Positive discrimination: only the best for the board (you can quota me on this one!)

2011: A corporation near you

The majority of people do not believe that gender or race is more important than merit when it comes to getting a top job within the lofty heights of a corporate company. The majority of people* believe that merit is the name of the game. Contrary to what is often casually asserted, the people who don't believe purely in merit are not those people who believe in positive discrimination, but rather, the people who are sexist, racist, homo/transphobic, or ableist. Why? The answer is one that seems blindingly obvious: if pure considerations of merit were behind promotions to top positions, demographic distributions across company boards would be roughly representative. But they aren't, and more, they aren't really getting any better. The 'Women on Boards' review, released today by Lord Davies (link below), found some pretty damning statistics on the question of women's participation on boards in FTSE 100 companies, but stopped short of recommending quotas, suggesting rather that companies take active steps to reach mountainous targets such as 25% female representation on boards by 2015.

In fact, his recommendations seem quite good, but as Julia Finch pointed out in Women directors: why I've changed my mind, these are 'recommendations' to the same companies who are also made 'recommendations' to about acting ethically, regulating trade fairly, not causing financial crises, not fucking people over generally, and so on. That kind of speaks for itself.

On the topic of women on boards, there are several oft cited reasons why we have not yet reached gender-balance. Number one, company boards aren't representative because female candidates are invariably less good than male candidates. If women candidates are chosen who are less good than the male candidates they are up against, it is patronising to women, unfair to men, and bad for business overall. Number two, company boards aren't representative because feminism only started forty or fifty years ago, and it will take a while for women growing up during the golden era of the second wave to filter their way through to the top jobs. Number three, women don't get the top jobs because they don't really want them as much as men do. Women would rather leave to raise families, spending time on greater, purer pursuits than the mindless accumulation of empty, soulless, capitalist money and power. Women just don't like being CEO's! Everyone's a winner!

On this first point, on occasions when I have spoken to professional women about, for example, introducing quotas for women in top positions, the overwhelming response has been that it would not only be wrong but that it would create an unpleasant atmosphere within companies if it were known that a female candidate had been promoted to fulfill a quota, rather than on her own merit. Women I have spoken to, quite fairly, want to feel that they have climbed the corporate ladder by themselves, because of their own achievements, rather than because of some political drive to introduce equalities legislation. I understand this feeling. Nobody wants to get a job they don't deserve. Yet implicit in this argument is the premise that a quota for women would inevitably sometimes result in better men being passed over for inferior women.

Well, yes. Where there are quotas for female promotion and inclusion at higher levels, it is at least feasible that sometimes a more qualified man will lose out to a less qualified woman who has to be promoted because of the quota. But right now more qualified women are losing out to less qualified men, to the point where only 12.5% of FTSE-100 directors are women, where 50% of FTSE companies do not have even one woman on their board , and where there has been little improvement on this for years. We either have to argue that this represents only considerations of merit, and that men are just much, much better than women (sometimes known as misogyny), or we have to admit that the playing field isn't level, that it isn't getting better by itself, and that we are not going to have approximate equality unless some action is taken to get women onto boards. I for one find it highly unlikely that a 30-40% quota for women on company boards will very often lead to anti-male discrimination, simply because I do not believe that male candidates are better than female candidates. To my mind, if such a quota were enforced it would more often than not simply result in promotions for the equally-qualified women candidates who currently don't get promoted. Because currently the system is sexist, you know?

This brings us to the second argument, above. It's often argued that as girls now do better than boys at school, and that as half, if not more, of university graduates are now women, it will just be a matter of time until those proportions even out with a roughly equal spread at the top. Arguably, the forty years or so since the second wave are not long enough for women growing up in the 70s to have reached company boards. Touching as the faith in feminism's power of those who argue this is, it would surely only apply if feminism had already been completely successful. Though equal rights legislation is much improved, it is by no means perfect, and sexism is by no means gone. All people, to some extent, have internalised the norms of a society which has certain preconceptions about roles for men and roles for women. One only needs to watch The Apprentice, source of all my knowledge about business, to see that the qualities which seen to be apt for business are most often masculine ones, and only seen as such in male-bodied people. Confidence, drive and intelligence in men are read as aggressiveness, coldness and over-opinionatedness in women. Whilst much can be done socio-culturally in order to combat such ideas, it seems to me to be rather putting the cart before the horse to say that as feminism progresses and attitudes change women will get through to the top ranks. Rather, women need to be there to effect the change, and positive discrimination, to my mind, is the only way that this will genuinely happen.

On to the third point. Often this argument about most women just not wanting to give up their lives to moneymaking is seen on Comment is free, and other such reputable forums for debate. Of course, any essentialism about women's and men's intrinsic natures is pretty objectionable, and it's all rather convenient that women are supposed to happen not to want to succeed in the same way that men want to, when they currently aren't succeeding in that way. This is the point where the old 'children' chestnut gets brought in - if women will insist on taking time off to have babies and look after them and such like, how is it fair that they can be at the same corporate level as a man who hasn't done so? Any logic behind the notion that extending paternity leave to be equal with maternity leave will hurt the economy is mindbogglingly absent, unless it is assumed that men will always have higher positions than women. Though women, for obvious reasons, have to do the actual birth, there is no reason that childcare should not be shared equally, and indeed, the advantages men will gain from legislation for a fuller fatherhood will only be balanced by the concurrent removal of discrimination against women who want to have children. Sweden has it better than us in legislating for a minimum two months paternity leave (Dads in the UK only have two weeks), and its worth pointing out that their economy has not yet collapsed in any greater way than ours has.

There is still a considerable amount of misogynist prejudice in society, both obvious and latent. Right now, what we have is discrimination overwhelmingly against women, and where there are completely fair examples of areas in which men face discrimination, it is clear that when women make up less than negligible% of top corporate jobs, a very serious prejudice still holds fast. When no progress is being made otherwise, positive discrimination needs to be enacted to right the balance. Not to tip it over to the other side, but just to even the currently uneven grounds. More problematic than the notion that a hostile atmosphere will result from this is the implication that there is not currently a hostile atmosphere where massive injustice is being doled out. Bear in mind that even if a 30-40% quota system were introduced, sometimes stronger women would still be passed over for weaker men (because 60-70% would still be on a non-quota basis, in a still sexist society). But if nothing is done to create change, little will ever change.

Incidentally, I google image searched 'women sitting in boardroom' to find a picture for this article, and it came up with, 'Did you mean 'woman sitting in boardroom'. Telling?

*I know this because I have conducted an extensive survey which involved personally speaking to the majority of people.


More to read:
- Lord Davies' report: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business-law/docs/w/11-745-women-on-boards.pdf

Who's the daddy: has Portia taken Ellen's name in vain?

This article was originally published at an awesome website called THE MOST CAKE. Click here!

The second picture of Portia and Ellen on this blog so far. Might have to start a new one dedicated solely to them.

I recently found out that our reigning celesbian married couple have now become as homo-norm as you can legally get – yes, Portia has officially taken Ellen’s name. They are now the DeGeneres’s. Doesn’t roll off the tongue, exactly. I can understand wanting to self-define in a way that reflects your married identity, but what’s wrong with Mrs. DeGeneres and Mrs. de Rossi?

According to BBC News Portia is keeping de Rossi as a professional name, to which I say – why bother changing it at all? Ellen and Portia are obviously the most famous married lesbians in the world: Portia doesn’t need to adopt ‘DeGeneres’ to define her, if you are anything like me you know and love them and the fact that they are married, presumably they know and love the fact that they are married, if she’s keeping de Rossi for half the time anyway why not just keep it full stop? Like, de Rossi is an awesome name, why get rid of it?

It’s irritating beyond belief when straight women today continue the old tradition of changing their names, blindly, as if it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Frankly, we haven’t reached the stage yet, gender equality-wise, where marriages are so equal that changing one’s name can just be a lovely custom, devoid of historical context.

Replacing your name with your partner’s implicitly supports a conception of marriage as an contract of possession – whereby the man takes the woman into his family as a nice looking bit of property. Protest as people might that they simply didn’t like their name before (my mother’s favourite justification), the fact is that assuming one’s partner’s name implies a dynamic of possessor and possessed, of one party’s control over what should be a twofold identity. The concept of the ‘head of the family’, the ‘man as provider’, and so on, really hasn’t gone away. Physical and sexual violence are still rife within marriages, and where customs uphold the sexism that feeds these inequalities, I reckon they need to go.

On the other hand, you might think that Portia and Ellen both being women alters the facts on the ground in some way. Like, if it’s lesbians it’s fine, right, because where there is no man it doesn’t matter who changes their name?

No way sailor-girl. Queer marriage is a relatively new thing, and people are still trying to shape it, and to make sense of it, and it’s not particularly clear to me that the adoption of another’s name, whatever genders you are, does anything to transgress or subvert. We’ve all experienced people insisting on viewing lesbian relationships through a straight lens: i.e. questions like ‘but, who is the man in the relationship?’ Worse, (and particularly infuriating if like me you can’t help looking femme most of the time), there’s still an assumption that the butch-er looking partner in any given lesbian couple is the dominant, manly one.

Listen, whilst my attempts at butch gender presentation can often be described as laughable, however successful they might be, I am not the man in the relationship. But neither is my (nonexistent) girlfriend the man – in my (not currently happening) relationship, there is no man: capiche? It totally doesn’t help that Portia is the ‘femme’ one and Ellen is the ‘butch’ one, and that Portia is the one changing her name, this plays right into the notion that the more masculine partner is the man.

Words are powerful, and where words characterise identities, they are doubly powerful. It’s amazing that in some countries in the world lesbian marriage is legal, and I stand up for the right of all people of all genders and sexualities to marry whomever they chose. But if we don’t keep our marriages queer, we end up assimilating into the very heterosexist dynamic that gay marriage should – if we are right to bother campaigning for it at all – transgress. And that kind of behaviour fucks me right off.

How Celebrity Endorsement and a Catchy Title Still Doesn’t Make It Appealing To Stick Diamantes On Your Waxed Pubic Area.

Definitely get this done immediately?

‘After a breakup a friend of mine Swarovski Crystaled my...ummm...precious lady. And umm...and it shined like a disco ball, and so I have a whole chapter in there about how women should vajazzle their, vajayjays....It looks like a little disco ball down there, its great....it does...and...and it’s hot pink today, for you. So that’s good.’
- Jennifer Love Hewitt, discussing her new book on ‘Lopez Tonight’.

A year or so ago a good friend sent me a Youtube clip called ‘Clitter! Its Glitter for Your Vagina!’ Featuring the unforgettable lines ‘thanks Clitter, for turning my labia into a yaybia!’ and ‘Clitter turned my yeast infection...into a jewel collection,’ the clip was an obvious yet diverting send up of those ubiquitous beauty adverts which purport to endow lifelong happiness if only women would buy into the relevant product. The clip showed deliberately crude upskirt shots of female celebrities’ crotches covered over with MS Paint-like attempts at glitter. In short, Clitter was ridiculous, and because it was ridiculous, it was quite funny.

Ironic then, that where my friends send me videos mocking the ludicrous idea of decorative glitter for the cunt, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s friends suggest she lie down and get the hot wax out. That’s right, some women in the world, in the real, substantial world, have decided that pubic diamante applications are not self-evidently nauseating but rather, sexy and fun. Clitter has actually become reality, but cunn(t)ingly retitled as ‘vajazzling’. You’ve got to hand it to Hewitt, vajazzling is a pretty clever name. Because it is a pun. It has two meanings at once, get it? Meaning number one: vajayjay, (I’m presuming that this is a word for the vagina) delineating the general area to be glitzed up. Meaning number two: jazz, like jazzy, like jazzy diamantes. Or jazzy Swarovski crystals, if you have loads of money to waste an expensive crystal collection on the area where your pubes should be.

Except, this fad has nothing to do with the vagina. Indeed, in the vajazzling clip from inane TV show ‘The Only Way is Essex’, which I hold to blame for bringing the vajazzle to British shores, the vajazzling beautician (vajazzler) explicitly warns the proto-vajazzled client (vajazzlee) that the vajazzles are not to be glued to the actual vagina (vajina?). As the Anne Summers uniform-wearing vajazzler says, ‘basically, don’t put it on your bits, basically.’ And therein lies the flaw in what is otherwise a reasonably catchy way to repackage something so banal that I still can’t believe it really exists. Hewitt et al are not really entitled to say ‘vajazzle your vajayjay!’ or whatever it is they say, because the vajazzles don’t go anywhere near your actual vajayjay. The word ‘vagina’ refers specifically to, for want of a better word, the hole that all the other bits of the vulva surround. Vajazzles explicitly don’t go on the vajayjay. They also don’t go on your clitoris, your labia minora, your labia majora, your greater and lesser vestibular glands, your vestibular bulbs, your vulval vestibule, or any of your other external genital organs. As a non-scientist, I admit I just looked up some of those names on Wikipedia. Anyway, apparently, the official name for the place that the vajazzles actually go is the ‘mons pubis’. Perhaps unfortunately for aspiring vajazzlers everywhere, ‘monspubisjazzle your mons pubis!’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

To casually subsume such a politically, sexually, and biologically complex part of women’s anatomies under the totalizing concept of ‘vagina’, or ‘hole that the man penetrates’, is utterly objectionable and highly sexist. This is a retrograde concept of female sexuality, one that overlooks the arguably much more vital role that the rest of the genitals, and more, rest of the body, play in sex and eroticism. I see the lazy conflation of the waxed pubic area with the vagina as symptomatic of the prevalence of the ‘teenaged Nuts-reader’ mentality; in viewing endless pictures of women (repackaged as ‘girls’) nude from the front on, we internalise the idea that the pubic region simply is the female genitalia, and conveniently forget that underneath all that are real, odorous, vital, wet, dry, aggressive, soft, hairy, receptive, hard, human genitals. I mean, what could be less suited to a trivialising star/rainbow/pretty butterfly decoration than genitalia? If this is intended as a way that women can affirm and identify with our own bodies, fine, but can we have something a bit less...diamante? Maybe as a way to affirm, identify, empower, etc, we could instead have cultural narratives that embrace a variety of bodies and a set of beauty regimes that are even slightly less demanding, alienating, and infantilising?

Actually, for something ostensibly presented as idiosyncratic of some modern femininities to lazily take on an ignorant, simplifying, het-male-gaze view of female genitalia really just points to a wider problem with this whole vajazzling practice. In all Hewitt’s self-denigrating talk of cute little disco balls, it is unquestioned that a prospective vajazzler will have to completely wax her cunt, thereby further relegating the female body to the realm of unthreatening object: there for male pleasure. Why the necessary full wax? Can’t I put Swarovski crystals in my massive bush, if I choose to? A liberal sprinkling and it would be like a cute little mohair disco ball down there. I’m joking, my cunt isn’t cute, and I would never decorate my pubes with crystals because a: as I’ve hinted, I think it is endlessly stupid, and b: I would hope that any prospective partner of mine would not be able to have sex for laughing if they took down my underwear and found crystals inside.

Practices like these continue the ongoing process of normalisation of a sexist-ualised culture which simply expects women to conform to pornographic standards. It is well documented that women often self-objectify, how could we not when we receive constant cultural conditioning telling us that even if we don’t want to attract men, we should still shave/wax our legs, armpits, cunts, arms, eyebrows, moustaches, we should still wear clothes that are uncomfortable, impractical and constricting, we should still wear shoes that hurt and prevent us from walking, we should still diet until we are stick thin, still always wear full make up before leaving the house, still straighten or curl or dye our hair, still refrain from making ourselves strong and fit, and what’s more, we should do all these things for ourselves, because we like to do them? Sorry, but I can recognise bullshit when I hear it.

It is not just that monspubisjazzling is silly, even though it is. It is also self-othering and self-trivialising in the way that all needless ‘beauty’ practices are. First and foremost women are human subjects, and even if we sometimes take up ornamental practices, we should not reduce ourselves to them. The general genital region is culturally significant, and reasonably so, and I am not sure that its conversion into a site for decor should be seen as less meaningful than it is. Sure, if a woman performs a stereotypically feminine gender act because she enjoys it, or because she wants to look/feel sexy, or for whatever reason, she totally has the right to do that, but even in our modern feminist lexicon of consumer choice, the motivations behind ornamental practices should never go unquestioned or uncriticised. As Clitter pointed out of cunt glitter, ‘known side effects include extreme vaginal irritation, dry mouth, and fabulous looking herpes.’ However disco-fab pubic diamantes might be, I’m sticking with the hair what grows there.

Disclaimer: I'm aware that Laurie Penny has just written about the vajazzle probably better and definitely more succinctly, but I wrote this ages ago and just hadn't put it up yet. Whatevs Laurie, stop copying me.