If anyone should be left off boards it should be men

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

The background to this story is the recent resignation of 3 women from AMP's board. There's a royal commission into banking and financial services underway at present in Australia, that has exposed some of the rot at the core of it. AMP are a big financial services corporate and were exposed as having been billing deceased clients for years amongst other things. They have been savaged but are by no means unique in that as the commission has found the 4 big banks have corruption right to their core.

Yet it's 3 women directors who stand down at AMP and guess wot - looks like the blokes will be back in charge soon….

Another interesting media observation is that these corporates often ask women managers to front to the Commission for their male bosses- set up as lambs to the slaughter???

There’s some fantastic research by Michelle Ryan about the “glass cliff” - the way that women are often put in leadership positions to failing organisations.

The opinion piece didn't make a lot of sense to me as this AMP story isn't making big news in the UK (I think) - here is a Guardian article with some background.

The (female) chair and (male) chief executive have already resigned, but it's unclear why these three non-exec directors have been singled out - two of the three have resigned because the Australian Shareholders Association said it would vote against their re-election to the board, so it was pushed rather than jumped.

This could be an example of the Glass Cliff but it's hard to tell - the other non-exec director who is leaving is the longest serving member of the board, thus presumably most implicated in the scandal.

Equally I see the opinion piece is reacting to other opinion pieces in which these events are being used as evidence that women aren't capable of being board members - despite the vast majority of corporate corruption being carried out by men by simple virtue of there being far more of them in board positions. It reminded me of the story doing the rounds after the Miami pedestrian bridge collapsed that the construction crew was all female and thus women can't do construction. First of all, this wasn't remotely true but even if it was, why would it prove that?

I omitted to say the guy who's taken over as Chair was one of the architects of the corruption in one of the banks plus has brokered many govt committees that advantage financial services - he's one of the establishment males - Australia is a small market with a cabal of males who run things. So what I see is an establishment male taking over, who thinks there's no systemic issues ( as the article says), women being asked to step down and men being lined up to take over - we will see .....

I'll read the Michelle Ryan research - appreciate the link - it's a phenomenon I have repeatedly observed - even down to May ...

I knew it was Glass Cliff, as soon as I heard of those resignations. Of course, the rot was already well-set, BEFORE these women got appointed. Patsies.

Agree with the article that there needs to minimum percentages of women in large companies. Otherwise the rate of improvement in women’s participation will remain glacial