What Wall Street and Capitol Hill Have in Common

By Andrea Dew Steele, President and Founder
February 9, 2009
 
Okay, I am ready to start the Nicholas Kristof fan club. In case you missed it, he wrote a fantastic column in Sunday's New York Times. It is not to be missed. 

In his opening sentence he argues that "banks around the world desperately want bailouts of billions of dollars, but they also have another need they're unaware of: women, women and women."  Could this financial mess be partially blamed on Wall Street being so incredibly male dominated?  I would like to come back with the question of whether we can blame this economic crisis on the fact that our government is so male dominated. Despite the fact that we have a few highly visible women in leadership in Congress, the fact remains that we have only 17% of women in Congress representing us.  Look at who is on the Senate Banking Committee. Yes, only one woman - Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson from Texas. The House Financial Services Committee has slightly more women (probably because we have a woman Speaker of the House), but women are still underrepresented.
 
In his column, Kristof cites powerful research in supporting his Wall Street thesis.
"There seems to be a strong consensus that diverse groups perform better at problem solving" than homogeneous groups, Lu Hong and Scott E. Page wrote in The Journal of Economic Theory (pdf file), summarizing the research in the field."  This same research can be applied to politics.

Why is it that despite the fact that :

• 10.1 million firms are owned by women (50% or more), employing more than 13 million people, and generating $1.9 trillion in sales as of 2008.
  
  
• Three quarters of all women-owned businesses are majority owned by women (51% or more), for a total of 7.2 million firms, employing 7.3 million people, and generating $1.1 trillion in sales.
  
  
• Women-owned firms (50% or more) account for 40% of all privately held firms. (NAWBO)

Most of the economic decision in this country are still being made by men.

Kristof is right about Wall Street, but let's not forget Capitol Hill.