Women were first admitted to the House of Lords in 1958. It is amazing that it took so long and yet now women are very much to the forefront of the business of the Lords. In fact, I think I can say that the House is the most egalitarian of the institutions I have worked in, both in terms of numbers and attitude. Attitude is especially important. There is absolutely no sense of difference in the House between the respect, role and friendship of the men and women. It is most refreshing. The current Speaker is Baroness D’Souza, her predecessor Baroness Hayman. Baroness Royall is shadow Leader of the Lords; there are women peers distinguished by achievement in sport, charity, education, science, law and medicine, and they form about 25% of the House. Not enough, but not bad compared with industry and some professions.
I was prompted to write this after reading this morning that President Obama has voiced disapproval of US golf clubs which restrict membership to men. He is of course right because a golf club is not just about playing golf, but about business, networking and prestige. We have an issue in this country about the Pall Mall clubs. There are a few that are for one sex only, which is fine as long as they are purely social. But take as an example of one that was not, the Oxford & Cambridge Club. At a time when the two universities were going completely co-ed, and striving to give the message that women students were treated equally with men, the O&C Club in the 1990s resolutely stuck to a men only policy, and women associate members, whether Oxbridge graduates or female relatives of members, were relegated to the basement and told to stay there. The protest against this policy culminated in the resignation from the club of both vice-chancellors and nearly every head of the colleges in both universities, but it took from start to finish several years to get the club to change its rules. If its essence was graduation from Oxford and Cambridge, and those two universities treated men and women the same, then the club could do no less.
The outstanding issue of lack of balance is women on the boards of companies. Only 14% of places on the FTSE boards are held by women. Headhunters, often themselves women, advise that unless one has extensive experience in business, one cannot aspire to a non-exec position. Women’s roles, which they hold in great numbers, in running public organisations, hospitals etc. with budgets of billions, count for nothing in the competition. Not that one would want to do it, but the female perspective in business would improve its success, I venture.
Look at what happens when they get into those positions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/27/women-bankers-prone-to-risk-taking
The report claims that the presence of women in senior roles across the German banking sector was a contributing factor to the banking crash, alongside the bonus culture and lack of sufficient regulation.
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Why aren’t you owning up to the mess you’ve made?
It is refreshing to be informed inferrably
that the High Academic Architects, Sculptors and “Educators” of our Governancialists,
{and of our
(well, of The Queen’s)
Royal Bank of Scotland,
the entire boardroom of which literally “threatened” to emigrate to some poor Third World Country [where their accumulated capitals combined could effectively “buy” the obedience and ‘loyalty’ of the establishment & the government-in-power there]
if Britain tried in any way to reduce or cap their prevailing, and ‘improvingly’ several-times over-bloated, Salaries+Bonuses+Pensions
‘command-economical’
uptrending Self-Handouts};
are less “indispensable” than those they “educationally & economicly” parented (qua alma matered) !
Clearly the best way to overcome this is to appoint women to senior positions, to the required 50% for ‘equality’ because of their gender, and not on merit.
That will solve the problem, and won’t cause these women to feel inferior to possibly better qualified male colleagues in any way.
Oh no wait.
Boys’ Clubs
Clubs full stop. Women or no women it is merely the best club in London, and should be abolished, reinstated as a museum of legislatures round the world.
I thought this was going to turn into a post on why women don’t row in the Boat Race, given that you wrote it about the time some idiot decided to interrupt this year’s event.
The Lords is still much more egalitarian, not just when it comes to gender but in other respects such as race, than many organisations in this country.
I was wondering, how many female MPs were there in the ’50s? I suspect that if there had been far more of them, and earlier, women would have been admitted to the Lords sooner too. It should have happened before 1958, but that isn’t really the Lords’ fault, but rather a reflection of wider attitudes at the time.
I would stay very quiet about the amount of women in both Houses if I were you. Look what has happened over the years since the heavy scent of oestrogen has put the male participants off kilter and left them floundering like fish out of water. The downfall of the UK, as a result of the over zealous female lobby, is a disgrace to any country whose men have failed to counter it. Clegg being a prime example of the terrified male bitten by the chomping faces of strident airhead women.
All you have to do is look and listen to most of them and the embarassment is suffocating. We don’t have the likes of a Miss Suu Kyi batting on our behalf. All we have is a bunch of selected placements put in there to fulfill the ludicrous politically correct muppets, banging on number ten relentlessly with their asinine requirements and counterfeit put downs.
That’s all they know about and want, the easy rider, straight into the front seat, carried out on super triviality. Whilst the men are left to their devices in the war games of torture and betrayal of our moral beliefs. What else is their to do? Women placements didn’t do any good in the Blair administration did it? They simply sucked up and fanned his ignorant, avaricious vanity. He and Straw need to be put in the dock.
The heart can only sink when one of the ‘in crowd’ feels they did us all a favour and wants to crow with this nonsense. And all without the public backing. Ha, for democracy in this land of the free.
Pllleeease!
We need some good strong leaders, either sex will do, but, just one would be a bonanza in this spent force. But the back room boys are afraid of real leadership aren’t they? They like the ones they’ve fine tuned from inception.
Perhaps real leadership means we won’t need to be looking to the ‘USA’ for constant approval and reassurance. And for them to give snaction of their abuse and humiliation of our country men. What a farce.
I had to hang my head in shame when, this morning, Europe decided we don’t have the wherewithall to try our own criminals within this entire Union. And the pretense that the USA is a civilized country in order to bring retribution is the horror of all horrors.
Not only have these Human Rights Courts made themselves ridiculous, they have betrayed humanity and the cause of it world wide. That is the result of too many women in leadership roles.
These Abu’s should never have been in Europe or the UK in the first place. And the cause of it, is too many women in roles they are ill equipped to handle or understand on our behalf. We are being run by ignoramuses.
Two distinct kinds of constructive “leader” are needed,
first is the “Commander” and “Governor” kind, in every kind of Workplace.
second is the “Exemplar” and “Method III” kind, in every kind of Lifeplace.
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Maude sounds off well from her life-heart;
so Maude, could you please offer some Lifeplace-leaderful book that one could affordably follow ?
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personally I have to hobble along ‘outside the pale’
because there are no exemplary leaders visible and affordably-available for the lifeplace I am confined to (qua someone with a “low-income & poor-lifestyle”)
and the new local city physical fitness centre
(actually megalo-boastfully registered and publicised as the
“Plymouth Life Centre”)
is unplanned or otherwise unable to meet my needs as an impaired-member
and it has a big problem being two-way communicative with and positively-helpful to its individual members, and to ‘sub-communities’, ‘categories’ or ‘levels’, of members and of genericly-affordable holistic human-life needs.
so have just had to order imitable DVDs for “gentle yoga and pilates for beginners”
which I must do in secret at home, the Plymouth Life Centre, in the form of its Company Rules which one of its Gym leaders advised me about, having banned them from being watched and followed therein.
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“Clubs” whether by or for Boys, Girls, or Brit-Middle-Class-Personal-Beauty & Olympic-Fame Seekers, are yet to become fit for everyone’s down to earth Human-Life-Purpose.