Women are necessary, lovely, delightful, wonderfully colourful creatures.

One could use the same words to describe a potted plant. So cute! Would you like one for your office? It would go really well with your new decor and ergonomic furniture! Give it a try. Just don’t let them take over the running of the company. These pretty things are not very good at business. Did you read about a certain company featured in the Business Daily?

The Nation Media Group’s Business Daily is at it again. Last week it ran an awful advice column in which an ‘expert’ psychologist did some intense victim-blaming.This week's offensive column is written by a research fellow. Now, we know or at least can assume that fellows are funded to carry out research and contribute to the generation of new knowledge in their respective fields.

Anyone with the most rudimentary idea of research knows that you cannot make assertions such as the ones Peter Mutua makes without the backing of some credible data. 

Instead, he uses a badly posited anecdote. Company x did not do well because it was ran by a predominantly female board. One would assume that Mutua has controlled for all the things that make for a successful business: the right business strategy; the right products; the right marketing and sales; market reception; motivated workforce; competition; macroeconomic factors such as inflation, and many others. Holding all these factors constant, the company would have thrived if it had been run by a mixed-sex board.This would be the equivalent of arguing that company y does well, not because it has the right market mix, but because it is run by an all-male board. It is the sex, not the skills and competencies that make a board; is that right, Mr. Mutua?

I am equally baffled by the Nation Media Groups irresponsibility as displayed by publishing such articles. NMG needs to answer several questions. Has it run out of professional editors? Are the current editors misogynist or simply uncaring? Is there media group pursuing a sensationalist agenda? Incidentally, the same Business Daily Publication printed an article in April 2013 calling for more women in boardrooms. Identity crisis or printing articles for the sake of it?

When Kenyan women are facing assaults on so many fronts; from public stripping to being taken advantage of by the porn industry, why is an otherwise-respected media group supporting and abetting such unhelpful attitudes? Should the media be reporting with apparent glee these incidents, or investigating why for example, none of the men who have been stripping women at bus stops have not been arrested and prosecuted? 

Such articles should not see the light of day.