Archive for April, 2011

With the election a week away, it’s a tough call. No one predicted the rise and rise of Jack Layton. The last time I saw this phenomenon was during the 1972 election when I was press secretary to Robert L. Stanfield, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, as it was then called. As soon as the election was under way, and we began travelling, surprise issues began bubbling up from the street. There was an unhappiness across the country that almost cost Pierre Trudeau his job as prime minister. Trudeau ran a campaign that has similarities to Stephen Harper’s current endeavour. “The Land is Strong,” declared the Liberal slogan. The words haven’t appeared this time around, but the sentiments of the government are similar.

So what happens May 2? If the NDP win 50 seats, their best result ever, the Liberals slide to 70, and the Bloc drops to 38, Harper falls short of a majority with 149 seats as Helena “This Individual” Guergis wins her riding as an independent. Harper meets the house and gets the support of the Bloc who don’t want another election right away because they know they’ll be wiped out and have to go find real jobs – while collecting their fat federalist pensions.

If the NDP wins more than 50 seats, anything could combust. One outcome, after a session or two with the Governor-General, is a combination of opposition parties creating a coalition. Or, with left-leaning voters split between Liberals and NDP in a way that helps Conservative candidates, Harper could win a majority. Whatever the result, for an election that began by looking like it would yield more of the same, this contest has become a fireworks display with roman candles and rockets in all directions. Hurrah for Democracy. Canada certainly isn’t Yemen or Syria or Egypt, but we’re having our very own Rite of Spring.

Everything I read about PlayBook, the new tablet from Research In Motion that’s about to be launched, says it isn’t quite ready. In technology, when did this begin to matter? Microsoft sold software for years that had glitches, fixing them on the fly. RIM has been through this before with the launch of the BlackBerry itself.

Dave Castell, just recently graduated from University of Waterloo was put in charge of a team in 1998 to create what would become BlackBerry. Until that point, RIM had in essence been making two-way pagers. One of the books that Castell’s group found helpful was Guy Kawasaki’s “Rules For Revolutionaries.” One of the chapters, called “Don’t Worry, Be Crappy,” described the launch of the Macintosh in 1984 and argued that revolutionary products can’t be perfect. Companies can’t keep postponing the launch to make improvements. Another chapter, “Churn, Baby, Churn” said that once a product was released, then you fix the problems that show up as fast as possible.

Launched on January 19, 1999, BlackBerry had glitches that all got fixed. Why it didn’t even look like the current version; it still resembled the teeny, tiny previous model known as the Inter@ctive Pager 950. It wasn’t until April 2000 that the BlackBerry 957 was introduced with a bigger, sharper screen that displayed twice as many lines as its predecessor and appeared like the more modern versions.

So what’s the big deal? Not-quite-ready-for-market has an honorable history. As for missing ingredients, does iPad have Flash?

I tried to watch the entire two-hour debate, I really did. Steve Paikin was a good host, the format was workable, the questions pointed, but Gilles Duceppe eventually drove me away. At times he spoke gibberish. Let’s cut off the Bloc’s public money. Canada has a history of regional political parties becoming national parties but the BQ has been around twenty years without showing any interest in growing beyond Quebec’s borders. All they do now is prevent a majority government. Without the multi-million dollar annual subsidies they would wither away as well they should.

Jack Layton had the best one liners. To the prime minister: “Where’s the old Steven Harper gone? You’ve become what you used to oppose.” To Michael Ignatieff, “You’re Mr. Harper’s best friend.” His crack about crooks in the Senate, however, was a step too far. As for Ignatieff, he had his moments, but for an intelligent man who has lived abroad, written a stack of books, and commented on public issues for decades he seemed tongue-tied. I was embarrassed for him. He could not even muster a response to Layton’s challenge about his poor attendance in the House of Commons.

Stephen Harper did well. He was unflappable and not about to stick his toe into the traps set for him. His relentless stare into the camera worked for me. The others looked like three men in a tub. Harper won the night on points.

Why have force-fed mentoring and fast-track programs meant to propel women upward in their careers failed so abysmally? Aren’t women trying hard enough? Do they need more help? Or are forces beyond their control stopping them? As Marlo Thomas famously said: “A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold.”

The term “glass ceiling” was first coined in the mid-80s. That metaphor, which suggested a barrier through which career women could not rise, has recently been replaced. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli offer a new description: a labyrinth. Rather than come up against one obstacle, they say women run into numerous challenges and dead ends throughout their time in the work force. Men provide the biggest challenge.

To be sure, women can be their gender’s own worst enemies. Mothers dress their seven-year-old daughters in frilly outfits to compete at the Little Miss pageant where beauty matters more than brains. In the workplace, many successful women refuse to help younger women get ahead.

For nearly twenty-five years, women have made up half the graduating classes in both law and accounting in Canada. But when it comes time to appoint partners in law and public accounting firms, women comprise only about 20 per cent of those who achieve this milestone. Call it the Amelia Earhart Syndrome: Missing in Action.

The record in financial services is just as bad. Since 2000 the number of female executives in financial services has been stuck at 17 per cent. Only 13 per cent of corporate directors are female. A proposal to increase the number of female directors on bank boards to parity with men over a ten-year period is receiving little support. Shareholders, mostly male, are voting to maintain the status quo in order to protect their own careers.

Sexism – overt or subtle – remains a powerful force holding back the progress of women at all levels in the workplace. Such discrimination by men represents an age-old pattern of alpha behavior that diminishes the value of women. As long as porn is two clicks away on the Internet, as long as there’s a restaurant chain called Hooters, women will be stereotyped and regarded by men as sex objects or second-class citizens who are but toys to be admired and controlled.