No, I am not trying to promote feminism or spread any other stupid pro-women propaganda. In the most cases, articles like “A magnificent woman vs. a silly little man” seem to me desperately vain, usually written by a poor man-hater, and basically humiliating the idea of genuine feminism.
Recently, however, I ran across a fascinating article by Paul Farrell, a MarketWatch columnist, where he mockingly (as it seemed to me that time) discussed a best-seller “The End of Men and Rise of Women” by Hanna Rosin where she emphasizes the rise of females in terms of money, education, employment and power. "Warning guys, this is the last gasp of your male-dominated patriarchy.” - he says. Is there actually anything macho men should be afraid of? I will underline the most relevant points.
1. Macho men are
undermining their own future by defending conservative patriarchy
This cultural conflict reveals how men are their own worst enemy, sabotaging their future. Look beyond the so-called “war on women” rhetoric in the political arena where men fight to control women and women’s issues. Statistically they’re out of touch with most Americans. Fighting a losing battle. But look deeper into the brains of these male politicians. They’re frightened little boys who feel threatened at a deep subconscious gut level. So they react, double down, fight harder to go back to an old familiar power structure where Old Guys Rule, controlling women’s reproductive rights and more.
There is no way to come back though. Why? Because a huge cultural tidal wave is sweeping both men and women in its historic path.
Yes, “men are losing their grip ... patriarchy is crumbling ... we are reaching ‘the end of 200,000 years of human history ... the beginning of a new era’ in which women, and womanly skills and traits, are on the rise.” It is time men wake up to the power shift. No one can stop this historic shift, for the new economy just keeps empowering more women, preparing them for the future. Wake up guys ... before it’s too late for you ... for America.
2. Changing job needs
are empowering women and smoothing out the playing field
Men raised in macho cultures with traditional values feel even more threatened as women gain equality and power. As Homans put it in the Times: “The end of men is really the end of a manufacturing-based economy.” Six million lost jobs since 2000, mostly men, creating a vacuum. As a result, “a new matriarchy is emerging: For the first time in history, the global economy is becoming a place where women are finding more success than men ... run by young, ambitious, capable women ... taking matters into their own hands.”
Don't take politics into account, this is the “new service economy, which doesn’t care about physical strength,” demanding skills that “come easily to women.” Our educational system is preparing a new generation of women leaders: “Today 50% more women get college degrees, so even if fewer women are at the top, they are beginning to dominate professions like accounting, financial management, optometry, dermatology, forensic pathology and veterinary practices.”
3. More women are
gaining influential positions across the Globe
Last year Fortune magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Women” revealed that when the list was launched in 1998 there were only two women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Today, there are 19 women CEOs, at giants like IBM, Pepsico, Xerox, Kraft and DuPont. Plus “more women wield more power than at any point in history,” including many “guiding the future of the global economy,” like IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. Thus, what's better about women?
4. Women's brain is
naturally disposed to long-term strategic vision
The female brain is designed better than the male one. Wall Street, Corporate America and Silicon Valley’s social-media commandos all think short term, discounting to zero longer-term social costs, like climate change and resource depletion, while ignoring reality, that we’re living on a planet incapable of feeding the 10 billion predicted within a generation
Grantham predicted a global crash back in 2006. Now he warns of a possible 50% market collapse by 2016. Till then, the Fed’s misguided cheap-money policies will just keep pushing the S&P500 to 2,250. Why? The short-term thinking brains of our male-dominated capitalist world (closing process, quarterly earnings, annual bonuses) are not psychologically wired to solve the world’s bigger long-term problems.
5. There are getting
more female legislators across the world, as women think better
Yes, the trend is gaining popularity accross the world. In “The Case for Optimism” about our future, Bill Clinton’s Time magazine feature a couple years ago, he said the “world is getting better all the time,” citing five ways, including technology, health care, green energy. His fourth key: “Women Rule.” Worldwide, women now make up 20% of elected legislators, almost double 15 years ago: “This is good news, not only for the individuals themselves but also for entire societies.” Why? “It’s been proven that women tend to reinvest economic gains back into their families and communities more than men do.” Men are narcissistic. Yes, women not only think different from men, they think better.
6. Women are the new
leaders in a Battle for The Future
While many men still resist, others are teaming up with women, equals working together. Here is Clinton’s fifth reason for optimism: “Justice, The Fight for the Future.” He knows “the future has never had a big enough constituency.” But things are changing, rapidly, because the survival of the planet requires new thinking, new strategies. Women get it. They are taking the lead. Clinton says we must “create a whole different mind-set. We are in a pitched battle between the present array of resources and attitudes and the future struggling to be born.”
It all might have seemed exaggerated, given the fact that the author only criticizes men without describing any factual advantage over men. However, praising women is justifyable. Such famous periodicals, as Times and Bloomberg already wrote a lot about how hostile banks and stock-markets are towards women. Thus, no wonder women are trying their best to establish themselves in these sectors.
For instance, during the last decade Merrill Lynch was confronted with sex-discrimination claims from over 1000 women, and Allison Schieffelin, a former bond saleswoman, filed a gender-bias suit against Morgan Stanley - a case later settled for $54 million. Yet not a lot has improved for women in the financial services industry.
Despite the fact that women tend to win this kind of legal cases, there is still a tendency for female employees to leave their "money-linked" jobs, while discrimination and gender-bias might not be the most important reasons. The thing is that both banking and trading sectors are connected with a huge degree of emotional tension and stress, which are hard to stand for the majority of women and make them commit huge errors.
In 2012, as you remember, public attention was attracted by resignation of Ina Drew, the chief investment officer of American giant JPMorgan Chase, following the bank’s $6 billion loss.
Does it all mean women are better stay away from the financial sector? There were researches suggesting the opposite. Stock exchanges are in high need of women. Times magazine considers that in her day Drew was said to be one of the most skilled female traders on Wall Street — which, sadly, is just a drop in the ocean.
The financial services industry in general and trading in particular are unfortunately a testosterone-fueled culture, one that could use a considered and ongoing rejiggering of the gender balance, as Times suggests. This is not only because we live in the 21st century, when everyone is proclaiming feminism and emancipation, and these kinds of hiring biases and glass ceilings (intentional or not) are wrong and possibly illegal, but it could be possible to avoid many trading debacles if more women were making the decisions. It is the only conclusion you can draw from the seminal research Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence and Commons Stock Investment fulfilled by famous behavioral economists Terrence Odean and Brad Barber.
For their 2001 study, which is still up-to-date, the authors analyzed account data for more 35,000 households at a large discount brokerage, looking at the common stock investments of men and women from February 1991 through January 1997. Their key discoveries proved that men on average traded 45% more frequently than women, and that hyperactive trading reduced their net returns by 2.65 percentage points a year, compared to 1.72 percentage points for women. In other words, men were on average worse stock traders than women.
To be sure, individual investors, the majority of whom can be called amateurs, can hardly be compared with professional traders. However, if we dare to compare, the advantage in such a comparison would likely go to the folks at home. Why? To quote, Odean and Barber: “We believe there is a simple and powerful explanation for high levels of trading on financial markets: overconfidence.”
That is, the more that people overestimate their ability, knowledge and future prospects (what behavioral economists mean when they use the term “overconfidence”) the more likely those people are to take action based on their beliefs. Men, who have been shown in studies to be more confident than women when it comes to financial matters, are therefore more likely to trade—and more likely to hurt themselves. Now you can imagine, to what extent professional traders are overconfident.
It’s important to keep in mind, however, that a relative lack of confidence about financial matters does not actually mean that women are less knowledgable about the subject, or less able to succeed in the field. There are more recent studies supporting the view expressed by Odean and Barber: that men's overconfidence hurts them as investors, or that women were more successful at trading stocks during the financial crisis.
Thus, when will the glass ceiling be finally broken? The discussion is still open.
