One of the most enduring and, to me, infuriating tropes thrown
up by the financial crisis of 2008 is that the crash might not have
happened if Lehman Brothers had been “Lehman sisters”. The quip, which
has been thrown around by the likes of IMF chief Christine Lagarde,
reflects a kind of lazy, sugar-and-spice gender essentialism that sets
my teeth on edge. More importantly, it reduces analysis of economic and
corporate skulduggery to individual characteristics rather than the
pressures that are built into the structures of capitalist systems to
produce maximum returns in the shortest possible time. So the joke is
not only a tedious slice of benevolent sexism, it also misdirects the
finger of blame.
There is little scientific doubt that the typical man is more prone
to risk-taking and competitive impulses than the typical woman, and
testosterone alone can account for at least some of that difference.
However, the people who are selected to spin the roulette wheels of
international finance are anything but typical. People who reach
influential positions in corporations do so because they have the
ruthless personality, mindset and talent (if that word is appropriate)
to meet the demands of their employers. It might be slightly easier to
find men like that, but this does not mean women appointed to such roles
would behave any differently.
Economic observers typically attribute the seeds of the 2008 crisis
to a combination of reckless risk-taking and outright corruption - most
notably in the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Just as
risk-taking has been laid at the door of masculinity, so too has
corruption. Women, so the theory goes, are simply more honest than men.
Back in 1999, the World Bank conducted a major study into political
governance which suggested women are more trustworthy and
public-spirited than men, and found that the greater the representation
of women in parliaments around the world, the lower the level of
corruption.
In some parts of the world this has been applied as a systematic
policy. Women-only traffic police units have been introduced in Mexico
City to cut bribery. A similar experiment in Lima, Peru has reported
mixed results over the past 15 years. The gender effect has been quoted
regularly in international anti-corruption policies of bodies like the
UN. But is it true?
A fascinating academic paper published this week suggests that,
unsurprisingly, it’s a bit more complicated. Political scientists Justin
Esarey and Gina Chirillo dug deeper into the data and found strong
evidence that a gender gap in corruption-related attitudes and
behaviours is indeed present in democracies, but the gap is weaker or
non-existent in autocracies.
They argue that women have stronger incentives to adapt to political
norms because of the risks created by gender discrimination - under
patriarchal systems, women are subject to greater social pressure to
adhere to prevailing social expectations. Women, they say, will be
resistant to corruption in places where it is already culturally and
institutionally stigmatised, but behave identically to men where such
practices are simply a normal part of doing business, or even expected.
This is in keeping with a lot of psychological research, which has found
that women are more cautious or reluctant to behave dishonestly when
they know they are being observed or if there is a risk of punishment,
but just as prone to mischief if they think they can get away with it.
The new research suggests that it is not the case that bringing more
women into politics reduces corruption. Instead, the process of
democratisation reduces corruption and simultaneously helps to bring
women into politics. (I hope it goes without saying that bringing more
women into politics remains an urgent and necessary goal for many, many
other reasons.) By extension, it is a reasonable assumption that
bringing more women into the boardrooms and trading floors of
multinational finance would, on its own, be entirely ineffective at
preventing future scandals.
There is one final reason why we should be wary of the Lehman Sisters
logic. Underpinning it is the belief that men are inherent risk-takers
or aggressive traders, and women are more naturally prone to long-term
thinking or empathic and pro-social behaviour. This is the exact same
logic used by sexist employers to place men in high-risk, high-returns
positions and women in PR and personnel. This is not only scientifically
bogus, it is politically damaging. Those of us who believe that
people’s lives should not be mapped out by their gender would do well to
avoid the exact same mistake.
By arrangement with the Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment