Never marry a jerk

Today’s “Morning Ireland” on RTE featured an interview with retired Professor Linda Hirschmann, in Dublin to address a conference in Trinity College on why women are less successful in business that their male counterparts.

This coincided with another discussion item on the programme; “Boys continue to trail girls in exams”, which discussed the routine finding that girls do better in the Leaving cert than boys.

So the question, discussed between female guest and female interviewer, was why the cleverer sex continues to trail the dumber one in terms of top jobs.
It turns out that Prof. Hirschmann has a set of golden rules for successful women to follow, which includes the following gem: “Never marry a jerk”.

That got a laugh in Montrose. I even laughed myself. But if a male guest in a similar discussion had offered “never marry a cow” as a golden rule for successful men, he’d have been immediately jumped on by the interviewer and doubtless RTE’s switchboard would have melted with calls from outraged females. Undoubtedly, Trinity College would have been pressurised to withdraw his invitation to speak at a conference.

So let’s consider the undisputed fact that girls do better academically than boys, but men do better than women in the workplace.

Women have consistently diagnosed this as a result of endemic prejudice against women in the workplace, the infamous glass ceiling.

But the reason may be far more straightforward and simple.

Could it just be that Women are generally better in theory, but men are generally better in practice. ?