Barbie for corporate lawyers

I’ve checked Mattel’s website to make sure that it had some women on its board, immediately after watching the Barbie movie. Of course it does. Otherwise, it was not going to approve a joke about all male boards. Anyway, here are some of my thoughts after watching the movie. This is not a movie review, rather it is just a few thoughts that a corporate law academic interested in diversity (check out my book, The Corporate Diversity Jigsaw or just some briefs of the book) had after watching the movie. For an actual movie review, check out the one by the trusted FT team.

I’ve previously written approvingly about a Netflix show gently laughing at our current efforts to increase diversity in boards and across the workforce. Well, there’s some of that in this movie as well. When Ken (played by Gosling) discovers patriarchy and asks an executive if there is no patriarchy in that place because the executive has just refused him a job, the executive’s reply is something along the lines of, oh it exists but we have to carefully pretend that it doesn’t.

Anyway, what I found more interesting was a gentle dig at how we blame corporations for everything (‘Blame Mattel, they make the rules’ said someone in the movie, I don’t quire remember who). I think there was something for ‘corporate purpose’ watchers as well. There is this whole narrative about how Mattel made barbie so that little girls can dream of being judges, and doctors, and lawyers (i.e. ‘to inspire the limitless potential in every girl’)…well atleast this is true for later versions of Barbie. Then there is the counter-narrative about how this has really not solved anything in the real world. Well, corporations might do something with a ‘social purpose’ (the act can be profitable too i.e. what we call purpose with profit) or atleast put on social spin on their actions. But they can only do so much. In the real world, Mattel or another company does not make the rules. At least not all the rules.