Accountancy magazine misses the point on gender equality
Posted by Christie Malry on February 7, 2011 at 9:04 am
In the February issue of Accountancy magazine, there's an article in the Institute pages about the ICAEW's submission to the government's investigation into the lack of women in boardrooms.
Now, there are some obvious, bad reasons why women aren't able to get onto company boards. Maybe they aren't part of the "old boys" network. Or perhaps they're felt to not fit in with the other old, mostly white, men who are already on the board. We already have laws that should eliminate this sort of unacceptable discrimination.
In addition to these, there are also some sensible reasons why women aren't getting onto boards. Perhaps they don't want to. Or maybe it's down to taking a break to have children, which either disrupts their career progression or delays it while their male colleagues pull ahead. It's a fair question whether there are changes that can be made to reduce the impact of some of these factors.
It's a delicate subject which requires delicate handling. So the choice of photograph to accompany the article is really very unfortunate. They seem to have picked gone for a picture of a girl with the prettiest face and largest norks they can find. Yes, she is a girl; she looks like she's about 20 years old. And, rather than wearing the traditional office attire that's required of men - well starched shirt with double cuff shirt, windsor-knot tie, and sober suit - she seems to be wearing some sort of t-shirt.
There are some serious issues to be debated here. But the choice of picture completely trivialises the issue. All it does is reinforce the stereotype that women on boards are there to provide some sort of eye candy for lecherous old men. Accountancy magazine really does need to do a lot better.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Helen, Christie Malry. Christie Malry said: New blog post: Accountancy magazine misses the point on gender equality http://bit.ly/f7ANPd [...]