How to get Feminists Interested in Finance. The Mark Latham Way

 

Australian Financial Review and Mark Latham Part Ways amid Anti-Women Controversy. Reports gathered that the Australian Financial Review (AFR) split ways with its former leader following controversial views on feminism which many see as anti-women.

Reports circulated on social media suggested that Mr. Latham; a columnist on Australian Financial Review for more than 8 years, has written his last column for the institution, said AFR’s editor in chief, Michael Stutchbury.

However, Michael stressed that all reports on social media suggesting that Latham was dismissed were incorrect despite several twitter handles carrying the reports.

It was gathered that, the parting of Latham with AFR came after Westpac who happen to be the co-sponsor of the 100 women of influence Awards with the Australian Financial Review, raised alarm about Latham’s anti-women remark in the column he wrote to Mr. Stutchbury. The spokesman of Westpac stressed that

“Westpac rejects certainly the comments made by Latham and with heavy heart, we expressed our concern, however we strongly believe that Mark’s comments on his column should not take away the efforts, recognition, and achievements of this inspiring women”. “Latham’s column is the responsibility of the Australian Financial Review and it would not be appropriate on any ground to comment further on any discussions that will be done on this issue.”

Moreover, Mr. Latham’s column has attracted lots of concern and anger among women with another Fairfax columnist, Lisa Pryor suing him for defamation. Her lawyer described his writings as deeply personal and ‘eruption of bile’.

It was gathered that the headline of the AFR column “why left feminist don’t like kids,” is the major talking point that caused uproar among journalists and the social media at large. And Ms Pryor who strongly disagrees with Mark’s comments said that her experiences in balancing studying medicine full time and raising two children at the same time were ‘caffeine’ and ‘antidepressants’.

However, Mr. Di Stefano wrote last week an in-debt analysis of the cloudy similarities between Mark’s comment on AFR column and that of the twitter handle ‘@RealMarkLatham’ in January stressing that, although the twitter is linked at the bottom of the Latham’s column in the past but there is no certainty as to whether that twitter handle is directly associated with Mr. Latham himself.

Mr. Stutchbury wrote, “mark has been a provocative and highly readable figure on columnist for the AFR and he has many a times been both appreciated and criticized by readers, but his contributions has played important role in Australian public life even though I didn’t always agree with what he wrote.’ He further defended the Australian financial review that it has all right to make provocative opinions even though some readers and nonreaders may find it offensive, but this is the hallmark and pure example of democracy. However, the controversies surrounding Mark Latham’s column raised some important issues about the effect of public speech in social media at large.

And that’s a wrap folks. Image from Wikipedia.