We’ve heard enough about David Cameron’s woman troubles to regard anything he says about the fairer sex as a naked pitch for votes. But I reckon his comments today, about getting more women into boardrooms, are just as much motivated by concerns about the economy. ‘The drive for more women in business is not simply about equal opportunity, it’s about effectiveness,’ is how he put it earlier, ‘It’s about quality, not just equality.’
It’s a claim that reflects both the thinking of Masters of Nothing — a book by two highly-regarded members of the 2010 intake, Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi — and its continuing influence in Cameroonian circles. Part of that book’s general thesis is that the last crash was brought on by a testosterone-drenched culture in the financial sector, with men taking far greater risks than women naturally would. To correct this, it mooted a legally-enforced 30 per cent quota of women on company boards; an idea which Hancock’s former boss, George Osborne, was said to be sympathetic to after he launched the book at No.11. So it’s no surprise to hear Cameron raise it again today, although he did say that quotas might only be imposed ‘if we cannot get there by other means’.
Obviously, mandatory quotas would be politically controversial. When Masters of Nothing was published at the end of last year, Tories such as Dominic Raab and Priti Patel railed against the idea, saying that it would be both impracticable and a subversion of meritocracy. So the question now is whether Cameron will pick a fight with his backbenchers over this, perhaps with an eye on the female vote. Or whether he’ll merely keep on threatening it to nudge companies along in the desired direction, without the need for legislation.
Comments