California to become first state to require companies to have women on boards

Does this only apply to companies incorporated in the state? Most companies operating in CA (at least I assume the ones they’re trying to target) are incorporated in Delaware. Seems like this won’t make a difference if that’s the loophole.

On another note, what the flying fuck is this supposed to achieve? All this will create is scenarios where people are only there because they legally have to be, not because they’re the best person for the job.

I’m 100% for equal rights. I don’t judge a person by anything but their ability to perform the job as best as possible. This isn’t equal rights. This is a legally binding pitty-hire. Hopefully people leverage it positively, though, and start considering more women for board positions. On that note, women need to also push for these positions, too. It’s not exactly a cookie cutter issue.

After skimming the bill, I have to say that this is a bad law.

Without even considering whether or not I would support the purpose for which it was written, I can't imagine it passing constitutional muster - on its face it violates both the Fourteen Amendment's "equal protection" clause and Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964.

If what they want to accomplish is "ensure that corporate boards are not made up entirely of men", then the law should have been written to say that in a way that is not gender-specific - instead of definition "female", it should have defined "minority gender", and required minimum numbers of the minority gender on boards of given sizes.

There's also the small consideration that as far as I can tell, a corporation that has only one shareholder of record can have a board with only one member. This bill appears to literally make it illegal for anyone who does not self-identify as a woman to form and operate such a corporation. Existing corporations in this class would be forced by law to add an additional board member if and only if the owner is not female. That's absurd.

Good. Now also the different races. Also the different religions. Etc.

Just kidding...

Why not turn it around, let them prove the best were not hired based on these variables. For example, if a comoany has all white males in the board, start and investigation if they could also have hired a non white-male. Just putting 'a' woman in is not going to solve the deeper problem. In fact that would just be cosmetically covering up the deeper problem. also if I were a woman, I'd liked to be hired for my skills, not my vagina...

Wouldn't having quotas violate Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964? Unless board members aren't considered employees?

Honestly, this is just a bad law and I'm a feminist. I don't think quotas are the right way to solve inequality and only furthers the culture wars.

A lot of the landmark civil rights cases in the 1970s involved obtaining rights for men, such as spousal social security and spousal military benefits. This is a step backwards.

Sounds like a great idea. My wife sits on the board of a nonprofit. The staff of this org is largely female yet my wife is the only female on the board. The men on the board have been truly insensitive to the needs of their staff, and my wife has had to work hard to advocate for them.

Just as important would be to require that boards have employees on them. Heck, better than that just do away with the board entirely and have worker cooperatives.

This is probably an unpopular or taboo opinion, but I believe in equal rights and merit based achievements. Basing employment, status or title on a persons gender or ethnic background is the opposite of equal rights, in my view. I see it as two wrongs trying to equal a right.

Is there any evidence that women are actively prevented from getting on the board due to bias? If not then I worry about these kind of laws. I am seeing too many big shots desperately painting themselves as minority messiah to boost own career and get attention in press. This is very slippery slope. What’s next? Forcing businesses to hire people each race, country and sexual orientation? Once you abandon meritocracy, it’s then all about what you are born with and not in your control. Laws are supposed to protect citizens from this! I hope one of these days Supreme Court makes these kind of reservation system illegal.

Equal rights is not the same thing as equal outcomes. This law seems very ham fisted.

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but my first thought is how long before someone claims MtF status for the exclusive[1] purpose of not really fulfilling this requirement.

[1] i.e. do not actually identify as female. I make no statements about genuinely trans people in this post.

On the workers-on-boards topic I mentioned this quote from Zero to One, which applies here too:

"A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards—the average is nine members.) By far the worst you can do is to make your board extra large. When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small." — Peter Thiel

More board members may increase intransigence, decrease oversight (cover over who is really making the decisions and who is not), and turn US corps more bureaucratic. Never-mind who is joining the board, this is going to increase board sizes, and that's pretty unfortunate for some philosophies of effective management.

If you do not believe this will increase board sizes, then you must believe that all companies are willing to fire some number of current board members to meet their quotas, which seems terribly unlikely to me.

If currently all-male (48% percent of companies have no women on their boards), requiring at least 3 on boards of 6, unless you fire half your current board, is exploding the board size by 50%. Requiring at least 2 on boards of 5, unless you fire ~half your current board, brings the number up to 7. But then you need 3 (its over 6), so you have to add one more, so a board of 5 gets a 60% increase in size to 8 people.

If you want businesses to be successful, you probably shouldn't expand their boards against their will. It is not that female representation isn't a problem, it is that an effective company structure must be foremost, ahead of any other (more arbitrary or ephemeral) requirements. Or else there won't be as many great companies to steward in the first place.

Whereever you might fall on the left-right spectrum, this law is sexist, discriminatory, idiotic, and an escalation of the brewing gender war.

If the law required a 50/50 gender split on boards, or at least one member of each gender or similar, I wouldn't find it offensive. As is, it allows all-female boards and bans all-male ones.

Laws like this are what energize the Trump political base.

To me it seems weird that the law should even consider the gender of a a person. I do realize most countries have different legislation for men and women which is just very hard for me to understand the justification for.

Can someone think of corner cases where it should matter whether a person is a man or a woman?

oh boy. So far all the responses here are negative.

Look, nobody wants to see non-merit-based appointments. The seemingly rational argument generally amounts to, 2 wrongs don't equal a right. The problem is that natural bias by existing boards and existing founders leads to over-selection of males. In many of those cases, a female would do equally as well.

Choosing the best candidate isn't a strict rank order function. Each candidate has many intangible / hard to quantify positive qualities they bring to the table, and there's always a tradeoff of which qualities are the most important. I'd wager that in 99% of cases, it's impossible to choose a single best candidate.

Instead of assuming that forcing females onto the board leads to picking less-qualified candidates, why can't people assume that females are just as qualified as males, and that this legislation just forces a representation more in line with demographics? ie, when given 2 "equal" candidates (and I'll argue there are never just 2, there are often "many"), a female candidate will be preferred so as to bring gender representation closer to population demographics.

Please do keep in mind also that board membership is not generally merit-based. The old-boy network is real.

And in practical terms, this will have near-zero effect as far as HN crowd is concerned. Tech companies incorporate in Delaware. Companies that are incorporated here that want to reject this legislate will re-incorporate elsewhere.

I’m a minority and consider bleeding heart, big government, free market capitalist. But I can’t agree with this. Corporate America should have “affirmative outreach” and not just recruit from Ivey league schools and even partner with colleges and high schools with large minority populations and reach out to females to widen the top of the funnel.

This might not be so bad, since the board of directors doesn't have a huge impact on the day to day, usually.

Does it require the members have voting rights?