New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand asserted at a Tuesday conference that if women ran Lehman Brothers, then they might not have caused a financial collapse.
During a Center for American Progress conference, Gillibrand intended to talk about the importance of women but instead ended up tacitly blaming men for the 2008 recession.
“If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters we might not have had the financial collapse,” she asserted.
.@SenGillibrand talking up importance of women in power at CAP conference: “If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters we might not have had the financial collapse.”
— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) May 15, 2018
Gillibrand could be referring to studies that suggest women are more risk averse than men, as several articles post-collapse tested the “Lehman Sisters” hypothesis. However, this applies to men and women on average across all jobs. Alternate studies have found that women in management positions are just as comfortable with risk as their male counterparts.