Please Someone Inform This Billionaire CEO That Parenting Isn’t Just Women’s Work

You may not know who Jamie Dimon is because he is a billionaire who hasn’t bought a social media platform or hosted SNL, but there is a decent chance you bank with him since he’s the CEO of JPMorgan. And since we’re writing about him, you know he did something, well, billionaire-y. No, he didn’t murder 101 dogs to create a coat. (Though I think he’d have his assistants do that, don’t you?) Instead, he said some very Lucille Bluth-ian remarks about remote work in public that I’m sure he now wishes he hadn’t, since he’s getting intense blowback. Per Business Insider:

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is known for opposing remote work, but said it can make sense for jobs like coding and researching, and for women with child or parent care concerns.

“I think it’s perfectly reasonable to help women,” Dimon said during an interview Thursday from Davos, Switzerland where the World Economic Forum is being held. “For example, COVID taught us the burden on women, because they take the primary care, for parent care, etcetera, is enormous.”

Yes ladies, see, you and you alone are tasked with caring for children. It is a woman’s job to watch children. It is a man’s job to make extremely stupid comments to publications, apparently. Or at least one man’s job. Talking about you, Jamie Dimon. Congratulations on just now learning about the “burden” so often placed on women to be primary caregivers and a very merry un-congratulations on not using your wealth and power to do anything but reinforce it.

Obviously, people on social media are less than pleased:

Heteronormative ick aside, can we all just bask in the above quote for a second, please? Because I guarantee you Ol’ Jamie thought he was nailing it with that quote, and I’ll tell you why. That man is worth $1,600,000,000, and I wanted to write it out so you can see all those zeros. (Note: I had to google it, too, because it is so many zeros.) Do you think for a second that there wasn’t an entire household staff raising his three daughters? I’m happy to be proven wrong here, but you know he considered it a triumph that he even recognized for a second that some of his employees were responsible for their own childcare. A regular man of the people right here, folks.

The fact that he got it so comically wrong is on some level, hilarious. Can you imagine being the person who now has to gently break it to him why it is offensive to imply that women are solely responsible for childraising and that it’s not uncommon for his employees to be comprised of family units that are not solely man and woman? If it were me, I’d somehow try to get him to guess the cost of a single banana, for my own amusement, and I’d probably not be able to contain myself if he estimated $10.

Personally—and take my opinion with a grain of salt because I’m not a CEO of a publically traded company, I’m just a person who once had a three-hour commute per day so I hate going into an office—if a job can be done well remotely, why the hell does CEO care if it’s done in the office or not?

Well, according to Dimon, it’s because the company needs to be okay:

And he said that while it might be “OK” to have remote or hybrid workers in some jobs, it also “better be okay for the company, the clients, not just the individual.” 

Uh, the “company” is not a living thing, so I guess I will continue to not work for banks and be just fine and dandy. For anyone who does out there, I wish you all the best and sincerely mean that because, with leadership like that, you all have your work cut out for you.

(featured image: NBC)