Too Many Women In The Wrong Places (Again)

History Doesn't Repeat Itself But It Rhymes 

Longtime readers may recall our post from 2022, "Too Many Women In The Wrong Places", which sparked a a vigorous discussion here of more than 300 comments. In that post, we quoted our friend Emil Kirkegaard's Substack piece about the consequences of shoe-horning women into roles for which they aren't suited. Emil mentioned the story of the Norwegian navy frigate, the KNM Helge Ingstad, 

As Emil wrote there, 

As women increasingly are hired into traditionally male jobs via affirmative action laws or indirect pressure via media, we see more and more incompetence. This is true whether it is academia, the military or the police. Here's a funny example from Norway a few years ago. The Norwegian navy was recruiting more women and celebrating their great success in their own magazine Forsvarets Forum (Forum of the Defense) in April 2017.

We can read a quote from one female navigator named Emilie Jakobsen Ophus:

- Det er en fordel å være mange kvinner om bord. Det blir jo med en gang en naturlig greie og et ganske annerledes miljø, som jeg ser på som positivt.

- It is an advantage to be many women onboard. It immediately becomes a natural thing and a quite different environment, which I see as positive.

She is named a navigator on the KNM Helge Ingstad, which is, well was, a frigate. You can guess where this is going. The article also mentions that 4 out of 5 navigators onboard are female. Fast forward to only the next year and we see this headline:

You can find many sources about this accident, but the story is quite simple. They sailed into a fucking tank ship due to incompetent navigation. 

Emil went on to note that the science of human differences was pretty clear that women should not be given preference in jobs like navigating, which require high spatial ability: 

From a HBD [Human Biodiversity] perspective, this stuff is gruelingly obvious. Not only are women more less interested in these jobs to begin with, but they obviously lack talent compared to men. We know this because spatial ability -- the sine qua non of navigators -- shows a large male advantage even from childhood. The same way men also dominate basically all sports relating to spatial ability, even where physical strength is not an advantage (e.g. race car driving). 

Emil went on to link to and quote from scientific studies backing that up. 

Looks Like It Happened Again 

Flash forward to this past weekend, when New Zealand suffered its first naval loss since World War II, as the HMNZS Manawanui, helmed by Captain Yvonne Gray, sank after running aground on a reef off of Samoa. 

A Bizarre Defense Of DEI At Sea

This incident prompted a bizarre defense of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) by maritime journalist John A Konrad V on X. 

From his X post: 

I interviewed a female veteran who served as an officer on [U.S.] ships about this incident, and she shared an intriguing perspective I’ve never heard before.

She said that it took men centuries and thousands of shipwrecks to master commanding ships without major incidents, and we should expect some losses as women, who think differently, learn the ropes and gain that experience too doing it their way.

She said losses are to be expected and they are ok especially if there’s no loss of life. She said we shouldn’t try to investigate this from a male perspective but learn lessons from a female perspective.

I didn’t include this in the article because I couldn’t figure out how to present it without sparking a DEI firestorm, but it’s a thought-provoking take nonetheless. I kinda agree. Women do think different and this could become be a major tactical advantage for us but testing new methods and systems of thought comes with risks, especially at sea.

A major tactical advantage: sinking our own ships before the enemy sinks them? It's hard to imagine the China will employ this "tactical advantage" in its navy anytime soon. 

Speaking Of China...

On Sunday, ZeroHedge noted on X that Goldman Sachs finally acknowledged that China's stimulus-fueled rally is likely to have legs. 

We’ve had two recent exits on China trades, a 200% gain on our calls on Qifu Technologies (QFIN 0.00%↑), and an 88% gain on our X Financial (XYF 0.00%↑) shares.

On Friday, the top two names in Portfolio Armor's automated daily ranking system were two other China-linked stocks. We have options trades teed up on both of them for later today.

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