Guys, this is your fault

When an overweight frat boy spills his beer all over me at Kilroy’s, I blame him.
For obvious reasons, I extrapolate that blame to all the rest of mankind. My drenched shirt is, clearly, a man’s fault.

When I am subjected to blabbering ESPN commentators droning on and on about how “watching the game in HD even sounds more realistic,” I blame men.

Moreover, I wholeheartedly believe that if men did not walk the planet, I would never again have to listen to explanations of how awesome Marissa Miller is. (She hasn’t ever done anything. At least Brad Pitt can act.) So, for that, I also blame men.

And when the economy comes crumbling down, crashing under the weight of the imploding financial sector ... that’s right – I blame men.

Credit crunch? Global economic downturn? Oh, they have guilty male fingerprints all over them.

Now, boys, in all fairness, I am no anti-male feminist. Before you throw my column down, muttering under your breath “stupid man-hater,” hear me out (I know, I know, listening has never been one of your stronger skills, but bear with me).

If you were to begin pointing fingers for the financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, where would you start? The disgraced CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, would be a great first pick.

Or perhaps George W.? He was, after all, behind most of the deregulation that allowed the state of American finances to decay so much in the first place (and he’s just fun to blame for stuff).

So, here’s my challenge to you, men of IU: name for me one prominent female figure deserving of a finger point. Can you provide even one woman responsible for any of the companies that led to our economic demise?

As Harriet Harman, the British Labour party’s deputy leader, suggested, had it been the Lehman Sisters rather than the Lehman Brothers, the crisis may not have been so bad.

A study that appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences correlated more confidence and risk-taking appetite with higher levels of testosterone. The study suggested that too much testosterone could lead to impulsive decisions and extreme risk-taking.

I am not the only one who has taken notice.

“Maleness has become a synonym for insufficient attentiveness to risk,” Chris Caldwell said in Time magazine.

Bloggers have suggested that we refer to the current economic situation as the ‘he-session.’

Reihan Salam even went so far as to reference the “macho men’s club called finance capitalism” in his article in Foreign Policy.

Females have always been underrepresented in the business sector.
Girls, we make up just one-third of business school students. And while we account for 35 percent of MBAs, only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are ladies.

Had women been holding the reins of the financial sector, rather than men, would we find ourselves in the current predicament?

It’s impossible to know – but I’d like to think not.

Nonetheless, it is certainly an idea worthy of contemplation. Perhaps this world still stands a lot to benefit from the contributions of women. Hopefully, they will not continue to be such a stark minority in powerful positions such as chief executive.