California has a new law: No more all-male boards (2018)

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/30/business/california-requires-women-board-of-directors/index.html

by colinprince • 7 years ago

46 75 7 years ago

edition.cnn.com

While noble in its intentions, if flipping the roles is seen as discrimination (no all female boards), it’s discrimination.

jeromebaek• 7 years ago

Nope, you're confusing the syntactic definition of discrimination with the semantic definition of discrimination.

maxander2• 7 years ago

I get what you’re trying to say, but I’m not sure there’s such a thing as the “syntactic definition” of a word.

colejohnson662• 7 years ago

No. Reverse discrimination is just that: discrimination

toomuchtodo3• 7 years ago

I hope they'll not mind someone identifying as trans to get on a board. You get what you measure, and you can hack around all sorts of discrimination.

Edit: To be clear, I do not support, encourage, or condone discrimination of any protected class. You should be able to discriminate by skill level, of course.

jakelazaroff5• 7 years ago

You know, for all the worry about people "identifying as trans in order to do X" it seems to happen very infrequently.

lokedhs• 7 years ago

I'm not sure many boards feel the need to hack around it. If you were to ask any all-male board why they don't have any women on it, I'm pretty sure a very small minority would be doing it because they intentionally want to keep women out.

I think most would simply say that it just happened. The number of boards who intentionally conspire to stay all-male is likely very small.

baroffoos• 7 years ago

I imagine you would probably have to have your gender legally changed before that counts which is more effort than hiring one female to sit in the corner to meet a quota.

aeternus2• 7 years ago

The bill actually does cover this explicitly:

(1) “Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

PinkMilkshake• 7 years ago

What about gender fluid board members? Will the company be compliant with the law on some days and not on others?

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

I hope they'll not mind someone identifying as trans to get on a board.

You mean, “to avoid also appointing a woman to the board”, presumably.

jakelazaroff5• 7 years ago

This is pretty easy to word neutrally: "No boards where every member has the same gender."

Is this really a problem, though? Do we really expect a situation in which men are systemically prevented from being board members?

FakeComments3• 7 years ago

How about we just don’t pass sexist laws because we’ve somehow told ourselves that this particular instance of institutional sexism is okay?

We’re already having enough trouble getting people to accept Title IX protects male students, after 40 years of females being the majority in student populations.

I’m not nearly as optimistic about the outcome of intentional sexism as you.

sdinsn3• 7 years ago

Do we really expect a situation in which men are systemically prevented from being board members?

I mean, this law sets requirements on board members genders. So I wouldn't think it's much of a stretch.

belorn• 7 years ago

Sweden made a similar law for sport clubs. 37% of board members are women, 63% are men. Yes, there are boards that is dominated by women.

One of the ten largest sports, horse riding, has a national board with 23% men and 77% women. In the same top ten category, ice hokey has 82% men and 18% women.

Football and Swimming, 56% men and 44% women. Skiing, 50% and 50%. Gymnastics, 44% and 56%. Golf and bandy, 57% and 43%. Athletics 60% and 40%.

Those are the top 10 in the area which my government though was so bad it needed to implement affirmative actions in order to correct it. 37% sounds few but in reality, only two are considered gender segregated and it is one female dominated and one male.

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

While noble in its intentions, if flipping the roles is seen as discrimination (no all female boards), it’s discrimination.

You are overcomplicating things; making a legal distinction is discrimination on the basis used to make the distinction; this is overtly sex discrimination. Your mirror test isn't needed.

Whether it is permissible discrimination likewise does not depend on a mirror test, but on whether (at least, from the perspective of federal Constitutional jurisprudence, using the test that applies to sex discrimination) it serves an important government purpose by means substantially related to that purpose. Which a mirror test of the type you propose doesn't help answer, both because it doesn't answer it for the mirror case and because the mirror case won't be similarly situated compared to the actual legal test unless you mirror all of society, not just the policy.

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

About 30 years ago, I read as much as I could to try to understand why I had ended up with some "barefoot and pregnant" type life as the full-time wife in a 1950s style marriage. My takeaway: European women did better than American women in terms of greater wage parity, etc, because they focused on getting accommodation for the burden of bearing children plus help carrying the burden of rearing the children.

Quotas seem unlikely to work as long as America continues to be the only developed nation that lacks paid maternity leave as a kind of "canary in the coal mine" test of this issue.

My sons are adults. I'm post menopausal. I'm largely out of touch with childcare issues today. But our continued lack of maternity leave makes me feel that we are likely still in the dark ages on this issue.

chongli• 7 years ago

maxander2• 7 years ago

Childless? AFAIK, the politicians holding back educational spending and maternity leave reform are mostly parents (mostly fathers.) The word you’re looking for is “rich.” :)

aeternus2• 7 years ago

California does have 6 weeks of paid maternity leave. Some companies pay 100% but the state guarantees 60-70% depending on how much you make.

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

Thank you. I wasn't aware of that.

It's still a really short period of time compared to most developed countries. Here's a list (from 2012) I was able to find with a quick search:

https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/22/maternity-leaves-arou...

According to the article, Japan provides 14 weeks. Germany provides 14 months.

So 6 weeks seems like a drop in the bucket on this issue.

nathanvanfleet• 7 years ago

Canada has 55 weeks which is not bad.

duxup• 7 years ago

To be clear it applies to their California employees.

I worked for a company HQed in the valley. With much fanfare they announced their paid leave program.

A few months later my second child was born and I filled out the paperwork. HR returned it to me telling me to fill out the unpaid leave paperwork....and to write them a check for healthcare....

ToBeBannedSoon• 7 years ago

It's obvious that any sensible company will just headquarter itself in a friendlier state. California has shot itself in the foot with this law.

sadris• 7 years ago

Clear violation of federal Civil Rights Act. Gender and race cannot be factors in employment. Why waste time with blatantly unlawful legislation?

Simulacra• 7 years ago

Is serving on the board considered employment? What if it’s not paid?

screye• 7 years ago

It is already being used elsewhere.

NSF grants are being rejected with massive frequency if the proposal doesn't document women and minorities being involved in the project.

I am all for diversity. I support providing minorities with opportunities to gain skills needed to excel in a certain field or make them feel welcome. Equality of opportunity is great.

Trying to skew incentives in hope that it will facilitate an inflow of talented minorities is something I've seen no proof of working. Anecdotally or statistically. If anything, it only breeds resentment.

derrick_jensen• 7 years ago

NSF grants favoring diverse groups and outlawing private corporations that don't meet diversity quotas is a false equivalency

the_trapper2• 7 years ago

See also California's unconstitutional gun control laws.

They believe they have moral superiority on their side and federal laws don't apply to them.

floatingatoll2• 7 years ago

Unconstitutional is a term that only applies when a court of law has found a violation to occur. Which California gun control law has been found to be unconstitutional by a court of law without further possibility of appeal?

floatingatoll2• 7 years ago

CRA and EEOC require equal opportunity regardless of gender. California’s data shows that women are consistently being treated unequally on corporate boards. Their law reduces unequal treatment. Please define in terms of CRA or EEOC how you think this law will result in an increase of unequal treatment and thus be in violation?

anon12345690• 7 years ago

what data? having less women isnt proof of unfair treatment

forcing companies to hire based on gender is a very bad idea

pmoriarty• 7 years ago

Now if only they could mandate that every board has to have someone poor on it. Sadly, I doubt that will ever happen.

zdragnar• 7 years ago

Now if only they could mandate that every board has to have someone poor on it.

Unless the board positions are unpaid and merely advisory, then whoever joined would be de-facto not poor. Unless, of course, they were paid minimum wage while everyone else was paid normal wages for board level positions.

Either of those options would be absurdly patronizing, in my opinion.

guelo• 7 years ago

numerous independent studies that show companies with women on their board are more profitable and productive

That doesn't tell you which is the cause and which is the effect. It could be that companies that hire women for boards are better run to begin with so that forcing poorly run companies to hire women won't make them better.

taborj3• 7 years ago

Wait, you mean correlation doesn't equal causation? (I'm being sarcastic, of course)

ratboy666• 7 years ago

Of course, this doesn't (arguably) matter. In California, persons are allowed to change gender. At some point, Senate Bill 179 can be used to align government documentation, but that doesn't need to happen.

So, prior to a board meeting: "Who is female?". Ok, we are covered.... Don't know what happens after the meeting, but that doesn't matter. For the purposes of the law, the board is not "all-male". Anyone who disagrees can then be taken to court, for discrimination.

That is how I would play this. Just good fun.

FredW

Beardeddragon• 7 years ago

Good way to build resentment. This is CA after all.

dang3• 7 years ago

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

rlt• 7 years ago

This seems like an ill-advised game to start playing. Why stop at women? Shouldn't other underrepresented groups be legally entitled to board seats too?

I'm definitely not saying there aren't qualified women or people from other underrepresented groups, but eventually if the quotas are subdivided and specific enough the available talent pool won't support the quota.

tomlock6• 7 years ago

The average board has 9 members. If we were to randomly flip a coin 9 times, we'd expect to see 9 of tails/heads about 0.2% of the time.

tomlock6• 7 years ago

It is honestly incredibly funny that this comment, about factual probabilities, would get downvoted.

sdinsn3• 7 years ago

Because it's not relevant. Job positions aren't coin flips. There are more men who work as welders, there are more women that work in nursing, for example.

dang3• 7 years ago

This had several major threads:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...

It's a good idea to search before posting, especially when the story happens to be news of the second freshness.

AmericanChopper• 7 years ago

Never seen a thread removed as dupe for being posted 6 months ago. Old news is reposted on HN daily. It’s hard to see this moderation as being anything other than political.

dang3• 7 years ago

Please see the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Reposts are allowed after about a year. Otherwise, if a story has significant attention already, we mark reposts as dupes. This is standard HN moderation.

I'm not sure what amazes me more: that we can do something routinely every day, and users still report never having seen it; or that people rush to assume political skulduggery as the explanation for whatever they do see.

arduanika• 7 years ago

Why do companies wait so long before IPO these days? Do the restrictions on publicly traded companies grow more burdensome with each passing year?

taborj3• 7 years ago

I'm sure there are many reasons, but one of the reasons is that after you IPO, your business decisions - indeed, the very direction of your company and what products you develop and sell - are dictated not by management, but by shareholders.

That's a lot of control to give up.

California has a new law: No more all-male boards (2018)

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