If you want real profound gender diversity at company boards, think of nominating housemothers

Sir, Daniel Thomas discusses the issue of having more women on corporate boards “Shareholders can do more to bring about boardroom diversity”, June 2.

More than a decade ago, as an Executive Director at the World Bank, I told my colleagues “We all have, more or less, quite similar backgrounds. If we were by means of a lottery substitute a plumber and a nurse, for two of us directors at the board, I am sure we would have a much wiser board”. I do not remember what my colleagues replied… or if they did.

Now, hearing the currently so frequent demand for more gender diversification, I feel the same. Having women educated similarly to the men they are to substitute for, brings much less diversity into the boardroom than what could be expected. 

If you want deeper meaning gender diversification, then invite housemothers to work some hours as board directors. The challenges mothers have to confront in their daily routines are way often much harder and much different from those that their then men board colleagues face.

Also, as an economist, to guarantee more gender income equality, start by arguing for parents, most usually women, to be remunerated for their socially so important work of taking care of their children or elderly. Unfortunately housemothers, just as the unemployed, do not have unions to take care of their interests. 

@PerKurowski

Does anyone see the grey showing on the roots of Lucy Kellaway’s hair or the smear of icing sugar on her leg? Not me!

Sir, you know I am usually a great admirer of Lucy Kellaway’s writings, but, this time, I think she’s got it wrong. “High heels and boxing gloves: a portrait of women at work” March 21

Kellaway writes: “If a company wants to show that it really values women and wants to prioritise action in the gender equality landscape, it will show pictures of them in which they don’t always look cool or gorgeous. They just look like professional women at work.”

Hold it there, my wife is a great lawyer, and she has never ever expressed to me any concerns about any type of discrimination based on gender; if anything she has lately felt, ever so slightly, more burdened by age. But, no matter how she looked at work (always gorgeous of course), she would always, no exceptions, prefer to be depicted as if not at work.

And we men are instinctive survivors. We know perfectly well we should never ever take photos of any woman, including Lucy Kellaway, with “grey showing on the roots of hair and a smear of icing sugar on leg”.

PS. The following is absolutely no opinion, especially not mine; its just a question:

Is there anything as deflationary as women willing to work for less? If women did not work, and stayed home to binge on over 100 episodes shows, then unemployment rate would be lower, salaries higher, and so central banks would get the higher inflation they desire and so allow us higher interest rates, and so we could all have a chance to earn a bit on our savings to cover for our retirements. Matching life styles with the economies is always challenging… so they say.

@PerKurowski ©

Basel’s risk-weighted capital requirements for banks, is a macro-imprudential tool which blows financial bubbles.

Sir, I refer to Wolfgang Münchau’s “What central banks should do with bubbles” July 14.

My answer would be for central banks to make sure that if they must blow, when they blow, it is not for them to take over the role of the markets by directing their winds to where they, in the short term, perceive it to be safer.

We know that financial bubbles never ever inflate with air perceived as risky, but always with air that pays more than what its perceived absolute-safety would seem to validate. In this respect the best bubble inflator ever, must be the current capital requirements for banks which allow banks to earn higher risk adjusted returns on equity on what is perceived as absolutely safe.

Holy mo! What a dangerous macro-prudential tool that is.

Münchau also references bank´s “antisocial and unethical behavior” and so I would also like to ask the following:

What if the capital requirements for banks discriminated against gays, the sick, women or black persons? Would that not be deemed as an “antisocial and unethical behavior”? 

Of course! And all hell would brake lose!

And so why is it that regulators can discriminate in favor of the infallible those who are already favored by being perceived as that, and against “the risky” those who are already being discriminated against by being perceived risky… and nobody cares.