A heated debate broke out on GB News today after Youtuber Pearl Davis argued that women "just need to work harder".
This comes after the former boss of the FTSE Women Leaders Review has warned that nearly seven out of 10 of the "most powerful jobs in UK business" are still going to men and there remains "much more to do" to boost female representation in Britain’s boardrooms.
Speaking on GB News, Davis said: "Women aren't breaking that glass ceiling, because really, we're not doing equal work. Women don't build any of these companies.
"When we look at top female billionaires, we see Kim Kardashian, where men have Elon Musk. If women aren't willing to build these companies themselves, why do we go to the men and say give me the best jobs in these companies?
Youtuber Pearl Davis said that women just "don't work as hard'
GB News
"If we look at society at large, women don't do the hardest jobs. Men create 75 per cent of our food, 80 per cent of our stuff. And in 150 years of Nobel Peace Prize for the hardest things like physics or chemistry zero women have won.
"We're not picking career fields or even going to college for the highest paying stuff. We are not working as hard as men and therefore we're not getting the results that men are getting."
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Feminist Jean Hatchet was left fuming with the comments and responded: "I mean this is an absolute basic level of inequality on a board. Because what Pearl is saying is that women don't have merit because they don't do the work, but you've already got those boards stocked with men who decided the merit of those [other] men.
"So we're working within an already established patriarchal society which has already laid the groundwork for those men to lead those companies and do all this work that Pearl assumes they are more capable of than women. For those board positions, 65 per cent of those positions are nominations. Those men nominate other men.
"That's the patriarchal society we've lived in and been aware of for centuries. And Pearl can pretend she's not aware of it but that's how you build a career as a YouTuber."
She added: "Male violence against women is at epidemic levels. So when you're asking why women aren't there, why they aren't doing this work, there are much deeper reasons why women don't attain those heights, specifically working-class women who will never get anywhere near a boardroom."
The Youtuber said: "I disagree that we are in a patriarchy. I would say we're in something closer to a matriarchy where women have more power than men. I've spoken to corporate recruiters and they actually give women preferential treatment through DAI hiring practices. I disagree completely that anything is holding me back."
Bev Turner looked shocked by the comments
GB News
She added: "Male violence is preventing me from getting a job. Are you kidding me? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Women are the more violent gender. When we look at the most abusive relationships. Do you know what they are? Lesbians. Lesbians are the most abusive."
GB News host Bev Turner interjected and said: "It is just empirically evidentially true that our prisons across the world are full of men who have murdered their female partners, as opposed to women who have murdered their male partners. That's just nonsense."
Davis fumed back: "Women have aborted an eighth of the world population, the most violent place someone can be is in their mother's womb."
Hatchett responded: "There are other issues as well as maternity and the commitments of family life for women. Some of the comments there about lesbian women were abhorrent, I think we've also got to look at menopause."
Davis tried to interrupt the feminist and she said: "Can I speak, please? You're very rude at interrupting. I've seen your interviewing style. It's not pleasant. Please stop."
Jean Hatchet claimed that she was being "very rude"
GB News
She went on to explain: "You have levels of maternity that put pressures on women. You've got menopause. You have got a system where women will not put themselves forward for jobs because of decades of having their confidence undermined by men in the workplace.
"Some of that is sexual harassment. Not all. Not all women are subject to sexual harassment. But we have to stick with statistics here, and we have to stick with how men get to those positions and why women don't.
"And throwing out these random anecdotal examples of why you can particularly get to a position that ignores the actual experience of women attempting to get to those positions that not that's not really an argument.
"It's dismissing, you know, the statistical evidence of why women don't get there."
