The controversial feminist “Fearless Girl” statue, which has been staring down Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” — a symbol of the robust American economic machine — is about to get a new home in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
The statue, a publicity stunt commissioned by State Street Global Advisors, has “done its job,” State Street’s (male) CEO Cyrus Taraporevala told ABC News. He believes that 150 new female C-suite employees, added since “Fearless Girl” first went up, owe their jobs to the tiny bronze avatar.
Since Fearless Girl’s placement, more than 150 companies have added a female director to their boards,” he said “Our hope is that by moving her closer to the NYSE she will encourage more companies to take action and, more broadly, that she will continue to inspire people from all walks of life on the issue of gender diversity.”
The new female employees are probably the result of correlation and not causation, but no matter. Taraporevala is hardly the first person to claim “Fearless Girl” was evidence of a powerful new era in women’s equality. Everyone from New York’s mayor to Sen. Elizabeth Warren got shots of themselves posing alongside the statue, even though in staring down Wall Street’s “Charging Bull,” the little girl was really standing in the way of actual progress.
Not everyone loved it. The “Charging Bull” artist said it interfered with the meaning of his original work. Even some feminists objected to what they called an “infantilizing” symbol that reinforces, not shatters, sexism.
But typical leftists were smitten; “Fearless Girl” had a lease on its tiny bit of real estate for one year. Mayor Bill de Blasio extended that agreement in order to give the statue and its artist time to find it a new home. Now, the city claims that it will probably send “Charging Bull” over to the NYSE as well, even though it’s been a fixture in its current spot for close to four decades.
They have to be together. Or something.