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.
