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California May Become First State To Require Companies To Have Women On Their Boards (techcrunch.com)
Two female state senators from California are spearheading a bill to require companies to have women on their boards. "SB 826, which won Senate approval with only Democratic votes and has until the end of August to clear the Assembly, would require publicly held companies headquartered in California to have at least one woman on their boards of directors by end of next year," reports TechCrunch. "By 2021, companies with boards of five directors must have at least two women, and companies with six-member boards must have at least three women. Firms failing to comply would face a fine." From the report: "Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas," said Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, who is sponsoring the bill with Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego. "It's not only the right thing to do, it's good for a company's bottom line."
Yet critics of the bill say it violates the federal and state constitutions. Business associations say the rule would require companies to discriminate against men wanting to serve on boards, as well as conflict with corporate law that says the internal affairs of a corporation should be governed by the state law in which it is incorporated. This bill would apply to companies headquartered in California. [A] legislative analysis of the bill cautioned that it could get challenged on equal protection grounds, and that it would be difficult to defend, requiring the state to prove a compelling government interest in such a quota system for a private corporation.
Yet critics of the bill say it violates the federal and state constitutions. Business associations say the rule would require companies to discriminate against men wanting to serve on boards, as well as conflict with corporate law that says the internal affairs of a corporation should be governed by the state law in which it is incorporated. This bill would apply to companies headquartered in California. [A] legislative analysis of the bill cautioned that it could get challenged on equal protection grounds, and that it would be difficult to defend, requiring the state to prove a compelling government interest in such a quota system for a private corporation.
What about companies with all female board of directors? Will they be forced to have males on board or does equality only matter when you have a vagina?
Wait a minute. I'm Hispanic. Where is the law that requires companies to have at least one Hispanic on their board? Why does the California legislature hate me?
It's about the intersectional thing now. A woman? Why not a black muslim woman? Or better yet someone who is transgender or gender fluid? That law is so behind the times. You have to be a member of a grievance group to get attention.
Sadly - this identity politics thing is fueling the rise of white nationalism. Which is another identity ground centered around grievance as well. Strangely - many far left and far right groups are in solidarity on socialism. Weird.
I thought we were working to make everyone treated the same?
Now, women need preference quotas to fill chairs.
Got it. I'm SURE that will give them the respect they precisely deserve.
-Styopa
James Damore got in trouble, because his memo said that women don't think the same way that men do.
But Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson says, "Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas."
So do women think differently from men, only when this difference should make you want to hire women?
I'd like men to live as long as women, and to have a suicide rate that's equally low. Can we get more funding for research (and subsidized medical care) to level the playing field? And how about criminal justice interventions which stop our prisons from being full of men?
Equality is great, unless it's applied unevenly. And frankly, I will worry about boards of directors after I worry about healthcare and unequal application of justice.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
My exposure to board-level people is that the positions are sinecures meant to demonstrate the bonafides of the company and provide inside access to the resources that board member is associated: eg. inventment banker, or someone from a VC firm, or the President's son. In other words the notion of "most qualified" is laughable.
California is attempting to address the chicken-and-egg problem of increasing the number of women in a position to be influential enough to ask to join the board in the first place.
This bill is a pretty blunt-force approach, but corporations are creatures of the state and this isn't an instance where a quota would have an impact on anything that could pretend to be a meritocracy.
There are fewer women on boards not becuse women are less intelligent but because there are fewer of them at the top of corporations , fewer of them with the depth of experience which would actually br beneficial to a company. The reason for that is not discrimination, it's that women overwhelmingly make different life choices than the men who fight their way to the top of these companies. It's perfectly clear ftom the internationsl data thst this is their vhoice. That is their right.
There are women who are accomplished and sit on boards , run companies etc., just a lot fewer.
What gets me is when women encounter the real level of competetive viciousness inside companies, they think they're being targeted because they're women. Wrong. They do the exact same thing to men, it's just that men eat it.
Women are smarter in a certain way. They see how bad it is and decide it's not worth it earlier than men do. They preserve more of their vital years for thing that matter than men do. This has to be counted as a form of intelligence.
Ihave a friend who works at a hospital. She watches high powered men die all the time. They almost all regret how they dpent their lives.
I would not want to have accomplished what Steve Jobs accomplished if it came with the price tag of being the person we now know Steve Jobs to have been.
You buy things with the hours of your life. Some peopel, men mostly, buy command psoitions in corporations and all that goes with that. That is their due. You can't just hand it out to people who didn't earn it.
In situations like this forcing in a small wedge can be what is needed to start a move towards a genuine meritocracy and a system that doesn't exclude women.
I can't really see how you can conclude that, given what you just said:
Look at the average board and it's full of cronyism and nepotism.
Thinking that a cradle of cronyism and nepotism magically becomes a place of genuine meritocracy, by just including women, is just a baseless delusion.
It is either a meritocratic place or it is not: throwing women into the equation, you get either a meritocratic place with a few women more (possibly less meritocratic then) or a meeting of cronies (now both male and female cronies).
In the end it does nothing for "women", it is good only for a few, already privileged, women, namely the president's daughter, the CEO's lover and the venture capitalist's sister.
If you do not believe what I just said, look at how well "coloured quotas" worked in South Africa for coloured people (and South Africa at large).
He's pointing out that "qualifed" just means a member in good standing of the financial nobility. Skill, intelligence, etc usually associated with "merit" have nothing to do with it.
No, because no woman has ever been attacked in a highly highly gendered fashion, called "bitches" when aggressive (though less than their "go-get-it" male counterparts), accused of sleeping around, or of being pre-menstrual, etc, etc, etc. You're livin in fucken dreamland matey.
I know - my wife was the highest paid person in her company - Higher indeed than the owner. It was a company involved in flooring and construction, so lots of "traditional men" worked there.
All those things happened.
She was called a bitch - by women.
She was accused all the time of sleeping with the boss - by women.
All of that stuff that people try to attribute to men. Man, there were some nasty sexist bigot women there.
One thing both she and I learned was that there is a interesting relationship between loud people and what they say, and what they do.
These women were very loud about how they were oppressed because of their sex, but if a woman did well, they made excuses for that success based soley on..... sex. Projection 101. They were sexist bigots, and the only positive thing they got out of their bigotry was a cheap easy excuse for their own lack of success.
Their projection was not unlike the Social Conservative gay hating folks who rail on about the unholy sinful acts of sodomy, but then are caught having sex with another of the same sex.
This is no accident, it is projection. Accuse others of what you are.
there are sexists of both sexes, obviously. I merely point out that if we use sexism to cure sexism, it will never work.
And since Animojo will chime in here, telling me I am doing the same - no, I'm not.
If I wrote something stupid like "All women are sexist", that would be a pretty good indicator that I was projecting, and probably am guilty of what I am accusing others of.
No, I just react, noting that a system that determines qualification for a position based on the equipment between a person's legs, is the very definition of sexist. These sexist women are trying to pass an overtly sex based law. To deny that is to be sexist.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.