Gender, competition & boardrooms

Stuart Wheeler's claim that women are not competitive enough to get into company boardrooms has led to accusations of sexism. Such moralistic bleating, however, distracts us from some interesting issues.

The first is: what's the link between competitiveness and success in business? This does seem to be positive: people who play sports tend to go on to earn more, and many bosses (both men and women) are sporty types. It is at least possible therefore that, insofar as women are less competitive than men, they will be under-represented in boardrooms.

However, it's not clear whether this is the fault of women or of companies' selection processes. The link between an individual's sportiness and economic success might exist for healthy reasons: sporty people get on well in teams, and have high self-motivation. But experiments show (pdf) that sporty types are also more likely to engage in envious anti-social behaviour. This suggests that competitive people might rise to the top not because they have desirable characteristics, but because they are more likely to trample over others. It's not obvious that it's efficient for companies to reward such behaviour.

So far, I've assumed that women are indeed less competitive than men. What's the evidence for this? It's certainly true that women are under-represented along top chess and bridge players, to take Mr Wheeler's examples. But it's not obvious we should infer much from the far tail of a distribution - just as we shouldn't put weight upon the single data point that is Clare Gerada's mum.

We do, though, have some scientific evidence here. This suggests that women - on average! - perform less well than men under competitive pressure, and prefer (pdf) less competitive (pdf) pay structures.

However, this difference might be endogenous. It might result not from innate differences between men and women, but from the genders being primed to conform to their stereotypes. Evidence for this is:

- Girls from single-sex schools tend to be more competitive, and to choose more "masculine" subjects than girls from mixed schools. This could be because mixed schools make girls more aware of their gender than do single-sex schools. In depicting the girls of St Trinians as criminal Amazonians, Ronald Searle had a point.

- When women are reminded (pdf) of their gender, they tend to be less competitive than when they are not.

- In matrilineal societies, it is women (pdf) rather than men who are more competitive.

From this perspective, Mr Wheeler is committing the fundamental attribution error. He seems to be attributing women's lack of competitiveness to individual dispositions, when it might instead be due to societal forces, such as gender stereotypes. Because of this, he seems to be blaming the victim; he's attributing women's under-representation on boards to their own failings, rather than societal ones.

In doing this, he is being not so much sexist as characteristically right-wing. Just as the right blame the poor for their poverty by citing fecklessness and idleness, so they blame women for their lack of economic success. The error is the same.

Another thing: in saying all this, I'm not suggesting that a lack of competitiveness is the only reason for women's under-representation on boards.

Yet another thing: as a Marxist, I have no dog in this fight. I couldn't give a toss what shysters, exploiters and rent-seekers have in their trousers. 

Comments

[FromArseToElbow]

There's something missing. Possibly a gratuitous St Trinian's upper-sixth photo.

[Valerie Keefe]

"Yet another thing: as a Marxist, I have no dog in this fight. I couldn't give a toss what shysters, exploiters and rent-seekers have in their trousers."

A cissexist Marxist, apparently.

[curt doolittle]

I think we know the answer and have known the answer for years:
1) the distribution of IQ at 130 or higher, which is common threshold in CEO's and board members, and necessary for marginally competitive advantage means that executive participation by women will max at around 30%. Nature does not produce an equivalent number of marginally different women.
2) board membership is not fun. It is largely hard work. The material is quantitative. And decisions are legal, funancial, political, factional and risky. Appeals to empathy or sympathy are considered rightly to be attemts at deception. Board members usually have little information and what they do have they must treat skepyically. Consensus can be difficult and intractable.
3) Women will not as willingly play the cost of maintaining unpleasant, argumentative factional loyalty as often or as well as men, so they are percieved as less trustworthy partners on a team. Those that do are paired with men they agree with. And that combination seems to be powerful.
4) more men prefer to specialize in abstract rules, and devote their time to one specialization. So more men tend to master what organizations value.

Free from nevessary domestic toil, women dominate the middle of the economy and men the margins, and assortive mating reinforces that distribution. There is no chance it will change and if it did, those companies operation by existing means would rapidly dominate those with less meritocratic orders.

We are only equal under the law in the resolution of disputes over property and even then not universally so - as males will attest in family court

But we are not equal in ability. Equal in value to others. Equal in status ( mating potential). Nor equal in value to mankind.

Equality is achieveable in kinship matters, but not commercial relations. And commerce under individualism is not kinship outside of a homogenous city state.

Just how it is and must be.

[SteveH]

We shouldn't be surprised that a psychotic, greed driven system rewards psychotic greed driven people.

"board membership is not fun"

This made me roar with laughter.

[BenSix]

I don't understand why Typepad, which costs money, lets through so much spam but Wordpress, which is free, is good at blocking it. You'd expect a private club to employ more and better bouncers than a local boozer.

It does look neater, though.

[redpesto]

@Valerie Martin:

Transgender people are perfectly capable of being "shysters, exploiters and rent-seekers" alongside the cis-gendered.

[Frances Coppola]

Shorter Curt Doolittle:

1) Women are dim
2) Women don't like hard work
3) Women are a soft touch
4) Women don't concentrate on anything long enough to become expert in it

Summary:

Women are mediocre.

Nice.

[emma]

curt doolittle's comment was a nice long list of assumptions dressed up as an argument.