Fearless Girl is a Shill!

Update April 25, 2017 Apparently the original plaque has been removed, replaced by a sign that does not mention SHE.

In my previous post about the Fearless Girl statue now facing down the iconic bull on Wall Street, I criticized the sentiment on the bronze plaque at her feet as “inelegant.” The plaque reads: “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.”

Now, as your old English teacher will remind you, the pronoun “SHE,” being singular does not agree with the plural “women” to which it seems to refer, resulting in an “inelegant” grammatical structure. Frankly, I thought it strange that the folks at the ad agency responsible for FG couldn’t come up with a better sentence.

What I missed was that SHE is the NASDAQ ticker symbol for State Street Global Advisors’ Gender Diversity Index SHE fund, which is meant to appeal to investors wanting to invest in politically correct corporations. The fund invests in “U.S large capitalization companies that rank among the highest in their sector in achieving gender diversity across senior leadership.” So “SHE” does not refer to “women” but to the SHE fund.

In other words, Fearless Girl is promoting a commercial product—a product of Wall Street, no less— as she faces down the symbol of the power of Wall Street to make a thriving economy possible, including, one assumes, the success of State Street Global Advisors.

And she is promoting that product on City property.