Corporate Executive Gender Equality

"I claim to have an introductory knowledge of history, I suppose, as far as racism is concerned that term did not exist that long ago. It's only been around for centuries." - breadloaf

Well, yeah, that TERM probably wasn't around for all humanity; the English language being a relatively recent development in it might have a bit to do with that. But are you implying that the underlying issues in human nature leading to racism are all that recent?

"Why don't you spend a post explaining your viewpoint more clearly instead of just lashing out at everyone else for arguing the wrong thing." - breadloaf

Lashing out at everyone, breadloaf? By what standards do you distinguish between "lashing out" and "not lashing out" in ways that would put most of my responses into the former category? Most of them, as far as I've been aware, were of the latter.

Now, I've probably lashed out at YOU, but that's because your (earlier) claim that you "cannot fathom" the idea of someone "disagreeing that men have the better deal" (despite the fundamentally subjective nature of this notion) combined with your fairly FREQUENT missing of the points I make just made me wonder how this reflects on your perspective.

As for my viewpoint, if you're referring very specifically to the issue of corporate executives, frankly I think that in a walk of life as corrupt as business, supposed covert discrimination on the part of the top leaders is hardly the worst part. To see people focusing their activism with respect to business on making it gender neutral reminds me of this video.

But in any case, I came in to comment on the OTHER issues this reflects on. When someone is attributing this to sexism, and mentions of gender differences are met with the "that's because SOCIETY makes them" argument, despite the paradox that argument creates, I see this as reflecting on their perception of the issue. For all I know, the REAL gender differences might actually make WOMEN better at business. But in any case, the issue remains that interpretations that just disregard gender difference altogether for whatever reasons aren't interpretations I would trust on a matter like this.

Actually, neo, he's not the only one who views your replies to have the impression of lashing out. I just assume that you're making a good faith atempt at meaningful discussion, and overlook it as best I can. Really, having such discussions face-to-face mightr prove to be the better way to conduct a debate or discussion, as subtle tonal changes and body posturing are more or less lost on the net - but I'm sure everyone knew that already. I sometimes get Captain Obvious syndrome.

Well remember, this is an on-topic discussion, I was merely pulling a single issue in the corrupt corporate world, that was my OP anyway. So the discussion at hand only really looks at gender discrimination, even if say, corporations are stabbing babies to make gasoline. Perhaps you might want to start a new topic about general corporate corruption, I have plenty of grievances there anyway.

I can understand that you want to say "but gender can make a difference even if we don't know what the difference is" but both sides of the argument are accepting this. What you do with that statement though is where we differ.

For instance let's go with a few logic paths here:

Gender makes a difference but I don't know what but I trust capitalism.

Okay, so then let's do nothing and the market will figure it out. Market always works.

Gender makes a difference but I don't know what but I think legislative intervention is good

Well the corporate executives are mostly men, in fact almost entirely men, why don't we see what the effect of forcing women into the positions and breaking the current power clique? We can use a statistics agency and those of other countries in an attempt to figure out whether this is better.

Gender makes a difference but I don't know what but I think it is possible to find out

Then let's make some experimental situations with women solely in corporate executive positions and see how it compares to when men are solely in those positions.

And also some control groups of companies that do whatever.

Well the corporate executives are mostly men, in fact almost entirely men, why don't we see what the effect of forcing women into the positions and breaking the current power clique? We can use a statistics agency and those of other countries in an attempt to figure out whether this is better.

How would you force them? I can't think of a way to do it that's not illegal under present law. You'd also need a specific metric for "better" agreed upon by all parties before carrying out the test, otherwise barring a dramatic change one way or the other it would be extremely difficult to get anyone to agree on the results.

... not to mention the sheer potential such "experiments" have for sources of error. I doubt women forced to the top of the corporate executive ladder are going to be a representative sample of what women who otherwise make it to this position will do.

Why not focus on promoting ALTERNATIVES to corporate positions, for both men and women?

Certainly you would want good metrics to go by first, which then also sorta means that right now you can't even say that women are poorer corporate executives since you don't have an agreed upon framework to even say that.

So by "alternatives" what do you mean?

By "alternatives" I mean promoting walks of life OTHER THAN business.

And again, examining the implications of gender difference on business performance, though not perfect either, doesn't seem as rife with potential sources of error as just seeing how bringing women to the top with reverse discrimination works out.

edited 29th Oct '10 8:18:50 AM by neoYTPism

So you mean that if women don't appear to be getting into corporate executive positions then we promote them to go to other types of jobs?

I already said that "other jobs" should be promoted for BOTH genders, which more so than anything is because I do not regard business to be a walk of life that should be encouraged.

But generally speaking, I think before enacting reverse discrimination on the basis of gender discrepancy careerwise, people should be a bit more open to the notion that gender differences play a role, whichever role that may be. Which means "stop dismissing mentions of them with the assumption that they are entirely a product of social norms."

I think it's more on the lines that because you don't know what role they may play that it seems ill considered to design policy that presumes that it plays a role and that the current market composition is adequately describing the role it plays.

I would personally tackle the issue from a bottom-up and top-down approach at the same time and I believe most opposition pertains to the top down approach. In this case we would be talking about enforced gender composition of corporate executives.

While you may disagree with business jobs in general, I think it is outside the scope of the discussion, and we should focus on corporate executives in general.

I would state that outside of confirmed scientific analysis, we should not create biases in hiring practices that have no proven claims. For instance, race, gender, culture, appearance or other things which have not been proven should be disregarded. Basically I am practicing positivism, in that, until it is proven, I can say nothing about it and i disregard it. Gender has not been proven to have any particular effect, so I disregard it as a factor until I do have information on that subject.

Bottom-up involves eliminating psychological and cultural bias against women being in authoritative positions. Top-down approach involves enacting temporary legislation that limits the power of men in favour of women, possibly for a period of five years and then dropping the law (sunset clause).