The Fearless Girl is an empty marketing ploy masquerading as female empowerment.
The firm behind the “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street isn’t as into gender diversity as it claims, at least according to one measure.
The investment management company State Street Corporation has positioned itself as an advocate for women and gender diversity in corporate America in recent years. In 2016, State Street launched an investment fund devoted to gender-diverse companies, and the following year, it placed a statue of the Fearless Girl staring down the Charging Bull in New York City’s Financial District. (The Fearless Girl statue has since moved to across from the New York Stock Exchange a couple of blocks away.)
But according to a new report from the investment research company Morningstar, State Street might not be putting its money — or rather, its shareholder votes — where its mouth is on promoting women in the upper echelons of corporations.
Of the 10 times its gender diversity fund used its shareholder votes to weigh in on a gender diversity or pay equity proposal for one of the companies it invests in over a three-year period, the fund only voted in favor of the proposal twice. Six times, it voted against the proposal, and twice, it abstained. Morningstar compared it to two other gender-focused funds, the Glenmede Women in Leadership US Equity Portfolio and the Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund, which voted for diversity and pay equity proposals every time.
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