The vast majority of high ranking politicians and bankers are men, so is testosterone the real culprit here? These issues came up during Friday’s programme with Prof Mohammad Yunus. Over ninety per cent of the borrowers at his Grameen Bank are women. And they payback the money at a rate no main stream bank can match.
He said it was as much about circumstance as gender, but plenty others are more explicit. They argue women do things differently, and a female approach to money would have avoided the excesses and risks that have led to the current economic situation.
Do you agree?
So do women do things differently? If women were heading banks and were CEO’s of the majority of huge global corporations, would we be in a global recession? Would a female approach to money have avoided the excesses and risks that have led to the current economic situation? Is testosterone to blame for the financial crisis?
A couple of guests coming on today’s programme, who used to work in the City of London, say women go one of two ways. They either take on male traits, so what’s the difference? Or they aren’t taken seriously and are just the pretty thing that brings clients in while the men cut the deals…..Do you agree?
Is now the time for a rethink?
Or do you refute the idea that men and women have different approaches to money? After all we’re all human beings?
And what about on a practical level. If women are going to have families, take maternity leave, come back and work part time, are they really capable of working at the highest levels of business, or do they have too many distractions?
Should introducing more women at the top of your country’s financial sector be one the measures to improve how the financial sector operate?
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BBC World Have Your Say 
Of course, if women were handling things; they’d be done more efficiently. 😛
Hello,
NO!,
Greed, gambling, avarice and pride are not sexually polarised. Women are just as capable of getting the country / world into this state as anyone.
Women’s capacity for intelligence, evil, caring and kindness are no different to that of males.
This is not some petit quibble over who is dominant or better than the other, but the condoned robbing of people’s futures for personal gain and aggrandisement. It is feudal and primitive and as always the perpetrators merely gain in their reputation and standing in certain societies.
The fact that some whit in his tired sophistication has decided to make a wheeze out of it and practice his skills of manipulation or exploitation says all that needs. To make light of suffering and poverty is obscene!
Andrew.
Well, if I look at my mom, ex wife, and other various American women, then I’d say it would be worse. Talk about buying things that you don’t need and living beyond your means. And the only reason men buy and use credit is to impress women like this. So I’d say no, it would prob be worse.
-Anthony, LA, CA
I believe that at this current time, women in patriarchal societies would be better with money. In these types of societies, the women are typically the ones who run the home and know the value of and the risks they can feasibly take with the family’s finances. This has nothing to do with an inherent gender quality, however, it is simply that the female sex in many parts of the world still run the home.
Once women are i n power, they do things beyond normal reasoning. But that aside, borrowing these days is charged at interest credit tax rates percentage instead of the normal interest credit percentage!
Of course, there are women and women… Yet, I think women are generally more responsible in dealing with money matters… And I’d like more women to hold top positions in my country’s government in general and in financial sector regulators… It’s much harder for women than for men to reach top positions in government so those who succeed in doing so are really smart and talented… I think women can suggest better solutions in the current financial crisis…
Men don’t want to spend their own money but are happy to spend other people’s money. Biologically, men are charged with attracting a mate and he needs to have resources to do this. So he wants to hold onto his resources and deplete the resources of the “competition”. Women, on the other hand, will spend their own money to take care of the needs and the needs of their family but are they very careful when handling other people’s finances. Bilogically, women don’t have the imperative of attracting a mate by having plenty of resources.
A woman, my grandmother, explained why she lost her savings in the crash of the 1930’s. She explained banking and currency regulation, why they were needed and got me to take note of these things. The hocus pocus of the stock market was always a risky way forward. Do we learn from the past? Women live longer and talk to each other and identify more with their families than their jobs as compared to most men. That may improve our analytic odds.
Of course they would do better. Women are more sensible and careful Men are risk takers, and even bigger risk takers when the money is not their own
Hopefully in the future we will not need men any more, we will store their sperm, but thats all. The world will then be a better place, no wars, no greed, no cheaters. Just a heavnely Utopia
Once in a while you get a good woman F1 driver. An ordinary woman driving in F1 is unlikely to crash and also unlikely to win. The number of men engineers far out number women by the choice of women themselves.
Probably women of my geneetration (born 1939)
would have done better, with more of an eye onwhat the real assets are; ie home, money in the bank for a rainy day, children and grandchildren provided for.etc.
I have seen money become a commodity to be bought and traded, and “grown”, verb, active, by “making it work for you”
I have savings and am content if they accrue interest, reinvested, that keeps pace with inflation.
RE “”The vast majority of high ranking politicians and bankers are men, so is testosterone the real culprit here?””
—————————————————————————————————–
——————– Sweet, a leading question defining the problem by gender. Watch the fur fly.
The global banking crisis is amore about politics that has encouraged these banks to flourish in a vast unregulated hole of the regulations. Women are approx 1/2 the vote and thus 1/2 the problem.
If anything, these bankermen are LACKING in testosterone that they have to compensate for by acquiring illegitimate wealth by fraudulent means. Precious few of them have the backbone and spit to stand up to the group which guickly gangs up and eliminates any threats to their little glee club.
Ambitious women just as likely to behave in the same manner from what I’ve seen of the corporate world, or worse.
The real culprit here are the 7 deadly sins identified in the Good Book, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Smug modern culture has made them over as virtues and evolutionarily superior to more “primitive,” more religious cultures who could never understand highly complex financial derivatives.
Well i think women in ultimate power would have been signficantly better in handling CREDIT if they wont allow mettling things by the persuasive men hangin around them! From the context of my surroundings i believe as women are naturally lenient they are less precarious than men in messing all the concerned life stuff!
it is not true that women could have avoided the current globle economic crisis if they where the bankers, sure they would have behave like men or more stronger then men
Hi WHYSers!
The easy response, of course, is yes – if for any reason than that there is a demonstrable difference in terms of the sex organs of men and women. But that is about where the differences begin and end. It is really a culture of financial prudence and appropriate decision making which seems under consideration here; and those are matters which surpass whether one can carry another human inside her, or simply (?) aid in planting the seed! The levels of excess and greed of the tycoon millionaires and refusal to be contained by the realities of the current situation is a crime all people are guilty of, especially those who feel no desire to rein themselves in and, often, in countries where there is singinficantly more wealth.
Culture trumps gender in this instance, though gender is, effectively, all about culture. Men and women are different because society says they are and treat them so. So, there might be a point to having women as the heads of organisation, maternity leave and family committments notwithstanding! LOL!
But, seriously, the global financial crisis is a collective failure of systems across a range of borders and institutions, many of which are gendered in the sense that men run the world. However, it is important to note that it is not all men who run the world and that there are differences even amongst various groups of women. Gender identity is not a universal given. It varies from society to culture to culture to classa and even to race and religion. Ideas about men and women shift, accordingly, though there are areas of overlap, admittedly!
I think this question is silly and not worthy of a show. Women are just as capable of being as bad as men are. Let’s not forget that virtually all of these missing kid stories are stories made up by women to get media attention these days. Women are no innocent angels, and not all men are horrible. There’s some important news going on in the world today, and this is not part of it.
Neither men no women can save us from the crisis provided capitalism and free market ‘culptit’continues to dominate. What women could have done, may be is to reduce extent of effect and not save us at all.
Do you want to say all companies which are in crisis are managed by men?
Common sense implies there would be no difference between how men and women would manage an economy, since once in power they would be influenced by the same forces.
However, experience on the small scale implies there might be a difference. A female friend worked hard to earn CPA certification after which she was hired by a large firm in California. She resigned after refusing to sign falsified documents. She discovered so many CPA services were tainted by dishonesty that she left the profession. She was, at the time, the sole breadwinner for her family.
Gender isnt an issue here .though I would say as nurturers women have a tendency to be more co operative .
But the real world is the real world and its objective make up is such that competition leads to overproduction and a diminishing rate of return in real profit .
The consequence being that production and consumption become dominated by credit to the point it collapses in on itself .
Its insoluble , and not gender based . We’ve been here before ,and the only way it was resolved then was through the rise of nationalism and the smashing up of production in WW2
lol, a typical, preposterous, WHYS type question.
There is this little known philosophy (I think I named it) called “girl math”. My wife is sent to the store with $40 hard cash to buy me 2 pairs of inexpensive jeans. I saw them listed in an ad for $15 a pair. She returns with 4 pairs of expensive jeans that cost $30 a piece, and two pairs of shoes for herself. (She didn’t need shoes. Believe me she has new ones she has never worn.)
She explained that the jeans were on sail as a “buy one, get one” sale. So she bough 4 pairs. But i didn’t need 4 pairs I explained. What about the shoes? She explained she “saved me $50” because they too were buy one get one. I said but you didn’t need shoes. She said, but she couldn’t pass up the chance to save money. Then I asked “how did you pay for it? You only had $40.” “oh I put it on the (12% credit computed bi-monthly) credit card. Of course when she finally pay that off, it will have cost nearly double of what she paid for the stuff we didn’t really need. Oh yeah, nothing she bought was manufactured in the local economy.
Much the same math applies to dieting I have discovered. It turns out that if a friend at work has a birthday or you “didn’t mean to eat” something, the calories don’t count. If only she could figure out why her diet plan and the hundreds of dollars spent on exercise equipment and videos isn’t working.
ha ha ha,,,,Lol.
nice topic,,,,,,lack of education, ability to driving cars/ shopaholics are few reasons men would like to give ,to justify/or convince them selves that they are good at money matters.( I am not saying they are all bad.)
Men may not accept it but women are any day good with money when compared to men. It is in our genes.
For decades/generations woman run the house hold. That’s a fact. Live with it.
Yes. There are exception to every case.But even shopaholics know how to get the best deals.
This has just turned into a gender battle.The truth is whether male or female no one could have prevented this. Am sure the lady would get caught up in the enviroment and do whatever it took to survive .
Yes yes yes. Brazil realized years ago they had to pay state benefits to women not men because women spent 95% on the household and children and men spent only 70% on the family. That decision taken for hard cold facts in what remains a macho country.
It is true that the current cut and thrust mentality of our culture mortgages the children’s futures (financially, environmentally and spiritually) with war and territorial expansion and acquisition the major drivers of so called ‘wealth creation’ in our current mindset.
Marianne Williamson speaks so eloquently about the feminine power that has been trampled by Judeo-Christianity in the West. That is why we have done to women what we’ve done, and to our family structures and to the planet.
It wasn’t like that in Pre-Judeo-Christianized times. Women had more power in different domains. Marianne says that may be a reason for so much depression in women, and increasingly in children and men! We’re feeling the imbalances in our minds and bodies, in ways we can’t even articulate.
Let’s get it back into balance!
It is moving that way as we build our awareness! Thank you WHYS!
By definition the customers of the Grameen Bank (90% women) are people with modest expectations. They have little to invest but everything to lose if their small investment is lost. This concentrates the mind on realistic and careful finances. I applaud the banker who made it possible for small entrepreneurs to flourish in this fashion, and the customers who were realistic and responsible.
The current global crisis is the result of rash mismanagement and greed in the banking sector and in society. People were loaned money they could not afford today, to buy things they didn’t need (luxurious houses and expensive cars for example). For years we have lived in a culture where our wants are met NOW, not saved for as in the past. Excessive bonuses for bankers fed that greed and ambition. The loans were passed from one institution to another, to the point where the entire house of cards collapsed.
Would women have done better? Very likely.
Women would get the same education. Investment and banking is about taking risks. The idea that women are inherently more capable than men is inherently sexist.
Both women and men have high numbers of reckless spenders, and low IQs.
From what I’ve seen there are true sweethearts in the ranks of women, but also very cruel characters. Actually the truth be known the weaker sex is much more vicious, underhanded, an effective of inflicting harm.
troop
For a fix now we need integrity and wisdom and a willingness to break from the pack when the pack goes wrong. Not gender based,
BUT
Childbirth has straightened up lots of party animals. Maybe sound economics come from contemplating the pregnant belly.
I wont generalise.
In Nigeria, we can still remember the case of our first female speaker.
Women would have had a better say today, if not for her.
You ask a question and then conclusively answer it yourself: “If women are going to have families, take maternity leave, come back and work part time, are they really capable of working at the highest levels of business, or do they have too many distractions?” Though I’d have written about ‘too many responsibilities’, rather than ‘distractions’.
This must be a good candidate for ‘most pointless topic to date’. I can see why there’s rarely time for subjects like Congo, piracy, Chechnya, and other trivia.
Re ‘introducing more women at the top’ – how? Obviously not on merit. Affirmative action? Is that the debate? Then be candid and say so. And presumably not just in finance? And why limit yourself to gender? Aren’t most of those at the top of the big international banks caucasian and oriental? Presumably, by the same logic, we need more Haitians, Liberians, Bangladeshis, Bolivians and Nigerians etc to bring their talents to solve the banking crisis. Sillier and sillier.
I think that in the modern world behavior styles of men and women at financial sphere differs little. Therefore, I suggest that if women will on the world’s financial top positions, they will tend to male manage style, and we won’t see signigicant distinctions.
Sure, with an exception: Very politically successful women are little different from their male counterparts; they generally lack intimate knowledge of economics (not the big, macro-fancy meaning; but the littler, older, and much more important “manager of a household” one). When shopping, the average women asks the simple question “I’m I getting my money’s worth,” which the average politician or CEO never asks.
g
No No No! Are you really posing a sexually charged question like this?
Women would not have done anything differently as a matter of fact they prolly would have made the situation worse every woman I have ever encountered in a position of power has been a @%$# and was fiercely competitive with her colleages.
@ A woman you said its a fact women are better with finances care to provide evidence of how every woman has more financial know how then every male. Women cried for equallity for so long yet make blanket statements like this I find it very offensive. Just like any woman would find it offensive if I said women belong barefoot, naked, and pregnant in front of the stove…… get real
this topic is clearly a chance for WHYS to get some ratings
The ICC has step out of line by issuing the warrant of arrest for president barsheer. Would they do the same if the presidents were from US or its allies , Russia or China. Double standard. This must be the work of a woman.
100 percent absolutely! 🙂
Lets not forget that its men who got our economy growing in the first place. It’s unfair to look at the negative and none of the positives.
-Anthony, LA, CA
Yes, women could have saved us from the banking crisis..
~Dennis Junior~
Say if there’s a sale at Neiman Marcus or at Prada and these execs storm out of the office during conferences to go shopping? If we’re going to play stupid gender stereotypes, then they go both ways.
Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!! Not a chance! Some of the most ruthless people I know are women! To suggest such a thing is complete nonsense!
Ahem.
Just look at the damage that Maggie “TINA” Thatcher did to the workers of Great Britain if you want an example of how bad a woman can be for social financial justice.
There are women in the world that get themselves pregnant just to drain a man’s bank account, and my female colleague agrees with me so I am not putting women down its just a fact.
Financial crisis is a problem. What is needed to solve any problem is nothing but merit, provided that this merit is enriched with knowledge & skill relevant to the domain of the task. There’s no such example in globe’s history that problems were solved by dint of gender, colour or any such external similarities.
Did Babage or Ada Biron or Adison solved their problems of computer, programming & filament of bulb, by dint of sex/gender/colour/nationality?
They solved problems by dint of merit only! So if anyone claims that women could have saved us, & so should have to be placed in cardinal posts; s/he is surely mistaken. What is needed most is to place the right person in the right place. Men or women, white or black, citizen of X or Y land, -these aren’t matters. In my country Bangladesh, I notice no such remarkable pragmatic credit that Yunus & his Grameen Bank can ever claim. God bless us all with the ability of thinking logically. Amen!
Ripon
Bangladesh
Greed is not subject to one sex alone some women are allot greedier then men!
I Certainly can appreciate that testoterone has driving powers, however, the charge that women would have save us from this crisis is unfounded. They are more of what? “calm, collected, and less competitive?” Would that have saved us? I think the question as a whole hurts my head. The banking crisis, housing crisis, credit defaulting, and vast number of other issues are not the product of men, they are the product of an array of different policies and economic approaches which would arguably have been developed by women just as much as they would be by men. Furthermore, what would suggest that women have approached the situation any differently in the past. Women would fill the same niches as men and represent the same status. Bankers are bankers, traders are traders. This is the reality. Also, there are a great deal of problems with how micro-loaning has been functioning, not to say it is bad (because it’s a great thing), but simply to say…
Ahem.
For another bad example, just look at Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska who took the money for “The Bridge To Nowhere”, even when it was exposed as a financial boondoggle.
And as a Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin spent US $150,000 on clothes for her campaign!
She would have been a financial disaster as a Vice President of the US.
What is left out is the role of the US government in the banking crisis. What they aren’t telling you is there was an act passed in 1999 called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. It did away with the Depression Era regulations on banks “to control the rampant speculation that had helped cause the collapse of banking at the outset of the Depression, and to prevent such consolidation of the banks that the nation had all its eggs in one fiscal basket.” (The Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/sumner)
Tell me again how women were going to stop this? This an absolutely asinine question that ignores the other factors involved.
Yes of course
Unlike men, women tend to take less risks. and therefore this crises would have been less severe.
Hakim From kuwait
And what if, by some tortured logic, one gender is proclaimed to be better with money than the other? Your money is yours to do any fool thing you want with it, which does include having given it to the “wonder boys” of derivative trading. So, why not take your lumps, stop looking for a new saviour, and act like an adult of whichever gender you happen to be.
Virtually every woman I know that isn’t a lawyer has either bad credit or massive credit card bills.
“If you want something said, ask a man…if you want something done, ask a woman.”
This conversation is just another attempt to shed responsibility by pointing the finger in increasingly obscure directions. Both men and women, on average, are drowning in debt; given that women, on the whole, owe less, is statistically true, but in absolute terms, what’s $2,000 less than $24,000?
Help!
Does anyone know the name of the Canadian study the female caller referred to that showed boards/companies with more women where more successful (I think that’s what she said)?
Men may be more vulnerable to financial carelessness, but there’s also a sociocultural element that equates masculinity with bringing home as much “bacon” as possible. On the other hand, there were a few men who tried blowing the whistle in the U.S. mortgage scandal, and there ARE small banks that have resisted the kind of activity that ran out of control on Wall Street.
Perhaps more women in executive positions would improve diversity and investment risk, but the poor regulation of investment banks also encourages greater risk taking and more “creative” money-making.
I don’t think women could have done a better job, in the current climate. It seems greed, aggression and risk taking were key traits rewarded by the financial fields…all characteristics that can be shared by men and women.
With that said, it does seem a bit odd that there aren’t more women CEO’s. If we are truly equal (same intelligence, access to education, etc), why does this inequality still exist?
Max from Singapore have brought up a good example of gender equality, men are no better than women, neither are women better than men. What I have to add is that the business model must be rethought of at this point of humanity.
Women may not have saved the world from the financial crisis, it is more a matter of principles and values, women may be able to deliver a more fatal cutthroat business maneuver in a different way than men can.
One thing for sure…women would have revealed what was going on and the news of the scandal would have gotten out a lot sooner than it did.
I am a woman who has worked in construction, a very male dominated field, for the past 15 years. I learned my craft from men,so of course I modeled them in many ways in order to get good at it. It has only been with time that I have grown into my own way of doing things that is truer to who I am, including acting from the side of me that is characteristically female. Now, I am respected for doing my job well and in my own way. I agree with Kristin’s comment that the more women who have a place at the table in any business, the less gender will be an issue at all.
It’s ridiculous to think that my vagina gives me some inherent ability to invest better than a man. It’s the values and morals of that person and how they were raised, what values were instilled in them. Saying that we are inherently more level-headed takes away the from a woman’s agency, the actual work and ethics that she holds. Even categorizing those values as “feminine” or “masculine” is sexist. Isn’t another stereotype that women love shopping carelessly? So which trait is the “feminine” one, the positive or the negative?
What the business world needs is to not hire a-moral people, no matter what’s between their legs.
i believe women are good money managers than men, but on the current global financial crisis women should be given the chance!
I think that humanity would benefit from bringing more of what is considered womens’ values into business.
Business has been so de-humanized, so anti-humanized, by the creation of the legal fiction called a “corporation”, which has the legal rights of a human “person”. The thing is, Conservative businessmen like to brag that there is no room for morals in business, it is “just business”.
Person-hood ought to be taken away from Corporations and they ought to be returned to limited charters..
R U KIDDING ME!!! Absolutely not! Most men take irresponsible risks so as to be “successful” so as to impress the ever demanding wife/galfriend with expensive jewellery, shoes, expensive shopping binges to various fashion capitals of the worlds (thats what the bonuses are for). Women can be just as irresponsible and greedy as men. However i do think women of the developing world tend to be more responsible than men in general. So this has nothing to do with gender but class.
So far we’ve learned that women are “more motherly” and “have more feminine values” than men. Wow. Great topic.
There is a relatively well established link between testosterone and risk taking. However, one must consider that a wholesale change towards more women in leadership positions (financial or otherwise) might see topics of programs such as yours switch from problems caused by greed to problems caused by pride or envy. Case in point, a recent survey undertaken by a Catholic church scholar tabulated the various frequencies of the types of sins each sex was prone to commit…Men were more likely to commit the sins of (in order of frequency) Lust, Gluttony, & Sloth…Women were more likely to commit the sins of Pride, Envy, & Anger…choose your poison if you will.
Older men have no resent ideas!
I don’t think that women could have saved us from the financial crisis. Both men and women operate, neurochemically, under an addiction to dopamine. And dopamine is related to risky behaviours.
Only by reducing dopamine addiction, as researcher Marnia Robinson advocates, can the problem of risky behaviours be reduced.
Cheers
The pre-current speaker has go a serious point! am on phone!
To add to my point earlier, why do motorshows feature so many female models along with the cars on exhibit?
This financial crisis was not caused by risk takers, it was caused by people who created Derivatives which were designed to eliminate risk from one side of the transaction and place the risk on the other side. They wanted to rid themselves of the risks.
The risk has now been placed on the public, it has been socialized. And the no risk side has been privatized as profit.
Value is for every human being but women are so weak at the peak that they betray their husbands and inturn danger their status , qualifications , moral behaviour and the drive at hand. They are weak and cant contain fear!
I think women can do nothing because the matter is not being men or women but it is this selfish,interest based economic system that is capitalism system.
This has turned into a “Men vs Women” debate. I see no point in it at all. Saying that women would have made better decisions is just dreaming. People are people. If you want to say that women are different than men, you are pushing the debate back years.
Just a couple of words, Ayn Rand. She popularized free market economics in fiction that has been used as the bible for real people in real life in the form of Alan Greenspan. Where is the “hidden hand” of the market in this situation. Women and men will make equally bad decisions if given the chance.
Just to be to the point – They can cause the worst financial crisis at the the highest level however much they have the competence! Risk for 2 days and the worst forever!
Women & Risk: I think it depends on the person–of course blanket statements of anything about “women” in general will not hold true. Perhaps I have more testosterone than some other women, but I take high financial risks — I am the type of person who does so. The study on the trading floor where levels were measured in men did not include women. It would be very interesting to see the same study which includes the levels in women, testosterone levels as well as cortisone levels measured in women *and* men. Then there would be better measure. Another point is that *generally* women are more responsible with money–particularly when they are they ones taking care of children–if you have little ones depending on you, you’re less likely to gamble away the farm. Who knows why. But this is what the person who started MicroCredit found. Women did more with the money.
Thanks for having the program. Very interesting.
+a+
I can’t give an answer to this question because it would be gender biased.
But Consider this: I am a man in my 40s – since my 20s my mother has been skimming me off and I could not say no. She has walked out of her job years ago and became a freelance and when there was no income, she turned to me for money. Generally she paid back, but once – when she asked me to borrow for her from a friend – she “forgot”.
Last year she pressured me to take out a low interest loan on my credit card, because in her country of residence the loans were much more expensive than in the UK. But now she cannot pay it back to me, and the promotional 0% rate (paid by me now shot up to 27% So I have the debt and the increased interest now.)
Oh, btw I am married with a child, my wife suffers from bipolar, which stops her from working sometimes for a year. She is angry that I am helping my mother and does not accept that I can’t let her live in the street. But she is also being very hard on me for not earning enough money and us living with debts. When I point out that we have problems because she hasn’t been earning for years. She is accusing me of spending all our money, being irresponsible, a liar and an untrustworthy person. She has been sleeping in a separate room for a year now. Apart from criticising me for our finances, I have the privilege of paying the mortgage, while she keeps the money earned by her in her lower paid job – to be one of this superior and responsible women who pay off their credit cards. Why don’t I divorce? Because it would put me even more in debt.
There are a few vertebrate species on planet Earth that can reproduce asexually. In every case, it is only females who can reproduce without the (so-called) benefit of a male.
I do not contend that this makes females intellectually or morally superior to males–it just makes them, sometimes, rarely, able get on with the business of making life without male intervention, while males can never get on with the business of making life without females. If I were possessed of XY chromosomes instead of XX chromosomes, I would wonder if patriarchal societies, macho behaviour and displays of chutzpa might be ways of overcompensating for females’ biological dominion over reproduction.
Chidi (from Minneapolis),
If the guy didn’t put a raincoat on his lttle guy when the two did the deed, he knew the risks. He gambled and now he has to pay.
Re: 54 billysoh March 4, 2009 at 18:31
Thanks for the support on my views! 8)
Re: 21 Dwight From Cleveland March 4, 2009 at 15:01
I just love the stuff on “girl math”. I started off by chuckling & then outright laughter! Thank God there are no cameras in my room. If there was anyone observing might think I’d gone loco.
.
.
It is time for the Men of this World to Unite! As for the alleged financial acumen of women I’d agree in the following areas only:
>Ask the husband of a wife (couple have no kids) who divorced him for his wealth while claiming to do so for every reason other than money.
>Ask the ordinary Joe whose wife keeps nagging him about what the neighbours have and ‘we’ don’t. So she suggests a financial plan which requires the male to give up on beer and buy her shoes or a plasma TV or whatever.
>Ask all the girls who date the guys with the flashy cars and NOT the guys with ethics and values!
This is a conspiracy by women to control the men! They already wear the pants in the house in many cases. Achtung!
Re: 12 Roberto March 3, 2009 at 08:18
It is quite amazing that your views and their basis, are almost exactly the same as the ones based on which I spoke on air! I don’t know which part of the world you’re writing from. But I completely agree with your views.
So the Men of this World CAN unite! Yipee!
No women would not have saved us from the financial crisis.
The internet is virtually unregulated, it used to be predominantly a male environment, women especially in western countries have caught up in terms of usage hours,however they haven’t really changed much.
Yes Gender is important, however the appropriate regulation of financial markets is more relevent to the present world crisis.
No thats too far fetched, however most women grow up from childhood being careful with money and as they mature they are afraid of going broke, because it would make them vulnerable and unprotected from going the wrong way. Their only weakness is spending money in beautifying themselves. Go to any shopping area you will see mainly women doing most of the shopping in every kind of store. The best way to get out of the recession is to pump money in the bank accounts of women, and they will spend the way out of the recession.
Women are instinctively good with money..except when they are unhappy and end up a shopaholics!! They are more cautious in their approach and most have their financial heads firmly on their shoulders. Unlike men, they might risk their own money but prefer not to risk ‘other people’s money’..so it would be fair to say that women could have averted this financial crisis and doom and gloom that we are now subject to…
My my my, don’t we love to pinpoint women as wasteful spenders! It’s very stereotypical to say that all women love to shop and spend copious amounts of money!
Hmmmm, wonder if there are any good deals on styrofoam greek columns with the market crashing down around us? I always look to purchase those wanting to spend about 5.3 million on a festivity theme! haha Wait, I would never do that! In fact, that was a man that did that! Clothes-columns, clothes, columns; very tough choice. One word: priority.
What we have here is obviously that men are incapable of making choices based on priority~that clothing is much more important than large inanimate objects to decorate a background and feed your self importance.
if these women followed their own constitution that’s different from the one we all genders have been following,then they would have saved you.
TAMBUA,HAMISI,KENYA.
I don’t think it is an issue of gender. It is more of a result of the greed and reckless borrowing and mounting speculation in the financial sectors. Had the economy been regulated little more carefully and the defaulters been scrutinized and made accountable then there would have probably been no crisis of this intensity and complexity. Companies should be more accountable towards their share holders and reckless performance should be regulated for preventing such crisis in future and returning confidence in the market. Saying that women could have done better is a mere speculation. Every individuals are different identities and should be dealt separately.
It is doubtless when we say woman is a essential part of society,
woman ‘s role can not be disregard in the development,
they can play a cricial role and light the financial burden to the larg extent.
Women would not have made a difference at all.
The type of financial system in place was the cause of the financial problems which has been managed and operated by both men and women for many, many years.
Yes, more men operate within the system, however, significant amount of women also operate within the system either on the operational side e.g banks, policy definition e.g. government or guidelines or standards e.g. regulators sides.
The problem was the system and had this been managed soley by women, it would have resulted in the same outcome.
Where economies are grown on “a promise to pay” mechanism i.e. credit, also it takes to crumble is panic which leads to fear and profit taking i.e. those at the top of the piramid fear that those below will not make or fufil their payments thus protect themselves by takes “real cash” out of the systems thus reduce the solidity of credit which inturn restricts growth.
We need a system where value is based on true values and not fictional wealth based on gambling i.e. stock market.
The only positive thing which I feel that women would offer is the channel of funds toward building a society which would be fairer, better and more wholesome and definately less war mongaring and threathening.
of course women would make a better job of money !!
having been a single parent robbing peter to pay paul i KNOW how to handle it, e.g. every simpleton knows – witness even a squirrel – that in good times, one ferrets away something for when bad times come, for sure as life, bad times come!
so what has gordon brown done during the 10 years of boom when he was chancellor? SQUANDERED ALL OF IT — what have the bankers done? RISKED ALL OF IT. Put me in charge and i’ll soon sort them out………………
toshka
the spirit never dies
Remixing what I heard the British PM say on News Hour yesterday, a bad female banker somewhere is a threat to good female bankers everywhere.
They might have helped but the bad ones among them who have blown their chances keep preventing others from being trusted.
They might have helped if we had no phobia trusting them with our money HOW MANY MEN TELL THEIR SPOUSES THE TRUTH ABOUT THEIR INCOMES?
Women are good at handling finances..they can make a little go a long way..
Answering this question , we may think , that women could have saved us from World War I , or WW II , from neucler threat , or smth else , historicaly the state of affairs is that as it is, we must think of the way to get through financial situation , lets think of that but not about whoes handling could prevent the crisis …
The feminazi fanatics try once more to mold the dialogue. Estrogen can save the world! What rubbish.
Of Course!
Being a firm believer that God is A Woman and the Ultimate Creator who put me on the Earth, I hope that I do not offend any WHYS listeners.
My Mother was the person who created me and she sure did save me from being a greedy person who tries to cheat other people or get rich quick. Other people’s mothers obviously were not as smart as my mother, but you tend to learn the most from mistakes.
To implementaion of equal rights between men and women will surely promote
civil rights in general.
Countries, governments, bureaucracies, businesses, churches, mosques and
other religious esablishments, — in which women are still regarded and
treated as unequal and inferior than men — should be criticized and exposed
continuously!
However,
In our world of today —- Discrimination against others of diffrent ethnicity,
religious believe, political conviction, and against gays and lesbbians are
more serious.
Womenrights activists should always bear this in mind!
Amsterdam, 06 March 2009
My experience of women in business leadership is that to qualify for the positions they gain they have had to shed all that is intrinsically “feminist” and do it the “male” ie traditional way. Until you get women writing learned books on economics etc and being recognised for their intellectual prowess by predominantly male critics, in other words a few female Milton Friedmans or Maynard Keynes they will always do it the male way and render themselves a mere repetition. A sea change is required in the intellectual focus of human perception.
Dear Ibrahim Isa Alias Bramijn;
I am appauled by your thinking Isa!!!!!
“Discrimination against ethnic, religious and political groups, gays and lesbians are more serious than discrimination against women!”
Therefore, before we solve these issues…. let the women be “treated as unequal and inferior than men”.
Please revise your thinking Isa, be your own person, any injustice to the society has to be rectified as soon as it appears. There is no wait.
Nick Tsoupas
If women were in charge, things would be very different. The financial system would not have collapsed. Those giant companies would not have collapsed. This is because they would not even have existed in the first place. We would still be living in caves.