A short monologue by Sridhari Desai (uploaded by Katie McManus) summarizing research that the presence of child-related items or on-site daycare correlates with more ethical behavior and greater corporate philanthropy. The speaker links this effect to the idea that matriarchal societies center children (not women) and suggests matriarchy could outperform patriarchy in fostering ethical behavior.
So apparently teddy bears can make companies more ethical. So this study was fascinating. If you want to go and read the details, you can go and look it up. But anyway, Sridhari Desai and her colleague wanted to find out if there was any influence on how adults behaved, if there were toys in the room. And apparently their studies showed that adults acted more honestly when there were teddy bears or crayons or things that just indicated children. And they were trying to figure out if this actually had real world applications. And so they did a bunch of research and they actually found that companies that have five or more daycare centers on the premises give a ton more money philanthropically. So it's fascinating that just the mere presence of children in a work environment can urge the professionals, the people in the company, to act more ethically. And I read something a while ago that was comparing patriarchy to matriarchy. So patriarchy is when we center men. And so you would assume that matriarchy would be all about centering women. But no, if you study any matriarchal society, it is not the women who are centered, it's the children. And the workplaces that they studied that had all these daycare centers, obviously were workplaces that did center children. So I think we're seeing some real world data that matriarchy could potentially be a lot better than patriarchy. I know. Amazing, right?