Why?

Is imposing quotas for women in the boardroom a bad idea? It is according to a recent article in The Economist. The article, as is normal for that August Journal, is reasonably balanced. I say reasonably as it does acknowledge many verities relating to women and work. Some excerpts follow:There is a powerful business case for hiring more women to run companies. They are more likely to understand the tastes and aspirations of the largest group of...

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Finance and Investments

The acceptable face of Facebook. Few corporate types can charm hardened hacks so effectively. Sheryl Sandberg, the number two at Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, has been glad-handing reporters with spectacular results. The New Yorker says she may “upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture”. New York magazine puts her in line for Secretary of the Treasury. Bloomberg Businessweek speculates that she might one day be the president...

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Everyday Money

We all know that coping with everyday money in our relationships can be like climbing Everest without oxygen but in Japan it appears that before partners are united in wedded bliss, financial status is the yardstick.It appears that the most widely cited reason for stalling on getting married for men, and second-highest among women, was anxiety over whether the wedded couple would be economically comfortable enough: It seems 3 million yen in annual...

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Womenomics

Early this past spring, the White House Council on Women and Girls released a much-anticipated report called Women in America. One of its conclusions struck a familiar note: today, as President Obama said in describing the document, “women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s a huge discrepancy.”And it’s the same discrepancy existing ever since women started earning money – it’s well documented through 16th,...

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Who's Counting?

A recent Wall Street Journal article reports on male selection. Since the late 1970’s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons. Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. In "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the...

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Musings and Amusings

One of my favourite writers Kay S. Hymowitz suggests that the conflict between parenting and career is hardwired in the female brain.In the struggle for equality between the sexes, it keeps coming down to motherhood, doesn’t it? If there’s one part of evolutionary thinking that spells bad news for the feminist worldview, it is parental-investment theory, an idea originally proposed by Harvard professor Robert Trivers. Trivers was attempting to clarify...

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Womenomics

A fascinating article in the Sunday Times recently highlighted readers on how to predict a divorce. It appears that credit card statements tell their own story.So what are the alarm signals that suggest divorce might be in the offing? "There are many transactional signs," explains Professor Ben Fletcher, head of psychology at Hertfordshire University. "Spending on extra lunches or staying in hotels more frequently may indicate an affair. Perhaps the couple shared one weekly food shop and now buy separately. You'll see people preparing for a split...

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Finance and Investments

The biggest investment we make, emotionally and financially is in marriage. Figures vary but almost half of marriages end in divorce. It therefore makes a lot of sense to sort out financial issues prior to marriage - it should in fact be a priority. Here are four areas that should be at the top of the discussion list.ANCESTRYHow did your parents deal with money, how does that impact how you deal with it, and how might that impact a couple's relationship?Because so many of our money behaviours are learned, couples should share their earliest money...

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Who's Counting?

"I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not." Fran LebowitzVictoria University statistical consultant Dalice Sim crunched the numbers yesterday and revealed the odds of winning the big one where rather long. Per line, the chance of picking all six balls plus the Powerball is 0.000000026064, or one in 38,367,096.With a $12 Powerball ticket, the odds shorten to a paltry one in 6,394,5...

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Everyday Money

When you analyse a mortgage, there are three components which determine the true cost to you: the principal, the rate of the interest you pay and the total amount of interest paid. The principal is the initial amount you borrow, an amount obviously decided by the borrower in conjunction with the lender.For a $230,000 mortgage, assuming an average interest rate of 7.5 per cent (based on the average interest rates of the past 10 years), the borrower...

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Why?

Why is nothing in this world constant? Earthquakes, revolutions, and now the news that the lipstick effect isn't working any more. What? You mean you don't follow the lipstick index? Leonard Lauder will be horrified. The idea of the lipstick index was conceived by Lauder, from that rather famous family, after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The theory is simple - in times of economic and political uncertainty, people don't spend up big on clothes...

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Musings and Amusings

It was not amusing to read of Saudi Arabia’s decision to ban voting for women – it’s outrageous.It did however cause me to muse upon the flagrant disregard not just for women’s “rights” but the failure to see women as beings with intelligence, the ability to think, and to be at least equal to men.I suppose that here in the West at least chauvinism is fairly covert and some effort is made to allow women to join the ranks of voters and workers. Still,...

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Who's Counting?

You could be forgiven for thinking that the health system could save $1.9 billion if tobacco had never existed. That’s what the Ministry of Health says smoking costs the public system. But you’d be wrong. The ministry’s latest estimate of the cost of smoking has nothing to do with the costs that smokers impose on taxpayers or the costs that could be avoided if smoking were to disappear.After sorting the population by age, gender, income, ethnicity...

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Finance and Investments

Money illusion feeds into the kiwi obsession with property but as a recent Sunday Star Times article points out, many factors should be considered when weighing up the rent-or-buy options. The article quotes economist Shamubeel Eaqub from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research who says the case for "active" renting instead of buying a home is stronger than ever."I think house prices are completely unsustainable on pretty much every valuation...

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Womenomics

As the number of women participating in the workforce grows, their potential influence on business is becoming ever more important. Seventy-two percent of respondents to a recent McKinsey survey believe there is a direct connection between a company’s gender diversity and its financial success.Yet companies have not so far successfully bridged the gap between men and women in the top levels of management. This is not surprising, since the survey...

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Musings & Amusings

Marriage is a “public, formal, lifelong commitment to share your life with another person,” as Andrew J. Cherlin defines it in The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. In the American view, marriage remains the ideal state: only 10 percent of Americans endorse the idea that the institution is outdated, compared to, say, in France, where a third of people think it is. On the contrary, America is seeing a sort of...

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Why?

It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders – of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the "honour" of their families – are as barbaric as they are shameful. Many women's groups in the Middle East and South-west Asia suspect the victims are at least four times the United Nations' latest world figure of around 5,000 deaths a year. Most of the...

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Everyday Money

How do we teach our teenage children how to handle money? The use of money involves logic, facts, and a healthy dose of discipline. These have no place in teenage brains.If as parents you are over indulging by being the bank of Mum and Dad you certainly won’t inculcate good financial habits so here are some suggestions:•Give your teenager an allowance after they have completed their appropriate duties, I define these as a contribution to the bottomless...

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