debate. One assumes that the key difference between male and female risk perception relates to biological function – women give birth and are ‘wired’ to protect and nurture their offspring, so naturally would tend to be more risk averse than men. The real issue is power, in my opinion, and how people, whether male or female, use it.

As for quotas to place more women in powerful positions in business, industry or politics, beware of what you wish for. There are as many Maggie Thatchers as there are Mother Teresas. Anyway, I don’t think quota systems work. Increasingly, a public life entails sacrificing a private one. Who in their right mind would want to face daily dissection of the minutiae of their appearance, character, foibles and general persona for the fleeting illusion of so-called powerful positions? Most of us (women) can think of better things to do with our time.

As well as differences in risk aversion, there may be differences in time preferences. Liam Delaney & Orla Doyle have a recent paper in the Journal of Economic Psychology which looks at the determinants of self-control (which can be interpreted as a proxy for time preference) & find that females (at age 3 say) are more self-controlled (there is also a significant socio-economic gradient). Boys will be boys indeed.
Veronica: it would be most unfortunate if we had to think of women having to lie somewhere on a continuum between Mrs Thatcher & Mother Teresa.

In the theatre in Ireland there is a clear bias of about 70/30 in favour of men when it comes to producing new plays. This is even more extreme in movies, but much less so in in writing for soap operas where it is around 50/50.

The same amount, or slightly more, women wish to write plays, so it is not a case of women not being as interested.

But in the new play area, it is notable that women writers tend to write proportionally more roles for women and male writers tend to write more roles for men. This is whether or not they self-identify as playwrights concerned with gender. So, if the public want the whole of life experiences represented and actors want equal possibilities at work, then more female playwrights offer this.

On the ‘but it’s the best plays we want’ counter-argument, I note that in a recent study of commercial productions on Broadway, the same bias was there, but the plays by women make more money on average. This suggests that the bar is indeed set higher for women, as they can only get over it if their play is more of a sure thing. As the majority of ticket buyers for the theatre are women I would suggest that the same is probably true here.

On the quality argument, I would note that a very good case could be made for Carol Churchill being the current greatest living playwright in the English language.

In general, on the ‘it’s best person for the job’ argument, this does not take into account a culture and set of networks that favours one gender over the other. Sean Fitzpatrick, let us remember, got his best information on the 19th hole.

My mother, now retired, was a very successful business-woman / accountant in Chester. When running her own business she found that her networking possibilities were severely curtailed by not being in with the golf/rugby/cricket crowd. She solved this by becoming a member of the Chester Races, which was one of the few sporting places where men and women met on fairly equal terms. Similarly, she owned a better car than most of her male peers, because otherwise she was seen as ‘the nice woman who did the books’.

There are endless reports of clients and workers being treated to ‘hostesses’ and lapdancing clubs, which suggests business see themselves as a boys club with gender specific ‘rewards’.

I support a move towards greater equality in gender representation not because ‘it makes more money’ but because the playing field is still not level, for reasons of social inclusivity, personal possibility and a general sense that variety of representation makes for more rounded decision making.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/13/women-absent-board-top-uk-companies

lunchtime parking about sounds more interesting than lunchtime larking about, but that was a predictive text thing, and much less common anyway 🙂

There are far worse problems in the financial services sector. I see lots of women sitting at desks in banks and insurance companies (they are often in the majority) in Ireland and the UK ….. but I rarely see a black face.

Equally, some of the female execs/managers I have worked with have been highly talented – just as some of the male execs/managers I have worked with have been. The other side of the coin is I observe that being a complete dickhead doesn’t seem to be restricted only to the male of the species.

Contrary to Carson I see this as an uplifting piece. There’s a wealth of research listed, and the abstracts of these seem to suggest a seat of innate differences hat can if properly understood and operationalised result in better financial outcomes for all.
Carson response seem to be along the lines of “don’t investigate”, and all but accuses the prof of eugenics.

Carson, I think you need to leave ideology at the door when you discuss serious and complex topics like this. Brian Lucey’s piece was a very useful description of behavioural differences between the sexes in finance no more & no less. I don’t think he was attempting to justify anything – perhaps he can speak for himself on this? The comparison with phrenology, which is about bumps in the skull, is trite. Incidentally it is well established that brain size is correlated with cognitive ability both within and between species.
The idea that all “gender differences” are social constructions is absurd (there are clear biological differences) as is the idea that none of them are. The “nature vs. nurture” dichotomy is known to be overly simple.
Your last sentence is, to my mind, quite chilling. Brian, in exploring some empirical differences ( which may be wrong and which may be innate or otherwise) is apparently guilty of the thought-crime of *justifying* some outcomes?

I might have written my last sentence badly but my meaning was that arguing that all children should not have equal opportunities is wrong – not exploring or discussing the issue.

Hey, let’s face it: we’d still be living in the trees if women ruled the world.

Only men have the urge to explore, to look at things to see if they can be improved, to measure and quantify things (as Yeats said: ‘Measurement began our might’), to philosophise (can anyone think of a great female philosopher outside of Simone De Beauvoir (my favourite quote of hers from The Second Sex: “Why travel? You can never get away from yourself”))?. Did a woman invent the microwave oven, dishwasher, washing machine, or automobile? I suspect the answer is ‘no’.

On the other hand, well … in an indefinable way (at least for this man) life would be intolerable without the ‘input’ of women in so many ways.

Would the Celtic Tiger years have not happened if women were in charge? Watch TV3’s ‘Expose’ any evening to see why it would not have been any different. To misquote Rihanna: “If you like it then you better put a new bag from Prada/Jimmy Choo’s/Louboutins/Hermes scarf/Louis Vuitton bag on it”, i.e. women embraced the Celtic Tiger years with gusto. As one well-known economist might say, “Follow the money”.

Quotas can work but only by this:
The people who seek power are the ones who are least suited to it.

Ruthless ambition typifies those who succeed more than ability. Sometimes those with ruthless ambition promote those with ability to assist them but that’s the only time that merit actually succeeds in the system

Power should be bestowed by lottery on all those with an IQ in the above average range. Monarchies are so popular because they don’t seek power either. It is bestowed upon them.

@ rf

Oh I see, … if only those with ‘credentials’ and ‘areas of expertise’ were allowed make decisions then the financial crisis would be over by now.

Bunbury

I know, I surprised myself by making such a demand, but such was the cliched incoherence of your post….

Dork

Im always sceptical of cocksure Americans making confident assertions

@RF
John Young and George JnR were slightly different fellows RF………

If we had the John Youngs of this world in the top echelons of executive power the world would be perhaps a slightly different place.
Coolness under pressure + extreme intelligence + Honour is a rare commodity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOth-BuCNY

There are many implicit beliefs being thrown around in this article and in the thread.

1) Power is wielded through formal channels – it is not. Formal institutions are our ways of organising the public face of the decision-making process, they are not where the decisions are made. That is not to say that politicians do not wield power, it is that it is not their formal political position that gives them power. Women have always had power and influence, but all power is wielded in private in real terms, therefore the private power in observing the world around them and influencing the “decision-makers” – or more accurately, the people announcing the decisions – has always been perfectly accessible to women, or as asseccible to them as any man. The problem is that these influencers only represent a small fraction of the population, and most women do not come to wield it, just as most men don’t. The feminist movement has seemed to disappoint women because of the lack of additional influence they have achieved, but behind the scenes real independent women are making influential decisions every day, as they always have done, without the glare of optics, which is what politics is.

This is all perfectly obvious when reading proper analytical European History, in which individuals such as Cardinal Richeliu are shown to wield far more power and influence than the monarchs of Europe. Many of the monarchs were dopy puppets, but proximity & control over the dope with the crown was real power, because then you had the public expression in the institution with the private capacity to make real binding and consequential decisions through the King/Queen.

Individuals like this can rise up through institutions or without, depending upon where they see the power of the optics residing. In the past it was the church, now its the media.

2) Determinism – if you decide that women have particular inate traits that make them act, in a general sense, in a certain way then, even if you are correct, society will view all women through that deterministic prism. So then, if I am one of the odd women who does not carry those traits then society will treat me as though I am more likely to, so my freedoms will be restricted by the expectations of others.

Carson’s point, if I may give my interpretation, is not that there are not natural physiological differences, in a very general & statistical sense, between men and women (we all know women have vaginas and men have penises, but also that the act of pregnancy has a deeply and fundamentally different neurological and emotional affect on the relationship between mother and child which is not statistical but scientifically verifiable, through thorough research – the child recognises the mothers voice much more because in the womb it reverberates differently around the body to external voices).

The real point is that if you deterministically say that I am a woman and then I can be expected to act like “this” or “that” in that situation then you will put me in positions in which you will expect one response, and get another, i.e. you will be surprised by my actions in any given situation, by failing to take into account my individual characteristics and putting me in a pre-defined simplistic box. And you will do this even when you don’t even know you are, so all attempts to deterministically define ME & MY nature should be stomped out and pulled out at the root like the failed eugenics experiments of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Yes, this is like eugenics, maybe not as evil, but in principle you are trying to do the same things and push the same control agenda.

3) (This is not a point about the article, but one about the broader general debate)

The start of feminism comes at a point where women stand up and say “I do not want to be forced to conform to a pre-defined role”, and it ends with the corrupted psuedo-feministic (anti-feminist) idea that:

“there is a ‘female perspective’ on society that should be represented equally”.

Gender quotas are supposed to fulfill this need for “representation” of this supposed distinct “perspective” on society. But feminist started with the idea that women could be as individual as men, with traits and freedoms and influence equal to those of men, treated as human beings as opposed to ‘tool’ or ‘vessels’.

The whole point of this movement was to say that the tools and skills and difference among women is much greater when considered in respect to the whole of the human population than their “sameness”.

But the “sameness” or this idea of a “female” perspective, can be applied to any demograhic you like,

i) Young People – take in media in a fundamentally different way, fully independent voters with ideas, different developmental history than older generations due to technology and media as well as cultural shifts in demographics during development – strong argument that young people, under thirty for example, should be proportionally represented so that people will stop feeling that young people are less competent than older people, especially in respect to the amazing successes of young people in the tech industry.

ii) Foreign born people – doesn’t matter where you come from, in relation to living in the Irish political sphere you have a distinct perspective on the world and should be represented in Irelands top legislative bodies with quotas.

iii) Disabled people – people with visual impairments, physical disabilities, etc… distinct perspective on how Irish bureaucratic organisations should be run

iv) Irish people who have lived abroad for more than five years – distinct “perspective” on Irish life relative to others

v) people who live in council estates – distinct perspective

If you want demograhically driven politics then you have to take it to its logical conclusion, you can’t have one rule for one group and another for a different group.

Ultimitely its an unworkable system.

Can someone please enlighten me as to what the credible argument for gender quotas actually is?

I realise after reading most of the other posts that some of yee will not have the cognitive ability to stay on a linear argument unless it is a well worn story with clear beginning-middle-end that you’ve already heard a thousand times. Real rational thought is indeed hard, it doesn’t come natural to anyone, its a strain. I just hope you’ll give these words as much though and circumspection as possible. Don’t just believe me, really way them up against your views and be self-critical. With complex and important issues its important that people in a serious debate are self-critical.

@ Sarah,

What are ‘women lurkers’?

As for Mam Theresa, nobody’s perfect which is really the point. It’s the end to which power is used that’s important as well as having some sound principles to back it up like honesty and integrity, respect for yourself and others, recognising what a moral choice is and knowing how to make one. If people don’t try to put those principles to work in their public and private lives and are more wedded to grasping the beneftis of cronyism, as Mickey describes it above, then gender is irrelevant.

I can understand the appeal of quotas as a ‘quick fix’ to gender imbalances or equality of opportunity. But they never work and just give those who want to ringfence their own hold on power and privilege a great excuse : ‘ Well, we intorduced a quota system to encourage these people and they couldn’t even manage to take advantage of it…’

@ Gavin Kostick

I think we’re in much the same place. Over time legislation such as the Equality Act works to change attitudes in society as well as redressing unfair imbalances in the system. Among their other defects, as Sarah points out above, quotas may generate resentment among those groups that are not the beneficiaries of them. If they have any positive impact at all – and I have my doubts – it’s likely to be short term bumping up of representative allocations that will slip back once the novelty value or policing of quota implementation dies back.

Anyone watching the ‘she-wolves’ of Britian’s history series on BBC 4?

@Ciaran

“2) Determinism – if you decide that women have particular inate traits that make them act, in a general sense, in a certain way then, even if you are correct, society will view all women through that deterministic prism. ”

Well, it’s not that one “decides”, it’s that one recognises the reality. The implication of the “decide” is that even if one accepts the reality of difference, then we should never admit it, because it might have a potentially negative effect. That hardly stands up.

I’d recommend Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate. Just because one recognises that some groups have particular traits it doesn’t mean that all members of that group possess those traits. e.g The best long distance runners tend to be Kenyans, but not all Kenyans are great long distance runners.

Brian Lucey states that “The news, gentlemen, is not good: women, qua women, exhibit traits which whether due to the subtleties of the female brain or due to culture, might well make them better financial operatives.”

This is not borne out by research with respect to gender difference as this summary of meta-analytic studies from the journal American Psychologist shows http://www.careerpioneernetwork.org/wwwroot/userfiles/files/the_gender_similarities_hypothesis.pdf.

Brian has made the classical mistake of stereotyping women and relying on research that uses biased samples. Women who have the necessary psychological traits and abilities to perform equally well when compared with men too often fall foul of being deemed to be too ‘manly’ in their approach. It is not by accident that the descriptor ‘man’ager is in wide spread use in organisations

There is a glass ceiling effect that operates and prevents women reaching senior positions in organisations and studies such as those that Brian quotes are biased with respect to the samples used samples. The selection of women into organisations is inherently biased towards ‘femine’ women ie. women who meet the cultural stereotypes of what a women manager or executive should be. For example the article entitled “Feminized management and backlash toward agentic women: The hidden costs to women of a kinder, gentler image of middle managers” is worth reading on how this operates http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1999-01257-008 .

As the American Psychologist article points out “Women who violate the stereotype of being nurturant and nice can be penalized in hiring and evaluations.” When Brian states in his blog piece “Thus we find that women in financial situations exhibit a greater aversion to taking risk than do men” he makes the classical mistake of ignoring the inherent biases in the comparison samples in the research he refers to. The females who match males on risky behaviours may well have been selected out. As the AP article concludes “It is time to consider the costs of overinflated claims of gender differences. ……. Most important, these claims are not consistent with the scientific data”.

The issue that has to be dealt with is the stereotyping of women managers and executives in the hiring and selection processes, and the cultural stereotyping of what women should be.

Ciarán Carroll
I really don’t think your long argument is as self-evidently correct as the line “some of yee will not have the cognitive ability to stay on a linear argument” implies you think it is. The nature of our politics is geographic diversity, very similar populations divided arbitrarily so that different ‘communities’ can have some access to the political process. Why can’t this be done to fit any number of criteria (And yes gender, certainly class, and if we come to have a large community in a generation that self identifies as Nigerian/Irish then them to. That doesn’t mean “any demograhic you like”, ie the Cuban gay community or whatever strawman we choose to use at a given moment.) This used to happen in western countries to some extent, Unions providing representation for the working class, and it is my personal opinion that it is indeed a good thing. Whether it’s done through quotas I don’t know, but it should be done.
Your points on the manner in which power is wielded, although interesting in its own right, doesn’t have a huge amount of relevance to the argument at hand. Paul Hunt has written about this recently, how power is wielded in Ireland and policy formed, and informal networks of women capturing the political process doesn’t appear a common phenomenon. Likewise ‘biological determinism’, the point isn’t that certain groups fall into easily defined scientifically indisputable sub groups, but, as you acknowledge, that there are social differences between and commonalities within groups that should be represented politically. I think the burden of proof is on you to show why we shouldn’t have a political system that better represents this diversity.
Sarah
Men resent women enough as it is without that to put up with.
Perhaps, although certain men will resent women regardless of a quota system, and will try and hide that resentment by making the target ‘feminism’ or ‘political correctness’. As far as I’m aware, and I might be wrong, most research shows that those that succeed in large businesses or politics don’t do so due to talent, but because they learn how to network and take advantage of internal politics. If I for a moment thought that we lived in anything approaching a meritocracy, and that the most important factor wasn’t still, possibly more than ever, who you were born to, then I would probably agree with you.
(And this isn’t due to some romantic notion of the benefits of having women in politics, but because the purpose of domestic, democratic politics should be to represent as much of the population as possible)

@Sarah,

Well, that’s me fingered – more a ‘lurker’ than a ‘commenter’ most of the time.

Still it’s nice to see more women commenting than is the general norm on irisheconomy.

I think folks ye have finally found a topic to discuss that is even more subjective and resistant to honest analysis than economics. Well done 🙂

“Post-3rd wave feminism has succeeded in pressuring most women to believe that unless they are productive in an economic sense – then they are worthless to society. And the cost of THAT is huge in monetary terms.”

That’s a very interesting perspective, one I’ve heard articulated frequently enough, and I couldn’t claim to have any-thing intelligent to add to it.
I do think though, in some ways, it backs up the argument that our political system needs to become more representative (not just on gender, but the whole sweep of ‘identities’ that are going to evolve over the coming decades) as the pool our political class tends to be drawn from is so narrow that it excludes a whole number of perspectives and life experiences from the legislative process.
How you go about that I haven’t a notion. (And I’m largely ignorant on how, or if, to tackle the ‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon)

“I’m determined when I do get back to my programme, to try and discuss more of these ideas with experts.”

I look forward to that! (I just hope the Sunday Indo hasn’t destroyed all non-Independent owned media by then….Okay I’m putting away that hobby horse)

I agree on responsiveness to constituents. It never made much sense to me that this was identified as the problem with our political process. (That it was too concerned with dealing with voters) At the executive level perhaps, but it struck me more as a smokescreen to obscure the deeper problems with our political institutions.

I certainly don’t think that someone has to look like you to represent you, but it generally helps. I mean there’s certain things that I can make an effort in good faith to understand or empathise with (such as the desire to marry someone of the same sex, or what issues are important in a closed immigrant community) but there’s only so far that good faith will get me, and there’s no political incentive to expend political capital responding to the concerns of a tiny subset of my general constituents. It’s like trying to make childcare policy with a Parliament full of childless Yuppies. It makes no sense to me why that should be our goal.

As I said though, I really don’t know how you resolve that.

“Maybe women have made the right call”

Absolutely. And perhaps in time we’ll find a better compromise to all the issues you highlighted. I remember a friend of mine whose aspiration from pretty young was to be a ‘house husband’. (He had a very simplistic and romantic notion of what that life would be like, but none the less) Needless to say he had that idea beaten out of him quite quickly, but he still bangs on about it every now and again. There exists, I think, a significant amount of men that would happily take up that role, and I think that’s being shown in countries more advanced along this route than us.

@Sarah

Talking to a marriage guidance counsellor I know the other day (out of interest, not for any other reason!!), I’m not sure she would agree with you. But I get your ‘some respects.’

It’s causing a huge number of problems and their services are totally maxed out…. and it ain’t going away any time soon.

after the debacle in twickenham i think gender quota’s should be brought in to the front row of the scrum…couldn’t be any worse.

@Garry “I think folks ye have finally found a topic to discuss that is even more subjective and resistant to honest analysis than economics”.

The issue of gender bias is amenable to scientific analysis, in spite of subjectivity and resistance to honest analysis.

Brian states in his blog “Thus we find that women in financial situations exhibit a greater aversion to taking risk than do men. This finding is not just evident from these ‘top down’ studies, but is also evident when we survey individuals. Again my own research on Irish adults is in line with international findings.”

I am not an economist but I am a behavioural scientist. So I decided to investigate a little further as Brian’s comment above is not consistent with the large body of soundly based empirical research on gender differences from the field of behavioural science.

Some of the research that Brian appears to be relying on uses a measure of financial risk developed by Grable and Lytton in 1999. This measure was developed using “A convenience sample of faculty and staff from a US southern state university. The majority of respondents (63%) possessed a four year college degree or higher, and all were working.”

Grable and Lytton suggested that future research using the items (questions) and their instrument should incorporate different sample frames and populations to confirm the generalisability of their findings. I have found no evidence of testing of the measure using samples that are more representative of the population, which is normal practice in developing robust psychometric instruments that are capable of scientifically answering questions regarding human behaviour.

In addition Grable and Lytton relied solely on Exploratory Factor Analysis in developing their measure. Psychometrics today uses Confirmatory Factor Analysis as the gold standard factor analytic technique in determining whether a putative measure is a reliable and valid one or not.

Brian’s own research showed that, unlike the sample used by Grable and Lytton, 24% of the sample used in Brian’s research in Ireland was ‘not working’, even though 64% did have a degree or higher. It may well be hat there were more ‘not working’ than ‘working’ females in the sample used in Brian’s research, and his published research did not control for this in making gender comparisons.

In addition there may well be a problem of ‘differential item functioning’ (DIF) or item bias with respect to differences between the working/not-working/postgraduate groups in the Irish sample. The effect of DIF was not evaluated by Grable and Lytton. The questions in the Grable and Lytton instrument are complex and would not meet the criteria for good item (question) properties in a psychometrically sound measurement instrument designed to scientifically access human behaviours.

What constitutes a good item in a psychometric instrument? First, the language should be simple, straightforward, and appropriate for the reading level of the scale’s target population. For instance, scales intended for use in general samples need to be readily understandable by respondents with only a modest education. In addition, one should avoid using trendy expressions, as well as colloquialisms and other language for which the familiarity (and thus utility) will vary widely with age, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. Item writers also should be careful to avoid complex or “double-barrelled” items that actually assess more than one characteristic. At best, such items are ambiguous; at worst, they may leave respondents with no viable response alternative.

With the guidelines for item writing in psychometric instruments in mind have a look at the Appendix to Brian’s research for the Grable and Lytton measurement instrument used and judge for yourself whether the items used meet the criteria for good item writing in psychometrically sound measures.

The generalisations Brian makes about gender differences can not be accepted without question. His blog on gender differences is very flawed from a scientific perspective.

@Gerry Im an engineer so I know nothing about either economics or behavioural science 🙂 I found the article thought provoking but flawed.

It’s funny, I thought on reading the title Mr Lucey was commenting on the vacancy created by Mr Cardiffs departure to Brussels. That role was definitely ‘a job in finance’… its been filled since I believe

I accept that Brian is talking about finance jobs in general, probably with the assumption that the person is managing funds in a trading environment, though he does make references to Chief Financial Officers… So I would point out the collapse of the countrys finances was not due to risk taking by those in leadership positions in the Department of Finance. Rather the reverse occured, the low risk option was chosen every time.

Mr. Luceys argument seems to be lower short term returns is strongly correlated with better long term results. To me that is a little simplistic, business is littered with the bodies of once great corporations that were managed into bankruptcy, with the low risk option taken every time.

I agree with you that the gender differences made in the article cant be accepted without question, but neither can the assumptions about what is ‘good’ financial management.

@ Sarah Carey

“Does someone have to look like me in order to represent me?

My answer is No. ”

I tried to argue ealier in this thread that I see gender quotas as desirable on the grounds of equality and fairness rather than representation. So I agree with your point above even though we hold the opposite view on quotas generally.

On the question of innate versus socialised gender differences, I thought it was interesting see you write about female lurkers. It has been my experience in life that from the class room to the board room, women are much less likely to feel comfortable speaking their mind or out of turn. In my opinion that is because qualities such as demureness and meekness are traditionally thought of as feminine and young girls socialised as such. To put it simply, boys are allowed and even encouraged to be much more loud and brash.

So it is no wonder that women are much less likely to seek a raise or promotion or put themselves forward as candidates for election. The qualities required to do those things are from a very young age discouraged amongst the female (second?) sex.

So for me this comes down to an issue of fairness. Is it fair that the child you are currently raising is much less likely to hold political office, become a board member or generally hold a position of power in our society if it is a girl rather than a boy?

Does it not frustrate you that men similarly talented as yourself and your female peers are much more likely to hold positions of influence in Irish society over the next 20 years?

Gender quotas may be crude, but they can be an effective force for change where otherwise it might take generations for the same effects to occur.

@Gerry Fahey

‘I am both an engineer and a behavioural scientist …’

We could do with more of these interdisciplinary combinations around here ….

The bias against women in positions of power does not relate to either competence or personality … it relates to the social construction of power … in which males presently have the advantage.

@Gerry Fahey

Doubt that anyone could claim reasonable or ‘plausible’ on any measure of ‘financial risk propensity’ considering how ‘fixed’ and ‘odious’ the whole ‘financial system’ has emerged in recent years.

The problems in Anglo had much more to do with the narcissism of its senior executives than testosterone. Narcissism is a personality rather than a gender issue.

Nicely put Gerry

Someone querying the veracity of Prof Luceys Irish Times op-eds? Hmmm. Interesting. That is all.

This is why so many women (not all) are less (or differently) ambitious than men, and also why men commit suicide & become homeless more often than women.

@Bond.Eoin Bond

When Brian’s op ed piece in the Examiner is carefully examined it turns out to be a very flawed opinion piece, as does his own research which he referred to.

1. Meta analysis deals with the problem of capitalising on chance with a single study in the behavioural sciences. Brian’s links to studies in his blog piece does not deal with the limitations of single studies.
2. Care needs to be exercised in looking at effects between different groups in research studies. Even a statistically significant result does not necessarily imply any practical significance. Within group differences in gender studies are usually far more important that between group difference, even when statistically significant.
3. Tests of statistical significance need always to be handled with a grain of salt because, as any competent statistician will tell, all you can really conclude is that the sample wasn’t big enough to detect a statistically significant difference!
4. His own study is very flawed. The methodology used (Grable and Lytton’s financial risk measure) is bluntly speaking – from a psychometric perspective – a measure that is seriously flawed with respect to issues of reliability and validity.
5. His op ed piece does a disservice to women by perpetuating the stereotypical myth that women with ‘soft social skills’ perform better than women who are equal to men with respect to cognitive ability and relevant personality traits.
6. He strayed into the area of human behaviour, which is outside his domain of expertise, and got it very badly wrong when judged against objective scientific criteria from the fields of psychometric measurement and behavioural science.
7. All in all both the op ed piece and the blog reflect very badly on Brian as an academic.

“Does it not frustrate you that men similarly talented as yourself and your female peers are much more likely to hold positions of influence in Irish society over the next 20 years?”

Oooh there’s a LOT that frustrates me about those who positions of influence! Fortunately I have 3 sons now and providing they avoid being kicked to death outside a nightclub, killed in a high speed car crash or diving into an empty pool whilst drunk on holiday I’m hoping they’ll all be rich lawyers who’ll keep me in my old age.

And see this is the bottom line. From the moment they are born, whether they are male or female, my peers and I will do everything to make sure our children are successful members of the professional middle classes.
Male or female, if you’re born into the underclass, you’re screwed.
Class not gender really dictates your future.
Gender quotas is a row only the privileged conduct amongst themselves…

@Sarah Carey

“Class not gender really dictates your future.”

That’s fighting talk where I come from 😉

@ Carson

“would you not like to see something changed about the issues you describe? ”

Providing one example of paternity leave doesn’t create balance. Yes, of course there should be paternity leave. Coming from a family where the father did largely stay at home and cook, and collect us from school – in y family the father was a fitter parent. If it was down to my mother we’d have grown up on Big Als chicken burgers.

But until young men are able to give birth they will never be as valuable as women, and thus the problem is intractable. The average woman will never feel the kind of pressure to succeed that a man does if they are deemed fit to give birth. Women will always have that foundation, even if they chose not to depend upon it. What an upper class woman fears in dependency on one other person and being trapped or restricted. What a man feels is being completely removed from society and cut off from sexual intercourse. A woman has a cage, but a man has a chasm and that won’t change, it won’t be “solved” by paternity leave, because very few people understand the nature of the problem. Those are two different subconscious implicit drivers.

We protect young mothers from the harshness of financial destitution for the sake of their children, thereby making the men that made the children superfluous.

You also can’t “put” people into powerful dominant positions, either in politics, or bureaucracy (corporate or governmental) through quotas. Even if they acquire the formal position power acts locally and implicitly, not through formal channels. That was my first point and it was dismissed as irrelevant, but it is the nail in the coffin of quotas. Ultimately power is not granted its taken, but if women don’t have the same drivers and motivations to take the power then they won’t grab as fast or hard as men. Then the powerful people will find a way to manipulate the formal system by placing pliable females into the positions and manipulating the circumstances to get them elected, just so they can sit in the backbench and keep shtum. But then if women don’t support their local communities by handing out local political favours then they won’t get elected in Ireland either.

This is speaking from the perspective of someone who voted for two women out of four votes in the last election.

I just don’t think the broader feminist movement really comprehends the complexity of the problem, they just see it as inequality produced by men and society keeping them down. But the men up their have beaten back a lot of other men to get there because the cost of not doing so is greater for him than for a woman.

@Gerry Fahey

Ta for that.