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.

Comments

Re:Consistency

[pots]

James Damore got in trouble because in between a complaint about Google corporate culture and a set of proposals to address that problem, he decided to insert his own little screed about all of the ways in which he thought women and men were different. It was poorly supported, inflammatory, and worst of all unnecessary. That middle section contributed nothing to his proposal.

However, if all that he had said in that middle section was, "Men and women think differently." he would not have gotten fired, his memo would not have created a shitstorm, and no one outside of Google would have ever heard of him. I'm going to be generous and say that your attempt to link these two things is forced.

Re: Diversity, but not for all

[slashdice]

where does old black pussy fall on the spectrum?

Re:Diversity, but not for all

[dryeo]

Isn't it Trump who keeps attacking the press and various other forms of speech? As well as salivating over any dictator, whether left (if you can call N. Korea left) or extreme right wing Muslims.
Really it is authoritarians that hate free speech, authoritarianism is bad whether coming from the left or the right.

Re:forcing of diversity

[AmiMoJo]

After decades of trying to address this if companies still have zero women on their boards we must conclude one of two things.

A) Women are just not good enough to be board members

B) Boards are not meritocracies

A seems exceedingly unlikely, where as B is pretty well established. Look at the average board and it's full of cronyism and nepotism.

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.