Mommy! My Golden Parachute is Broken!

I will just say from the start that I always tend to cringe whenever I read an article that starts with something like this:

"Let me begin with the caveats: I like men."

Don't get me wrong -- it’s not a horrible awful no good very bad article -- there are some good assessments and important points, like:

“. . . as the financial debacle unfolds, I can't help noticing that all the perpetrators of the greatest economic mess in eight decades are, well, men. Specifically, they are rich, white, middle-aged guys, same as the ones who brought us Watergate in the 1970s, the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s and, presumably, the fall of Rome.”

“Although the Y-chromosome is undeniably overrepresented along all tiers of finance, it is particularly overrepresented at the highest levels of power and in those sectors most deeply implicated in the current crisis. A Catalyst Research study last year found that women make up almost 60 percent of the workforce at Fortune 500 finance and insurance companies but account for only 17.9 percent of corporate officer positions and none of the chief executive positions.”

I don’t know exactly when I started getting that little “uh-oh” feeling about this article, but I do know when the “uh-oh” turned into an “oh no”.

It was when I read this part:

“We need women in leadership positions not only because they can manage as well as men but because they manage differently than men; because they tend -- over time and in the aggregate -- to make different kinds of decisions and to accept and avoid different kinds of risk. We need women who will say no to bad decisions based on male-dominated rivalries and clubby golf course confidences. We need women to blow the whistle when risks explode and to challenge the presumptions that too many men, clustered too closely together and sharing a common worldview, can easily indulge." (emp. mine)

First sentence, not so bad, but as the paragraph commenced, I found myself feeling all oh-no-ish. When I considered what set off my bells, I found that my response was not exactly simple:

First of all, I’ve never been a fan of the Venusian-Women/Martian-Men binary.

Yeah, sure, there actually might be some innate, hormonally-driven differences between those in biologically male bodies and those in biologically female bodies, but in my opinion, any such differences are so entangled with cultural entrainment that we will probably never truly know what’s what in that regard – so I always chafe when people bring up shit like University studies that “prove” that men are bigger risk-takers because (wait for it!) -- It’s the testosterone, stupid.

And secondly -- of course we need women who will say no and who will blow whistles . . . . . but we need that when anyone is making bad decisions -- not just men.

But that isn’t my biggest beef.

My biggest beef is that, if women are placed in positions of power so that they can say no to bad decisions based on male-dominated rivalries and blow the whistle when testosterone-driven risks explode, this, in my humble opinion, is just another casting of women in the Mommy role.

"Oh, did the boys make a mess again? Well hustle right in there, little lady, and clean it up!"

The notion of women as the mop-up crew or hall-monitor squad for men who just can’t help themselves when too many of them get packed into a boardroom does not, in my view, change diddly-shit about Patriarchy – it puts women right back into the role of the Eternal Maternal, while simultaneously infantilizing men.

I see institutionalized oppression, at its core, as a skewed distribution of power and responsibility (the group on top gets all the power, while the group on the bottom gets all the responsibility/consequences), and because of this, I don’t believe that putting more women in power will, by itself, shatter institutionalized sexism/misogyny.

In my view, in order for any system to be balanced, the responsibility/consequence has to live where the power is, and vice-versa.

That would mean that men step up and accept responsibility for the consequences of the power they’ve wielded for millennia, in addition to moving the fuck over when women step up to claim their share of the power (for which they’ve suffered the consequences for millennia, anyway).
The closing line of the article --

"As the constant wail from Wall Street should remind us, diversity isn't just nice in theory. It makes for better business."

-- brings to my mind the picture of the Big Baby Men crying for Mommy, who will put things right because of her innate ability to nurture and protect.

In other words: Same old, same old. No thanks.