This semester we were asked by a finance instructor for tips on how to increase the number of women in her finance classes. She said that there is not a single woman in her class; all her finance MBAs are men.

Ethics is elemental (although this has nothing to do with gender.) Finance is often - and this is my personal opinion - taught in ways that purport it is value neutral; the quantitative aspect of it further reinforces this. The work is somewhat presented as pure and practical and free of ethical debates, when in fact so much of what gets done is none of those things. The systems thinking aspect of it is lost in the compartmentalization. Perhaps it is a grave oversimplification, but for some people being involved in, say, a defense deal, is going to feel like they're also indirectly involved in weapons production and its end results. Life isn't always simple, but if I invest in this, I'm going to feel like I'm profiting from this. If you didn't pitch that weapons manufacturer financing - if nobody pitched that deal - where would the resources come to expand production in that segment of the economy?

If you don't water the seeds, they won't grow into trees. And finance courses, in my (limited) experience, don't prepare you to tackle the ethics side of things. What do you do if you are assigned to a group that deals with the producer of WMDs? Many, many women and men alike find even the prospect of such a scenario extremely troublesome. I'll be the first to argue that to do so - to raise the issue of whether, say, financing a certain project or company is ethical - is still more often than not considered naive or self aggrandizing. Someone once accused me of having a big ego (and he may well be right, but it was nonetheless an accusation hard to refute without fueling the fire), when he praised Michael Milken in an introductory CoFi class, and I raised my hand to point out Mr Milken was in prison for insider trading. Likewise, back when it was still legal, I was wondering why banks were taking research analysts to pitches and roadshows. These are (or were) not, some argue, strictly speaking "finance" issues. But they deal with the foundations, the building blocks, the ethos of the field. If legal professionals or healthcare workers were accused of corruption, malpractice, and failure to follow their professional oath, we'd say something - and people do. So why can some other professionals hide under the guise of numbers and the detached middlemannish nature of the business?

What we do and how we do it matters, and it has consequences. You cannot throw a rock in the water and expect no ripples. But as a finance student you are rarely taught or encouraged to approach the value judgments you might have to make in the field of finance, when hundreds of millions of dollars or euros literally start to seem like peanuts and when a deal is supposed to be just a deal, no questions asked. I argue that finance students still aren't taught to engage eloquently and reasonably with the qualitative or ethical side of the subject, and when you think about it, you're sort of lost.

There are sustainable investment ventures, which is great. There are sustainability indexes, which is great too. This blog entry doesn't concern those; it concerns the mainstream aspects of the business, and why someone might be turned off. Many women as well as men are, I believe, turned off from the field of finance, because they sense the arrogance and the detachment from the rest of society. For an industry that sells the tenets of efficiency and change, there are many examples that suggest Wall Street professionals themselves are hardly welcoming of it.

You can't play fair, if people egregiously bend the rules decade after decade and get away with it. I'm not talking about bending the rules a little bit or cutting the corners a little bit. I'm talking about outright misconduct that appears to be obvious to anyone but the offender, who is like the emperor walking naked down Main Street, insisting his subjects compliment his attire. You can't instill the fairness mindset, if individuals who should set the standards abuse the system to their advantage. I have never understood why white collars and years of education make misconduct less reprehensible. You would think people with a higher education are better equipped to tell the difference between right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable, acceptable and unacceptable. In answering the question, "how would we graduate more female finance MBAs", I would say, these issues must be addressed. How do you address them, especially if most people on the street think there's no problem? I have no idea. This is an issue that polarizes people, compartmentalizes them by class and gender, and easily alienates men from women even further. There's a huge issue there. It's not only about making the business woman friendly; it's about making it fair and ethical and transparent and open minded.

Wal-Mart Class Action Suit

According to Helsingin Sanomat, Wal-Mart faces a class action suit for gender discrimination. An American court accepted on Tuesday a historical suit involving millions of women who have worked for Wal-Mart after 1998. The suit alleges that Wal-Mart paid women lower wages and limited women's opportunities to advance into managerial positions.

In the clip, the CEO of Wal-Mart talks about sustainability issues at Wal-Mart. The interviewer is Charlie Rose, who doesn't exactly take a stand but leaves it up to the viewer to make up their own mind. More Charlie Rose interviews here; some of us know him as one of the most well regarded US talkshow hosts (he works for PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.) GoogleVideo offers hour-long interviews with Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, artist Shirin Neshat (whose photos were up at EMMA in Espoo last fall!) and others on issues like climate change, alternative energy and human rights.



Here "High Cost of Low Price" producer-director Robert Greenwald and a Wal-Mart representative talk about the firm's labor practices.

World Still Warming; Pageant Candidates Shedding Layers

In continuation of yesterday's entry, two things.

First, New York Times readers respond to the IPCC report on the newspaper's blog. Andrew Revkin, science journalist, readies to answer reader questions; you can still ask some and post your opinions. In the main article today, Revkin is interviewed in a podcast. Revkin is asked, "Should people think about changing where they live at this point?" He responds, with the New York area readership in mind, "Well, the timescales are such that" it isn't necessary right now. Revkin knows what he's talking about: he's one of the most read and respected popular science writers in the US. "And if you're wealthy enough" you can adjust later, he notes matter-of-factly.

He knows it all too well: most of the worst-affected regions are or will be those low-lying areas of the world that are extremely poor. What can a Bangladeshi family do?

When asked about how he feels about the future, Revkin says that he "goes to bed" a pessimist, but "wakes up" an optimist.

Elsewhere in the New York Times today, a columnist wonders if the IPCC report isn't in fact too optimistic. Climate science is advancing fast and we do not really understand the impact of melting glaciers or inland ice sheets. They weren't included in the IPCC measurements.

In the UK, the Guardian notes that "the scientists spoke cautiously, but the graphs said it all."

A tipping-point of public awareness was being reached. The time for talking, as the politicians kept saying yesterday, was over. Now it was time for action.

Although in saying this they were, of course, still just talking.

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On a completely different note, in a not-so-unexpected turn of events, "public outrage" over the controversial catsuits of the pageant candidates forced the tour organizer to revert back to half nakedness.

You cannot but wonder about the intentions and purpose of some publications, tabloid or otherwise. First of all, on a day when the IPCC report comes out (it would make awesome headlines, guaranteed!), climate change in some of the most widely circulated newspapers is largely left out.

Second, the phrasing and wording in these articles about the Miss Finland pageant... Pageants have often been criticized for being demeaning meat markets. There are certainly interest groups out there that would gladly leave it so and continue business as usual.

Readers aren't dumb.

The tour organizer wants to keep the pageant classy, despite pressure to use the scantily clad young women as bait at various consumer functions. While parading on stage wearing next to nothing, the young women are subjected to a leering, staring public. The public are wearing down jackets, by the way. The organizer doesn't want to take that kind of advantage, so she comes up with new ideas. Some of the events take place in the evening, in dimly lit clubs or restaurants. (How many of us would go to Kaivohuone wearing only underwear? Right.)

To protect the women, the tour organizer has a brilliant idea: nobody defined what kind of underwear the women should wear! So she arranges for them to wear full body catsuits, which is categorized as lingerie.

That, however, isn't enough: an anonymous "public" demands a return to what "we" had before. Why do I think the "public" actually stands for the "media"?

The interesting thing is, the only citation or statement in Iltalehti's article comes from the representative of the lingerie company. Certainly not an example of investigative journalism.

What's more, the wording on the matter suggests that the pageant candidates do this quite willingly, leaving just enough room for doubt in the mind of some readers, I'm sure, that this whole scheme isn't exploitative at all. Who knows, maybe they really want to walk around in their underwear in a car center.

I'm still wondering if the women get paid for this or if they ought to be categorized as unpaid interns or temporary workers.

Missit paljastelivat MIESYLEISÖLLE

2.2.2007 23:58

Mitään ei jäänyt arvailujen varaan, kun missifinalistit esiintyivät alusasuissa. Miss Suomi -kilpailujen finalistit esittelivät rohkeaa alusasumuotia eilen Autotalo Pelttarissa Huittisissa. Autoliikkeeseen oli kerääntynyt valtavasti etenkin keski-ikäisiä miehiä, joille missit tarjosivat aimo annoksen silmänruokaa.

Yleisön kommentit muotishowsta olivat tyrmääviä, joten Miss Suomi -kiertueesta vastaava mallimamma Marjo Sjöroos joutui taipumaan vaatimusten edessä: missit laitettiin jälleen paljastaviin alusasuihin.

- Näin jatketaan päivänäytöksissä. Iltaisin misseillä pysyy trikoot alusasujen alla, vaikka minua heitettäisiin kananmunilla päähän. En halua, että humalaiset miehet koskettelevat missejä iltanäytöksissä, Marjo Sjöroos totesi.

All of this reminds me of an experience a year or two ago. JCDecaux, the French multinational billboard corporation put up a lingerie campaign that brought on huge criticism in Scandinavia. The campaign featured a headless torso of a woman, with the text "I like boobs" on it.

I mean, on her.

Always easier to objectify when you cut someone's head off. Now that's class.

At that time, I called the clothes manufacturer (no response there) and the local Helsinki transportation authority to express my disapproval as a consumer of transportation services. "It's annoying," I said.

The HKL PR person was very sympathetic, but she said there is nothing she or HKL could do. I was surprised. "You guys own the bus stops, though, don't you?" I asked. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do?" I thought it sounded kind of odd: they are Helsinki bus and tram stops and this is the Helsinki transportation authority, so how come?

"What do you mean you can't control what posters people put up?" I asked. She said that they are indeed HKL bus and tram stops, but as far as advertising goes, it isn't that simple. JCDecaux, the corporation, has bought or leased the advertising space and the company decides what kind of advertising to put up. JCDecaux, the overseas corporation, decides who greets you at the bus stop: a milk carton, a mascara or perhaps a pair of mammaries. The corporation is in charge of what our living environment looks like, because they have bought that space.

The lady at HKL engaged in a good and spirited half-hour conversation with me. It was good fun and she was sympathetic, but she apologized for not being able to do much else.

---

Some thoughts from a former Miss Finland here.

Yksi Miss Suomen keskeisistä tehtävistä on toimia esikuvana tytöille. Millä tavalla Miss Suomi on parempi esimerkki tytöille kuin esimerkiksi Naisasialiiton aktiivit?

- Missi on neutraalimpi esikuva nuorille tytöille kuin naisasialiiton aktiivit. Heillä on paljon enemmän negatiivisia asioita, joita he yrittävät tyrkyttää nuorille tytöille, kun ajavat vain naisten asioita.

- Naisasialiiton aktiivit nostavat esiin paljon huonoja juttuja, jotta he voisivat edistää heidän omaa"hyväänsä". Missin rooli on loppujen lopuksi yhteiskunnallisesti aika pieni. Hän on kaunis ja saa jotain kivoja liitetöitä, mutta ei ole poliittisesti vaikuttava, eikä kannusta teinityttöjä tietyn ideologian alle. Sen vuoksi missiin on turvallisempi samaistua kuin jonkin järjestön edustajaan.

It's always interesting to see someone take an institution and assume it is value neutral just because that institution doesn't talk about its politics.

Climate Report Out; New Miss Finland Candidates Out and About

The IPCC report is out and the original can be found here. It is a 21-page summary of the full report. Two more reports are coming out in April and May, respectively; they will include a list of recommendations for action. We know the local basics: recycle your biodegradables, drive less, fly less, switch off lights etc.

On a completely different note, for those who are into gender issues, this may make you smile. Or laugh. The Miss Finland pageant is in full swing, and pageants, though seemingly innocent, glam and old school, are actually a business, sometimes big business. For example, Donald Trump owns pageant franchises in the USA.

u u t i s t u l v a

Miss Suomi 2007 -kilpailun osallistujien uimapukukuvaus on medialle maksullista, selviää Finnartist Oy:n lähettämästä lehdistökutsusta. ...
uutistulva.nettitieto.fi/ - 80k - 31. tammikuu 2007 -

Finnartist, the company that produces the event and has done so for 45 years, has actually agreed, either knowingly or unknowingly, to a very funky new version of the so-called swimsuit competition; photos can be seen here.

Iltasanomat calls this new type of underwear competition (whatever happened to swimsuit competitions?) the height of "tastelessness."

Did I miss something?

How tasteful is it, really, to employ young women to parade on stage -- or on the steps of some building in Loviisa -- in their underwear? (I wonder what compensation the firm or organizer pays to these individuals, if any.) Hope those shopping malls are well heated. Below is a more old-style example of what the tour entails for these women.



This isn't actually a new debate, globally speaking, but what is happening with the Miss Finland tour is definitely a new take on the subject. Pageants as an institution can be viewed from a number of angles. The most dystopian suggests that they objectify women and teach girls to self objectify. Girls -- and boys -- learn that the fastest way for young women to win over the hearts and minds of the people (and the occasional ice hockey player) is to look pretty and say you support world peace. In underwear.

Finnartist and tour organizer Marjo Sjöroos have just committed to the most socially responsible thing they possibly could by allowing this new twist on a very dated pattern. Well done. Looking forward to the repercussions.