David Bonderman leaves Uber. |
Board member Arianna Huffington was telling Uber staff yesterday that research showed boards with one female director were more likely to appoint a second female, Bonderman interjected: “Actually what it shows is that it’s much more likely to be more talking.”
The comment was made during a nationwide call where a change in culture was being announced. The firm has been under pressure for its supposed "sexist culture."
Remarkably, an outside law firm,
Covington & Burling, was even recently retained by Uber to suggest changes in culture.
Among other things, Covington recommended that a version of the Rooney Rule be adopted.
The Rooney Rule dates back to 2002, when the National Football League created a new mandate that teams "interview a minority candidate when making a new appointment to a head coaching position."
Specifically for Uber, the law firm recommended that it adopt a policy where "at least one woman and/or member of a population currently underrepresented on each applicant interview panel — not just the panels for diverse applicants — to ensure diverse perspectives in the feedback and evaluation of candidates for positions at Uber and to reduce the potential impact of unconscious bias."
The board unanimously adopted the recommendation.
Bonderman was actually, in a light-hearted manner, referring to some actual scientific studies when he made his comment about females.
Dr. Mia Lundin, an OBGYN, has written:
The female hormone estrogen heightens the production of oxytocin, which enhances relaxation, reduces fearfulness, and decreases stress responses. Women instinctively seek emotional support in the face of "danger." Psychologist Dr. Shelley Taylor and her UCLA colleagues discovered that females were more likely to deal with stress by "tending and befriending;” that is, nurturing those around them and reaching out to others. We actually increase our oxoytocin levels and experience renewed balance and calm when we socialize and talk with our dear ones.But MSM, infected with Cultural Marxist thinking, would have none of it. The knives came out immediately after Bonderman's comment.
The same day he made the comment, Bonderman emailed Uber employees to apologize — and later announced he was resigning from the board.
Bonderman is a billionaire. He didn't get that way by wasting time considering the sex or ethnic background of the people he hired. He most assuredly hired the people who could make him the most money.
He was making a pretty sound and subtle observation in a light-hearted manner with his comment: Why make hiring practices or applicant interview panels based on gender or ethnic background rather than just on competence?
If you hire females just because of their gender than according to two female doctors, Lundin and Taylor, you are going to get more talking. Taylor, by the way, received her PhD from Yale, taught at Harvard and has also received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, and the APA's Lifetime Achievement Award,
Given the cash Uber burns, if I am a shareholder, I am going to want every sharp mind I can find to be on the board, regardless of lame comments they may make. They just lost a great business thinker in Bonderman at the altar of Cultural Marxism.
That Silicon Valley boards are now policing their boards for light-hearted comments tells you how far down the Cultural Marxist road we are.
When it comes down to it, cultural Marxism is about control. CMs want to rip down everything that they don't control and replace it with their surrogates who will march the world away from free exchange and toward the centrally planned world of the CMs. Such a march has never ended well for millions in places like the Soviet Union and in Mao's China.
-RW
Didn't know Bonderman still owned a tie...
ReplyDeleteHe should accuse any offended women of being 'science deniers.' It is a fact that generally women talk more than men per day.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the article that came out on mises.org a few months ago "The Goal of Socialists Is Socialism — Not Prosperity". The goal of the board and the people running the company should be to make money and have a profitable company, not just to have diversity for diversity sake.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't these people cry out that 97% of kindergarten teachers are women? Should elementary schools have to interview a man every time a new teaching position opens up? Or maybe logging and mining companies should be forced to interview a woman when a new position opens up before speaking to a man?