Women of change – the whistleblower

 

International Women’s Day, commemorated on March 8 every year, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. We celebrate it but know that it is still near-impossible for women to have their views consistently respected, due to the archaic unwritten rules set by men.

Of course, women are also deemed to be a nuisance if they say anything that isn’t in the playbook written by the friendly misogynists. This phenomenon has been happening for years and continues to happen today, which is why we must celebrate International Women’s Day, and continue to support and sponsor women to be a bigger part of the economic voice.

We are now in 2022, and it is over 10 years ago that Corston-Smith published the Asean 5 Diversity Research report which showed that women directors positively impacted the performance of their respective companies. This research was conducted to examine whether “groupthink” or diverse boards were the answer to better company performance. We reviewed 3,054 companies in the Asean region. The most rewarding part of releasing the results of the research in 2011 was the reaction of the then policymakers, who subsequently announced the 30% target for corporate Malaysia.

As we stand today in 2022, it is now common language to appoint women as corporate directors (although the target of representation is still arguable). Going forward, we are now seeing “equity and inclusion” moving into this area of diversity on boards in some parts of the world. However, this is something we do not believe can readily happen here due to our existing laws.

There are generally three key risk areas going forward for most boards when examining sustainability. One main risk area is cyber security, and being able to clearly understand the algorithms used by your company. On this note, diversity, and not groupthink, at the board level is especially critical in the current world of social media.

In 2021, we saluted a very brave woman who was reported to have taken on large and powerful entities as she discovered years of wrongdoing by them. She is clearly someone who has the drive and desire, plus the information to uncover the truth; we all know that to be a female whistleblower takes a certain type of personality, which includes traits like self-confidence with strong moral convictions. We also are well aware that the boys’ club, i.e. the male network, will come into play at some point, where the perpetrators of the wrongdoing will support one another.

As whistleblowing is a long journey, it can also end up being a very lonely one, as many people will be inconsistent, and leave you high and dry, paying the price for going against the big and powerful. Ahead of the release of the information, there could be many who claim to support you; however, once the report is released, those who were on your side could move to the middle ground or to the other side altogether. This happens all the time, as money talks.

The key to whistleblowing is to ensure you follow the correct process so that you are protected by the relevant laws. Furthermore, the internal information that you reveal has to be accurate; whatever you do, do not use hearsay with personal summary comments or conclusions that are inflammatory and not factual. We have seen reports like that, which end up being futile.

In the global expose mentioned above, this very brave woman watched the unfair algorithms (what we refer to as “opinions”) that were building prejudice and hate within social media. As we have seen, hate sells and many social media platforms stoke hate by promoting it.

The revelation made by the whistleblower was that this particular social media company was using algorithms deliberately set to target young teenage girls. The goal? That one out of every three teenage girls’ body image would be slightly distorted.

One wonders:
Do the board members of this company know and condone these algorithms? And
If they don’t know, what are they doing about it, now that it has clearly been exposed?

With the pandemic, the dependency on social media for communication and connection exploded, as did these hate-feeding algorithms. It is unconscionable for this company to prey on young teenage girls who are now facing severe mental health issues because of all the poor body images repeated over and over again.

Again, it begs the question:
Where were the board members? Did they question management, whose job it was to correct what is clearly immoral?

Or, were they simply just enjoying the share price rise? Most likely, to carry favour of the founders with their booming net worth?

If you are willing to take advertising revenue that promotes distorted images, and uses hate as a business-revenue model, it really makes one wonder what companies are willing to make money off, and what kind of board members would allow this to happen. There is no point claiming to be sustainable or ESG-focused when your business model is deliberately causing mental health anguish in teenagers.

“It’s not simply a matter of users being angry, or one side being radicalised against another,” the whistleblower testified. “It’s about choosing to grow at all costs.”

Boards need to be well aware of this phase of algorithms, and artificial intelligence – as any non-compliance is going to be very expensive. Make no mistake that there will also be wide reaching litigation risks, as social media today has transformed the world to allow incorrect information and false imagery to be propagated over and over again with very dire consequences. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.