From the moment "Fearless Girl," a bronze statue of a small child, landed in lower Manhattan to face off against the 7000-pound sculpture of a charging bull, installed in 1989 as a symbol of Wall Street resilience, there were reasons, it seemed, to feel queasy.
While others saw a narrative of female defiance - the girl's torso thrusts forward as if she has a chance - I saw an exercise in corporate imaging.
![The "Fearless Girl" in Wall Street, New York.](/web/20170327024324im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/2/2/5/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gv1z73.png/1490360695210.jpg)
The statue, created by an artist named Kristen Visbal, was put in place on the eve of International Women's Day, March 8, by the investment firm State Street Global Advisors. It's aim was to celebrate "the power of women in leadership," a message the company delivered, we might note with some irony, absent the depiction of an actual woman. And it's due for removal in April, although there are calls to make it a permanent fixture.
Corporate feminism operates with the singular goal of aiding and abetting a universe of mothers who tuck their daughters in at night whispering, "Someday, honey, you can lead the emerging markets and sovereign debt team at Citigroup, and then become a director at Yahoo."
The point of "Fearless Girl" was, in fact, to advertise a State Street initiative pushing companies to include more women on their boards. Although the firm has said it is working to improve the number of female executives in its own ranks, it hasn't been close to exemplary in this regard: Of its 28-person leadership team, only five are women, according to the company website.
Is the root of this effort an organic wish to buoy the ambitions of confident little girls in high-tops? Not particularly. As the firm's marketing materials clearly state, "research shows that companies with greater levels of gender diversity have had stronger financial performance" and "fewer governance-related issues such as bribery, corruption, shareholder battles and fraud."
With this assertion, we are returned to the era of temperance movements, when 19th-century women were enlisted as moral safeguards essentially for the purpose of propelling capitalism's journey forward on the backs of a sober labour force, ensuring that rich industrialists got richer.
To believe that women can provide a certain kind of salvation in this sense - to speculate that we might have avoided the 2008 financial crisis entirely if only for a little more Girl Power - requires its own brand of sexism: the belief that women just don't have what it takes to be as greedy as men. Only someone with no exposure to the Real Housewives franchise could legitimately hold this view.
It is a high moment for gestural feminism, from the vapid Sheryl Sandberg-isms of Ivanka Trump ("Never settle," she says; who has to with a staff?) to the proliferation of pink hats from the West Side of Manhattan to the Los Angeles Westside.
Tourists have been flocking to take pictures of "Fearless Girl." On a recent cold evening, with 30 people or so surrounding the statue and vying for the right shot, I met a mother from Texas who had cut short the time she spent in the September 11 museum to bring her four daughters to catch a glimpse of "Fearless Girl" before it got too dark.
Even the New York City public advocate, Letitia James, who is generally more concerned with the struggles of the have-nots than the have-Harvard-MBAs, has made time to join the throngs now calling for "Fearless Girl" to remain at her location permanently.
#Fearlessgirl shows women, young & old, no dream is too big & no ceiling too high. She should be a permanent fixture https://t.co/KniutR936a
— NYC Public Advocate (@NYCPA) March 13, 2017
In a letter she wrote to Mayor Bill de Blasio suggesting "Fearless Girl" should extend her stay, James argued that all women would be inspired by her. But really, how inspiring is a symbol of financial-world gender inequity to a cashier at CVS?
The point is not that working to expand the presence of women on corporate boards is in itself an unworthy goal. It is that building a bronze monument to the plight of the more than 14 million women who make up two-thirds of the low-wage workforce would also be worthy. But would anyone Instagram that?
The New York Times
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