{"id":38219,"date":"2017-04-21T03:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38219"},"modified":"2017-04-20T09:06:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T13:06:18","slug":"the-oddly-appropriate-subtext-to-new-yorks-fearless-girl-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/21\/the-oddly-appropriate-subtext-to-new-yorks-fearless-girl-statue\/","title":{"rendered":"The oddly appropriate subtext to New York’s “Fearless Girl” statue"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the New York Post<\/em>, Nicole Gelinas<\/a> points out that Mayor De Blasio has set a precedent that might well come back to bite the city (the example she cites would be “Black Lives Matter protesters want a statue of police brutalizing a black man in front of One Police Plaza”. She also explains why the statue highlights an uncomfortable detail about the role of women on Wall Street:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The “Fearless Girl” statue faces the Arturo Di Modica “Charging Bull” on Wall Street (Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>But the bigger problem with Fearless Girl is that it casts stereotypes in bronze: Men do important things, and women get in the way.<\/p>\n

The bull is the primary actor: He is charging. The girl\u2019s job is to impede him. This is how Wall Street has long worked \u2014 and it\u2019s changing, but slowly.<\/p>\n

Take the management committee of State Street\u2019s parent company. Of its 14 members, two are women. One, the chief administrative officer, is a top regulatory official. The other is the human-resources chief and \u201ccitizenship officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Goldman Sachs\u2019 33-member management committee, five of our women \u2014 at least four of whom are in similar, growth-restraining positions.<\/p>\n

Yes, growth-restraining: These are great jobs and require deep skill. But they\u2019re bureaucratic rather than entrepreneurial. If a department head \u2014 a man \u2014 wants to start up a new unit, it\u2019s the regulatory experts who will say, no, you can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a trading head may want to hire someone \u2014 but the human-resources chief nixes it.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the area of \u201ccompliance\u201d \u2014 which sounds like an S&M activity but has to do with ensuring that the bank and its employees don\u2019t launder money, steal or do other bad things \u2014 is where women have done well.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This work is necessary. A company can\u2019t grow if it\u2019s convicted of money-laundering or if its employees are thieves (in theory).<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also the depressing age-old relationship: A man wants to do something fun and cool, like take the children paragliding before they\u2019ve had a proper breakfast. His wife says, \u201cBut honey, the kids have band practice today, and maybe we should save the money for the mortgage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fearless Girl fails in another way. It\u2019s terrific to have courage and fight important battles. But it\u2019s not a good idea \u2014 for men, women or children \u2014 to be recklessly fearless.<\/p>\n

Fear is a good thing. If a bull is charging you, according to the farming manuals, the best thing to do is what you instinctively do: get out of the way. If you don\u2019t pick your battles, you\u2019ll lose them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the New York Post, Nicole Gelinas points out that Mayor De Blasio has set a precedent that might well come back to bite the city (the example she cites would be “Black Lives Matter protesters want a statue of police brutalizing a black man in front of One Police Plaza”. She also explains why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,28,13],"tags":[102,321,43],"class_list":["post-38219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-media","category-usa","tag-art","tag-nyc","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9Wr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38222,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38219\/revisions\/38222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}