There's plenty of blame to go around for the country's current financial mess. And one journalist is blaming 50 percent of the population -- men. According to Debora Spar at the Washington Post, women could very well have prevented this nightmare.

Reason 1: Dudes were in charge.
Her first point: All the key players in the economic crisis are male. Obviously, that's partly because there are more men than women in top spots at financial and insurance companies. Why? Because women just don't fit into the culture of excessive risk-taking and favor-giving that dominates those industries and effectively led to economic doomsday.

Reason 2: Women play it safer.
And how are women different than men in the workplace? They take fewer significant risks, for starters, and they tell on colleagues who are about to do something chancy. Take the case of Sherron Watkins, the first Enron executive to warn the CEO that the company was headed for ruin. Obviously, the boys didn't listen.

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Even men back up Spar's notion: A study by the Aziz Corporation, a U.K. independent executive communications firm, found that 89 percent of business executives believe a culture that rewarded excessive risk-taking played a role in the financial crisis. Almost half thought fewer risks would have been taken had more women been at the helm.

Reason 3: Women aren't afraid to problem-solve up front.
But it goes deeper than just avoiding risk, says Myra White, who teaches about managing workplace performance and organizational behavior at Harvard. Women are more creative problem solvers and are more apt to weigh options before choosing one. Unlike risk-taking, though, these traits aren't welcomed in corporate America.

"The male approach of acting first and thinking later has been heralded as the gold standard," she said. "Women who haven't embraced this approach are accused of over-thinking problems and ruminating too much."

The answer, says Spar, is putting more women in leadership positions where their voices will be better heard (something other countries have caught onto). Until then, women can apply the lessons learned from the recession to their own lives and careers by encouraging discussion before decision-making and considering the consequences of risks.

Tell us: Do you think men caused the recession?