In one of the most egregious examples of issue hijacking* we’ve ever seen, a report from Cranfield School of Management claims that the economy wouldn’t be in such a terrible condition if more women sat on the boards of banks, and recommends that more women should be given senior positions on the banks that have been bailed out by the government.
Never has the acronym ‘WTF?’ been more appropriate. OK, yes, more women probably should be working in senior positions in the financial sector for the sake of equal opportunity, no arguments there, but we’re not quite sure about the rest of the logic. To argue that a higher representation of women on the boards of banks would have forestalled the credit crunch seems a little fanciful, but it’s certainly done a good job of getting the School’s ‘Female FTSE’ report into the headlines, which was clearly the point all along.
All the same, these are completely separate issues, so congratulations to the Cranfield School of Management PR team for getting such good coverage for their story by piggybacking it onto the economy issue with only the most tenuous of links to work with - bravo!
*This is Public Relations industry jargon for shoe-horning your boring news story that nobody cares about into another, much more exciting news story that is getting lots of interest from the media so that you can grab a little of the press coverage for your own agenda.
