Using the form of words favoured by comedian Adam Hills, Stuart Wheeler, the UKIP treasurer, needs to stop being a dick.
The latest drivel he’s reportedly spouting is that because women, in his opinion, are “nowhere near as good as men” at games like chess, bridge and poker it should somehow disqualify them from being properly represented in the ranks of business leaders.
Now, I’ve no idea how being good at games correlates with being an effective leader (nor where he gets the evidence to substantiate his claim – after all, Judit Polgar is a pretty decent chess player) but I do know that for most things, the differences found within a gender are far more significant than the differences found between genders.
As for leadership skills, the between gender differences are miniscule and vary between just favouring men or women on average depending on the measure used, as demonstrated, for example, in Janet Shilbey-Hyde’s 2005 comprehensive meta-study, The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.