Why isn't the excuse of "representing the public" used to require certain members have a particular religion or race as well? What about income?
Board members are about as far from representing society as you can get (and that's not the purpose of a board anyway) so I don't understand why this is being mandated. Seems like a strategy for cheap political points rather than any kind of well-reasoned reform.
Seeing “quotas” in action already I can tell you they have the opposite effect than desired or imagined. Until now some people could imagine they didn’t get the job but she did because she’s a woman. Now they know and they’ll always hold this kind of law as proof.
This does nothing to further women’s rights but certainly does a lot to discredit the ones that deseved to be there by casting a shadow over whether they’re there to legitimize the board in the eyes of the law.
This legitimizes the question “was it the skills or the legal requirement”?
Quotas have been a disaster in my country. Instead of hiring the best people so that we can compete better we've had to optimize for this variable q and often those seats have been kept empty as we haven't found that special person.
I didn't post the parent because I agree with this law completely, but to bring up the point.
The advocates of this law would probably argue that everyone discriminates all the time, including by gender.
I am on the fence. When I was younger I would have been firmly on the hands off libertarian side. Then I saw what a sham meritocracy can actually be and how much success is based on who you know. The more I saw of the high corporate and financial world the more liberal I became. Do some business consulting work and meritocracy starts to looks like survivorship bias.
Uppercase Liberal politicians and their education wizards (those who forgot liberal values, but would rather inflict collective punishment as a "solution") had forced bussing of kids in Northern California in the 80's and 90's. I had to ride the bus for an hour and a half each way, three hours total per day, because there were "too many" whites and Asians at a better school one block from where I lived. And I got to deal with gangs (XIV and XIII), drug dealers and far worse. Getting up at 4:15 am and not getting home until after 5 pm... at 8-11 years old. Affirmative action, my left foot.
That's a different type of mess. Was the specific quota mandated by law or left to the school or district level? It sounds more or less like what was happening with the self imposed quotas in companies until now. Many internal rules were re-written in such ways that sometimes finding the best person for the job was no longer the actual goal, but rather finding the best woman for the job. This was aimed at fixing discrimination with more discrimination at local level.
Now they took the next step and made it into law. They completely removed any illusion of a fairness for the next appointment on any currently male only board. Which isn't to say it was fair until now. Probably far from it. Just that now it's unfair with the blessing of a law.
The point is this is not about liberalism. The target isn't to fix the inequality issues. It's a vote grab. Which is why categories with less voting power and more PR issues are largely ignored many times and by many people.
A slippery slope argument seems really justified here as this legislation applies to boards that are quite small in size. If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board.
There is also a real concern with regulation like this is that the current climate of discussion is such that the negative effects are difficult to discuss in civil society. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people who object to this are sexists.
> If women need this special advantage, we only have to find a few other deserving minorities (race, religion and age seem like reasonable choices) before it is illegal to use merit as the first criteria for making up a corporate board.
Adding other categories is actually worse than that, because it creates the need to specifically appoint an asian catholic female age 35-49. An asian catholic female in the 50-74 age group is no good because then the younger age group is underrepresented, a hispanic catholic female in the 35-49 age group is no good because then asians are underrepresented, etc. So the last board member not only can't be chosen on merit, they basically have to be ordered from a catalog of people whose function is to fit into whatever weird shaped box is formed by the composition of the existing board members. And if anyone leaves they either have to be replaced by someone of the same gender, race, religion and age or you have to discharge other existing board members and reconstitute the board.
I think he meant that a potential chilling effect on discussion of such regulation is the likelihood that objectors would be labelled as sexist, thus being ignored as opposed to having their points debated upon their merit.
He didn't say that though, and it wasn't a complex sentence.
Logically speaking it's the other way around. People who are for this law are sexists (they want discrimination on the basis of sex) and the people against it are the non-sexists (appoint purely on merit). Obviously it will be inverted in many discussions: Orwell didn't invent the term doublespeak for no reason.
kwxza is correct. Obviously I'm not using the word according to its dictionary definition, but I'm in good company using it to mean "not in the best interests of females". In practice, the meaning of the word is being broadened by activists.
It seems wrong to assume that all trans people have the intention of undergoing a transition. I imagine there's a significant amount of people who feel that they were born into the wrong body, but find the transition process uncomfortable for whatever reason and choose to remain the way they were born.
A woman is defined in CA law, and the answer I gave is derived from that definition.
Personally, I favor far more liberal gender role freedom, and I prefer it precisely for the reasons given here.
More liberal gender norms would allow for greater personal expression, and covers these cases better.
People simply saying they identify as female is difficult to discern from those willing to game a law to get what could be an attractive board position, or present as a compliant group without actually complying.
Not all trans people fully transition. I never implied they must, or do.
However, the State of CA does require a few things to get that "F" on a drivers license, and those things involve a status change and some material effort to present as female.
Finally, some do feel they are better off staying as they were born. No worries, but doing that does also mean they are not going to be seen as women in the current law either.
All OK. I truly do not care what people do. People need and work best when they are able to be themselves. I much prefer meeting and interacting with the real person anyway.
It will be super interesting to see that play out in court!
I am getting downvoted. That is OK. CA requires a few things for Trans people to qualify as a gender other than the one indicated at birth. A complete transition is not required.
Frankly, gender fluidity and greater gender role freedom are two things I fully expect to play out in court. Both need to be addressed, and then more normalized.
Board members don't represent the public. In the U.S., they are elected by, and represent the shareholders. Evidently now for half the seats, the shareholders can elect whoever they want, as long as they identify as a woman.
It’s a bold move, and I don’t know that I think it’s the right way to do things. That said, it should start to break down glass ceilings and likely lead to behavior changes by adding female perspectives into the mix. It’ll probably also trickle down in hiring practices and possibly even product changes that are less male-focused.
I’d prefer it if women could achieve this on their own because they’re good and deserve it, but so far society seems to be stagnating... and with the recent Kavanaugh hearing and what Trump says and who he backs, I fear women’s rights are in danger and role is receding. I’m very curious to see how this plays out and what meaningful changes (if any) come from it.
This is one hell of an overreach and will absolutely not improve the problem that it tries to solve.
I am against identity politics on principle, but a much more amenable solution would have been something like offering tax incentives for companies who do.
But aside from being way too heavy handed for a state, are they planning to do this for every “protected” class? Why only women?
Paradoxical how this so call "largest protected class" makes up the majority of the population, majority of college graduates, majority of purchasing decisions, etc - and yet it needs "protection" and laws to force equality of outcomes.
If it's a start towards that, it's anything but good. Do you realize how many protected classes there are? And I'm sure that I could find a larger one than women.
Outside of Christianity, and obesity -- which isn't a protected class IIRC -- I can't think of any that make up more than 51% of the population.
The US Black population is around 13%; Hispanic population is closer to 18-19%. Asian and Pacific Islander is around 5%. LBGT population is estimated at around 5-6%; transgender estimated at around 0.3%. Muslims are <2%, and Jews roughly the same. Old people, defined as those over 65, are around 17% and rising to around 24% because of the baby boom. Kids, defined as 0-14 years, are about 18-19%, and are unlikely to be in the company boardroom. About 19% of the population had some sort of disability, with the majority of those being older (50+).
In 2017, 80.4 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.3 percent of all wage and salary workers. Minimum wage isn't a protected class though.
"Old people" is actually defined as over 40 as far as protected classes for age discrimination. There are probably more old people than women. Familial status is another.
There's no way this doesn't backfire in the long term. We're gonna see "yes women" added to boards which will discredit the women who are there for reasons other than to just check a box.
They should have went all the way: 50% women, 10% african-americans, 5% asian, 5% choose-some-other-race, of which 5% must be LGBT, 20% catholic, 50% christian, 25% none/agnostic/atheist, 5% "other" and 99% should NOT be in the 1% :-)
I suspect a working-class Lesbian Asian Hindu is gonna find themselves in demand!
How does something like this get implemented? A company has limited control over the gender composition of the board. The aggregate actions of myriad outside and independent shareholders may not align to produce the necessary result in aggregate. Furthermore, virtually all of these companies are foreign corporations, California has limited ability to modify the intrinsic nature of the board construction process -- it has no jurisdiction. The only obvious escape hatch that make this reliably executable in any sane legal framework is to guarantee that the CEO is female. Or to have a male member of the board exercise the "identify as female" clause if the shareholders in aggregate don't produce a board composition that meets this law. The whole thing is a setup for some absurd theatrics in the board room. I fail to see how this will produce a positive result for anyone.
That said, I am skeptical that this passes Constitutional muster. California has no jurisdiction over corporate law in the rest of the US, and (for good reason) nobody incorporates in California such that they would have jurisdiction. This is a publicity stunt that will stir up outrage by various factions and accomplish nothing.
So a company that has a target market of men must have a woman on the board? So an all woman board will be legal?
How female is female enough for them? Can someone just identify as a woman, or will there be a mandatory screening of what's between their legs (or what their DNA has)?
I predict the outcome will just be companies will move headquarters to another state (already happening because of taxes!) and/or the company will go private.
> Take a look at companies whose target customers are all women. Are you surprised to see a man on their board?
I actually agree with your point. I would mostly be surprised to see a man on their board. I also wouldnt expect legislation to require a man on their board.
However, the discussion also brings up the idea that a woman (and any other gender of person) could have expertise of value to that board despite their differing genderedness . The idea is like "You dont have to have cancer to be an oncologist" .
Still the idea of requiring it bothers me. I would have expected other forces to handle this situation instead of men w/ guns.
Requiring a private entity to spend resources in favor of one class of citizens is almost certainly unconstitutional. There are many actionable avenues available to California to promote equality in workplaces, by signing this soon to be struck down law, California’s leaders are exploiting politica division for political gain. Politicians going to politician.
I wish these laws would focus on the issues with the pipeline, instead of bandaid "fixes" like this. It's insane to me that we can look at women still being encouraged to study soft majors like art, history, teaching, etc, and then be surprised that they're not becoming board members of huge companies 20-30 years later.
There are SO MANY reasons that women are not becoming leaders of companies at the same rate as men, and the glass ceiling is such a small part of the larger picture.
This seems like an unbelievable lazy and dishonest attempt at fixing a real problem.
No it's not, because board members are important. The conversation, at worst, will be "how can we find the best qualified woman we can to fill the board seat required." They can expand the board to meet this requirement so they won't be unable to hire anyone.
It doesn't. Looking the other members of the board in the eye and telling them you couldn't find anyone in the world more qualified for one of the most important jobs at YOUR company - responsible for hiring and firing the CEO - than your girlfriend or wife based on no other parameters should stop you from doing that. I'd imagine you'd have a difficult time raising money too - let alone the publicity.
The law doesn't stop me from running each board meeting in the form of interpretive dance, either. As a board member, I would likely seek to fire that founder immediately in either case.
The article seems light on explaining the reasoning behind the law. Its proponents clearly want to increase the average female-male ratio on corporate boards. But that doesn't mean that a few boards being nearly all-male is necessarily bad. There must be a better, less blunt way to encourage companies to open more board seats up to women.
It does explain, but unfortunately the justification itself is light:
> "despite numerous independent studies that show companies with women on their board are more profitable and productive"
The scourge of biased 'social science' strikes again. The politician believes that science has shown that women make companies better (but oddly, men don't make companies with all female boards better).
I've encountered a few studies over time claiming to show this. Every single one was junk. Common problems are:
1) No ability to replicate, e.g. citing private databases and then just asserting the outcome. This is a frequent problem with studies that come out of management consultancies and other such groups.
2) Dropping data points. One study I read that concluded women on boards = more profit started by excluding all the unprofitable companies from the analysis.
3) Confounding variables. It's typical for such studies to simply compare profitability against gender without controlling for other factors. For example they look at firms in the middle east (all men) and say, look, western firms are more profitable, it must be because of women. This is especially problematic when they include countries in the analysis where there are already laws forcing women onto boards - invariably it's the richest countries that do this i.e. those without bigger problems to worry about.
I have never encountered a study that showed with any scientific validity that companies make more money when they have women on the boards. Yet now these faux 'studies' are causing major law changes throughout the world.
This is of course exactly what the (invariably female) authors of these studies wanted in the first place. It is sickening and may eventually result in severe blowback.
Hasn't happened so far but I'm sure they're taking suggestions. Feel free to raise some, and take it up with your legislature. But at least they're trying something.
This is just staggeringly stupid and makes me ashamed to live in California. I'm all for having women on boards, when there's a qualified female candidate. I am categorically not for forcing them to be on boards for some misguided sense of social justice.
I haven't been able to find the law itself to read it (probably not looking the in the right places), but all the reporting on it says that they must have at least 1 (or 2 or 3 depending size of the board) female member. I'm not sure how that's going to play out in the long run if it's actually worded that way since I suspect it would run afoul of federal EEOC set of regulations/laws. It'll be interesting to see the law itself and how it shakes out in the courts (regardless of how you feel about this law, I'm 110% certain it will end up in the courts).
I'm curious how trans people are counted as well. Say you have 1 Cis female, 1 cis male, 1 trans male, 1 trans female. Can the fifth person be a cis male or trans male?
A trans woman is legally a woman and could be placed on the board to count.
A trans man is legally a man and would not count.
In California, transgender people are granted a lot of protections and rights, like the right to change their birth certificate gender, ID gender, etc. without surgery. It's one of the most progressive states on that issue.
It’s an interesting question, but I’d assume the law would say a trans female counts, a trans male does not. After all, if you’re transitioning into the gender you feel inside, then your birth sex is probably irrelevant from how you think and approach situations.
But that said, the vast majority of boards are all cis males. That’s the real thing being challenged.
> 301.3. (a) No later than the close of the 2019 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California shall have a minimum of one female director on its board. A corporation may increase the number of directors on its board to comply with this section.
> 301.3. (a) No later than the close of the 2019 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California shall have a minimum of one female director on its board. A corporation may increase the number of directors on its board to comply with this section.
Extreme left-wing politics is basically defined by hypocrisy at this point. "Discrimination is bad... Unless we do it!" "Violence is bad... Unless you're punching people the mob deems Nazis!" "Free speech is good... Unless you say something we don't like!"
I'd like to imagine that most moderate liberals are seriously embarrassed by this kind of stuff. It seems from the thread that this is true, so that gives me hope that it's not all bad.
I agree. I support the principle behind this legislation, but it seems to set a dangerous precedent for giving the state government the authority to mandate demographics.
Agreed. Allowing the governments to dictate the demographic makeup of private organizations is just asking for trouble. If we continue down this path I'm sure people will screw it up and use it for bad things (like universally bad, not just considered bad by the affected minority) within a generation or two.
(1) It's sexist in an attempt to solve sexism in the same way that affirmative action is racist in an attempt to solve racism. Sometimes, the ends justify the means. Unless you believe that only old white men are capable of being on the board you should ask yourself why only old white men are on the board. What is it about society, or the system, that has gotten us to where we are? What if we tried this and see what happens? If it doesn't work maybe let's roll it back? I do know for sure doing nothing won't change anything, at least based on the trendline.
It's really easy to sit there and say this law is sexist if you stand to benefit from the status quo. I'm not sure you do, I know nothing about you - this is an observation in general.
(2) We can have two problems. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to solve one. This is akin to the argument that California should be dealing with the homeless instead of banning straws. It should be, and is, doing both. We can have two problems. We can work on multiple problems simultaneously. And having two problems isn't a license to sit on your hands and do nothing until you have a way to solve both at the same time. Further, if this works remarkably well in some way maybe it'll be a good template for future change? Or a lesson as to why we shouldn't do it this way.
> Unless you believe that only old white men are capable of being on the board you should ask yourself why only old white men are on the board.
Have you asked that question and looked for a scientifically valid answer instead of jumping to bigotry?
There are many objective reasons for that, one being:
> Fewer women than men become executive managers. They earn less over their careers, hold more junior positions, and exit the occupation at a faster rate. We compiled a large panel data set on executives and formed a career hierarchy to analyze mobility and compensation rates. We found that, controlling for executive rank and background, women earn higher compensation than men, experience more income uncertainty, and are promoted more quickly. Amongst survivors, being female increases the chance of becoming CEO. Hence, the unconditional gender pay gap and job-rank differences are primarily attributable to female executives exiting at higher rates than men in an occupation where survival is rewarded with promotion and higher compensation.
> There is still a question of why women have a higher nonmarket outside option than men. One explanation is that women acquire more nonmarket human capital than men throughout their lives, and hence find retirement a relatively attractive option. Women in the top executive market are mostly beyond childbearing age, but there is evidence that such women are more likely to leave for personal and other household reasons than their male counterparts. For example, Sicherman (1996) finds that in a case study of a large insurance company, female executives were more likely than their male counterparts to exit the firm because of better working conditions elsewhere, to be near home, change of residence, household duties, personal health, illness in the family, and positions abolished. Most of those reasons, except position abolished, are voluntary departures related to home or family.
Honestly surprised at how many people are posting comments about this. You know you'll end up on some list, right? Maybe you think it's ok to debate this kind of measure now, but the line will keep moving. In three years you may have people scouring your internet history for past wrongthink to deny you that promotion, or to get rid of you. In five years, machine learning algorithms may take your comments as input for your Ethical Credit Score. Hacker News is not going to delete your comments if you come to regret them.
It's best not to think about these things at all. What can you do, anyway? Suppress your mind's wandering. Focus on that algorithm on that refactoring, someone needs to get that work done, and it's you. You need that promotion. You need to make a lot of money for the federal government, for the state of California, and for your landlord, and you better make enough that there is something left to save. You don't want to look back in ten years and realize your youth disappeared while you were sitting in front of a monitor, you're still unmarried, you don't own a house, and you haven't had an independent thought in a decade, right? At least you've got to have some money saved up, that's going to make it worth it. So put your head down and get back to coding.
It's an abuse of this site to use HN primarily for ideological battle, which this account has been doing for a long time. Would you please stop?
We don't care about your ideology, but we do care about not letting a minority of users ruin this site for everyone else by turning it into a political tire fire—especially given what's happening on the rest of the internet, which people come here for refuge from. The rest of the comments in this thread are bad enough as it is.
However, I disagree with the assertion that my comment was about ideology or politics. My comment was about the very concrete conditions of life of someone working in the tech industry in California, which is why I thought it may be of interest to the readers of HN.
The situation I mentioned is not about following this or that political faction. It is a threat to free discourse, to the ability to have an intellectual life, and to folks' actual livelihood. And it is certainly relevant to many people who visit this site or comment on this article.
The only connection to a particular political side was the work "against" in the first sentence. I regret that, and I have replaced it with "about". If, with that change, you feel that it is still possible to identify a particular political or ideological faction which is responsible for the danger I mentioned, that is not something I can control. I can only say that the boot may be on the other shoe someday, and I would still be speaking up against it.
As for the rule against using HN primarily for ideological battles, I was not aware of it, and I apologize. Would it be better if I started posting more technical comments as well?
Also, how does your interpretation of the rules affect users that use "throwaway" accounts? If a user makes a throwaway to talk about a controversial issue, that account may only have one post, meaning that 100% of its posts are controversial. Would that not prevent people from discussing controversial issues at all? Which, in the end, is the same as the advice I was offering.
It seemed to me an ideological rant like countless others—but I don't read them so closely, for the same reason a competitive hot dog eater doesn't savor each morsel: too much quantity.
Your account's history seems clearly to be that of a single-purpose political account, and we ban those. HN is for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, not the prosecution of political battles. Those two things are incompatible, so we have to be proactive about this.
Throwaway comments don't change the equation much. The test is this: if someone is using HN primarily for political battle, we ban them (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). If they're occasionally commenting on a political topic as part of a range of intellectually curious interests, that's ok. In practice, these are two different classes of user: one is here for flamewar while the other isn't. There are always exceptions, but it's relatively clear where the line is. We don't want users who are here for flamewar.
Most users who create throwaway accounts to post political comments are just doing it so they can flame without restriction. We ban those. Earnest throwaway accounts are quite a bit rarer.
The guidelines say: "Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it."
"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to."
I honestly think there's a good chance your decision in this case goes against the spirit of the rules, dang.
In an idealized world it should. In reality, people aren't all equal. The circumstances of birth, genetics, society, societal memory and much more contribute to a world that left alone is inherently unfair. I'm for putting a finger on the scales a little bit to even out the inequalities. Not completely! But to look after the worst off, to right past wrongs (and we've made many mistakes getting here) and to push for a world where each individual is able to rise to the level of their competence and positive qualities by looking after their shortcomings. To create a meritocratic system in spite of the inherent inequalities.
So we're clear, I'm in favor or wealth inequality, and income inequality, but only coupled with social mobility. I'm in favor of having wealth as a reward for your contributions. And for a 90% estate tax to make sure each generation starts off without major advantages. I'm for socialized medicine so the circumstances of your birth or random chance don't stop you from achieving your potential. I'm for creating a world where nobody feels they can't achieve some level of success because of societal norms and if that means temporarily creating 'mandatory' role models, that's fine too.
If the world were inherently fair, wouldn't you already expect corporate boards to represent the rest of the society at large? And yet they don't so someone or somethings' finger must already be on the scales. Unless of course you're telling me only old white men are capable of being board members, that is. So in the interest of fairness, we should push back. A little. See what happens. Then act accordingly.
See how this would fit with my worldview?
I have friends who are incredibly right-wing and absolutely disagree with me, often, and I very much enjoy engaging them in conversation. I don't think they're wrong, I just disagree.
I don't think you're sexist for disagreeing with this law. I agree with it. I have my rationalizations and justifications, and I'm interested in hearing yours, and as always, in debating.
Predicting the future is your solid life advice? Would you recommend a crystal ball, a ouija board or a magic 8 ball?
Should I only concern myself with the long term history or do I have to worry about regressions mixed in? A lot of people thought they were on the right side of history with gay rights in Leninist Russia, it didn't turn out well.
FWIW my 'wrong side of history' comment was meant facetiously, nobody can know what the right side of history is until long after. Though in your specific case, I'd say they were, hopefully their day will come.
Fascinating to see all comments against this at the moment.
Some level of mandatory female board presence seems to work OK in plenty of places elsewhere in the world without a great backlash. No visible campaigns to repeal because of the great damage or tokenism that's resulted.
This outlaws freedom of association. If I am a woman creating a company for women’s products and want an all woman board, why should that be a problem or any business of the government? If the shareholders don’t like it, they can vote in/out whomever they want.
And if an all woman board is okay, then what hypocrisy is this new law?
Ah I see what you're saying. That's fair criticism, let me try again.
This does only apply to publicly traded companies, and lots of other employment legislation does similarly limit association within companies does it not? For instance, discrimination on the basis of race or gender in the hiring process is illegal (making exception on the basis of “bona-fide occupational qualifications”). Setting aside the gender component here, it would seem that this is settled law, does it not? It appears if the argument is restriction of free association, that ship sailed, and you do not have that right at work on an absolute basis.
Is it hypocritical? Yes. Without sounding like a broken record, I don't believe that only old white men are capable of being on boards, yet they're massively overrepresented, which tells me there's some other intrinsic issue with the system or society that is creating this environment. I support this measure as an attempt to rebalance the scales. To me, the ends justify the means. If it doesn't work out, it can of course be rolled back.
Hypocrisy isn't illegal. I'm not sure whether this runs afoul of any other legislation but I'd imagine that's been thought through.
To me, the argument is: "if I am a woman creating a company for women’s products and want an all woman board..." -- you're not. Statistically, nobody is. That's the problem. If they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. And when that changes, we can absolutely revisit this.
It's a simple question. Are you able to answer it?
A Danish state owned power company or some other local to EU, protected company, doesn't really have any effect on the world market, does it? It does not have anything to offer in terms of innovation or management skills.
Like BASF, Siemens, BMW, BP, HSBC, TATA etc are all backwater protected companies having no effect on the world market?
Seriously, it's half the G20 with either mandated quota requirements, or a requirement to document in the yearly report company progress toward diversity targets and justify progress - or lack of (model used by UK, Sweden and others).
It would be great if all the comments in this thread could give full disclosure for their position. As you would for any other potential conflict of interest.
For my part, I think legislation like this could be immeasurably improved if there was a sunset clause once parity was reached (in the state). Which would prove that this is only instituted due to the compete failure of the status quo of the old boys clubs.
I (a man) for one am happy about this decision. Not because this, the intermediate state, is one I'm happy with, but because it creates female role models that girls can look up to. This in turn will show girls that it's something they can achieve and aspire to, and ideally, soon, this legislation won't be required anymore. It's a bootstrapping tool.
We're talking about a single board member. This isn't going to destroy companies. It's not going to force companies to do without the best and brightest, that's incredibly hyperbolic. If you really want to add a specific man, add a seat, or drop someone.
Especially since as the article points out, companies with female board members tend to be more profitable [1]. Correlation is not causation. On the other hand, there's no apocalyptic collapse coming because they let a lady into the boardroom, my lord, what's becoming of California?! I do believe I've got a case of the vapors.
It's really amazing how little empathy is being displayed here. I'm sure each of you would feel differently if 90% of board members were women. Maybe it's just the demographics on here? Maybe it's because as engineers we live in a world we can control by simply moving a letters around on a computer screen. The real world, society, is messy. It's not as simple as declaring meritocracy and suddenly equality arrives. Change requires making uncomfortable decisions, making compromises and taking real steps. And yes, rolling them back if they don't work out as planned.
Many people feel sexism, and bigotry in general is not solved by more of the opposite kind of bigotry. I feel their theory that it will somehow lead to more rolemodels is optimistic, but misplaced.
Board members are about as far from representing society as you can get (and that's not the purpose of a board anyway) so I don't understand why this is being mandated. Seems like a strategy for cheap political points rather than any kind of well-reasoned reform.