Governor signs bill requiring California corporate boards to include women | Hacker News Reader

Governor signs bill requiring California corporate boards to include women

latimes.com

77 pointszaroth142 comments

> “There have been numerous objections to this bill, and serious legal concerns have been raised,” Brown said. “I don’t minimize the potential flaws that indeed may prove fatal to its ultimate implementation. Nevertheless, recent events in Washington, D.C. — and beyond — make it crystal clear that many are not getting the message.”

I feel like passing a flawed or badly-implemented law that forces companies to restructure their boards in order to send a political message will have the opposite of the effect you want.

Surely it'll just galvanize peoples' negative opinions of "liberal policies," and do little to actually change anything substantial?

It's funny how state regulation is considered liberal policy in the US.

This policy is deeply anti-liberal. But “liberal” has lost all meaning in the US and now is synonymous with “Democratic” or “progressive.”

This sucks because us actual liberals are feeling more and more homeless in US politics.

Would you elaborate on the ideal liberal platform?

I see and hear comments like this quite frequently (from folks of all political alignments, interestingly) and I'm always interested to hear what beliefs and policies people around me want to see in their government but don't.

Liberal is supposed to mean “freedom.” When a government tells you what to do, that isn’t liberal. Of course there is a government and even classical liberals acknowledge the need for some government, but liberal really should mean a support of a government that provides for a common defense and has a court system that would provide for the enforcement of civil contracts. A “liberal” government doesn’t mandate actions of private entities unless those mandates are to protect the life, liberty or property of other individuals.

Mandating gender on corporate boards doesn’t protect any of that. Nobody has a right to serve on a board and not serving on a board isn’t threatening anyone’s right to pursue happiness or live their life as they see fit. In fact, it does the opposite: it imposes a requirement that limits the freedom of people to run their business how they see fit. Unless the running of that business infringes on the rights of others, the government really has no business with that sort of mandate. And the key to understanding this is that no person has a “right” to success or a right to a specific job — they have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to actually be happy.

Progressivism is well-intentioned totalitarianism. There is nothing wrong with supporting progressivism, but let’s not pretend is has anything to do with liberalism.

I'm not making a case for progressivism here and I'm clear on the traditional (and international?) definition of "liberal."

I'm mainly interested in what specifically constitutes a liberal platform or policy model in the US. I genuinely don't know what it looks like. The descriptions I hear are typically hand-wavey in a way that reminds me of communist rhetoric; lots of ideals, few details, and typically reactionary (defined by what it isn't).

I'm assuming this is a gap in my knowledge/experience and I'd love to fill it in.

The libertarians are most in line with a classical liberal ideology.

It is a platform that acknowledges individual rights that exist independent of government, which finds its only legitimate role in ensuring those rights. Those rights are life, liberty, and property.

Any policy that prefers individual liberty and private property over government power and government-granted privileges would be more libertarian.

Libertarians support:

- Decriminalization of all "moral crimes" such as drug possession and use, prostitution, etc

- Freedom of trade and exchange, zero tariffs or import/export restrictions, elimination of price-gouging laws

- Elimination of taxation, government welfare programs, corporate welfare

- Immediate cessation of all foreign wars and assuming a defensive posture in foreign policy

- Elimination of most, if not all, regulations on consumer goods

- Sound money and the elimination of fractional reserve banking

For the most pure, detailed explanation of libertarianism, check out The Ethics of Liberty[1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0...

Great response, thank you!

If you want details, you'll have to look beyond internet comments. :)

Read The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty by Hayek for a deep discussion of liberalism.

The Wealth of Nations and Free to Choose are also great books to consider.

Fair enough :) Thanks for the recommendations!

But this is where the Marxist has to step in and point out that "the invisible hand" doesn't work. It's how you get robber-barons and child labor and unlivable wages. Having a system in which a group sees such little representation begs the question of WHY. The conclusion being drawn (accurately or not) by the progressive liberals is that the game is being fixed (perhaps intentionally, perhaps not)

The argument between "classical liberals" or libertarians or whatever they're calling themselves that day and progressive liberals is the belief that this will all just sort itself out if the government looks the other way and lets the economy run itself. We have seen time and time and time and time again that all that does is lead towards monopolies and exploitation of the masses. You can't possibly pretend that pure unadulterated capitalism is the best choice, since it just winds up leading to people being enslaved (literally or figuratively), murdered and oppressed.

Anarcho-capitalism is a horrible thing. It's impossible to tell what's market forces, and what's unfair advantages. The progressive liberals are of the opinion that in order for the whole to be better, sometimes the state needs to step in and act force people to play nice where it believes they aren't. It's not perfect, but it's a long slippery slope from totalitarian gulags to "put one fucking woman on your board you idiots".

Not the OP, but the best way to contrast liberalism is from the perspective of Puritanism. Puritans were certainly not liberal socially, but they were also not liberal governmentally - many of the laws in Puritanical societies were highly restrictive, and pre-modern liberalism had its roots in creating a more free society - Puritanism is a non-negligible part of American history.

Modern leftism tends to be more authoritarian - it encourages restrictive legislation as a mechanism for progress. This is the dystopian future alluded to in a lot of e.g. Heinlein's work - things like forced sexual liberalism, erosion of parental rights or even parentage itself, elimination of the individual for the cause, and discrimination against the individual based on factors outside of their control.

Americans tend to view political affiliation as a binary - left or right, progressive or conservative, liberal or authoritarian. That's because, due to our history, we have always tended to have a leftist, progressive, liberal party contrasted with a right-leaning, conservative, authoritarian party.

That language is in and of itself somewhat complex - prohibitionists were considered progressives in their time, though today we would view them as otherwise.

Great response, the historical Puritan context is something I hadn't considered before.

I mention in another response that I'm looking for a description or model that isn't reactionary, but your reply makes me wonder if that's even possible. Is Liberalism more of an emergent, regulating social phenomena than a proper political alignment?

What do you mean a model that isn't reactionary?

Liberalism I think has two camps:

1. We are forcing people to do the wrong things and should do that less.

2. We shouldn't force people to do anything (libertarianism).

The problem with the latter is obviously that libertarians tend to be ignorant of the social contract, but the problem with the former is that lots of those type of liberals stop being liberals when they're the ones in power.

In many other countries, the right-wing party is called "Liberal". The reason is that the history of liberalism is closely intertwined with the history of economics, but they started to diverge when economists started to argue that wage floors and welfare could result in slower economic progress. The most extreme example of the latter argument is John von Neumann's turnpike theory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_theory

There was a sort of "split" between people who wanted to maximize economic growth and people who wanted to optimize for some other measures of social well-being, but, crucially, they were both operating within the "social metric optimization" context of 19th century liberalism, aka classical liberalism, which included e.g. Bentham, Mill, and Schopenhauer. The major 19th century competitors to this philosophy were the various flavors of socialism, largely comprising the followers of Marx and Ricardo, which prefer to build social structures that naturally encourage human freedom (at least in theory), and also the various flavors of conservatism, which aim to preserve historical social structures believed to be beneficial for reasons that are often not clearly expressed. In countries subject to colonial conquest -- that is, everywhere except Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Thailand, China and Japan -- these historical social structures were destroyed, and along with them the population's appetite for conservatism. In Japan, Italy and Germany, conservatism was heavily curtailed after World War II.

When liberalism's main competitor was conservatism, the growth-maximizers tended to align themselves with the conservatives and liberals were on the "left". But when it was socialism, the well-being-maximizers aligned themselves with the socialists and liberals were on the "right". What connects the two kinds of liberals is a reliance on numerical measurements of individual status (wealth, happiness, lifespan) and dynamical theories (economics, sociology) to define, promote and produce social progress.

This is extremely illuminating; thank you for taking the time to respond.

"Democratic" isn't quite the right word there. "Democratic" is just "something done through the process of Democracy" not "something belonging to the Democrats".

Small "d" democratic is something done through the process of democracy. Capital "D" Democratic is something belonging to the Democrats. It's that capitalization which indicates that it's a proper noun and referring to the party with that name. Without the capitalization it's not a proper noun and does not refer to the party.

I capitalized Democratic for a reason. I'm talking about the Democratic Party specifically.

Are you suggesting that a state law (as opposed to a federal) is never aligned with modern liberal ideology because it's happening at the state level?

Call me cynical, but I'm not sure this was about achieving anything other than political points. I doubt anyone cared about who they galvanize into disliking this genre of legislation.

Out of all classes who experience unequal representation on corporate boards, why were women chosen as the exclusive beneficiaries of this legislation? My guess is because a lot of the hot button social issues being discussed right now focus on women, thus there's a lot of political capital to be gained if one takes a radical position in favor of women.

Or maybe because women are the most extreme example? Women are not a minority - they are ~51% of the population. When most of your population is treated like a second-class minority, well, that's kind of a big crisis.

And yes, it helps that women's issues are du jour. A lot of credit goes to a lot of women for their diligence in this matter.

You hurt your cause by using active discrimination to attempt to remediate systemic issues.

There have been plenty of European countries where similar (or much stricter) rules were introduced and arguments similar to yours were used.

And in the end, there are hardly any negative consequences.

This hand waves away the complexity involved. Witness the immigrant backlash and rise of populism in Europe, Britain, and the United States.

Progress is needed, of course. But these are pipeline issues that take decades to nudge in the right direction. Push the lever too far, too fast, and it is going to snap back in your face (See: Brexit, Trump, Poland, etc). There are consequences for disregarding the climate you operate in. Voters and companies can respond faster than you can; recognize the leverage points in your feedback loop and the appropriate amount of pressure to apply to each (and what each point can tolerate).

This has nothing to do with immigrants, brexit, Trump, etc.

And in many countries, these policies have been done for over a decade with no obvious voter backlash.

Are you arguing that these countries are the same as the United States?

Are you arguing that Brexit and Poland happened in the US?

I'm arguing we had a similar result with Trump being elected, yes.

Of course, there's no evidence that women are "treated like a second-class minority". There are individual instances where women fare worse than men (e.g., sexual assault victimization), but there are also individual instances where men fare worse than women (e.g., literally every other kind of assault victimization).

> most of your population is treated like a second-class minority

... as evidenced by not being on corporate boards?

The only relevant statistic is what percentage of board-eligible people are women vs their actual representation on boards.

Unless you believe corporate boards should reflect the composition of the population at large?

You don't need to guess, Jerry Brown says it directly.

White women are far and away the primary benefitiary of affirmative action. The simple reason is that they are the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of white men and thus are closest to them and it's not a lose-lose for white men.

Legislation seems like an absolutely terrible venue for a symbolic gesture like this. Unfortunately, you’re probably right that the measure will backfire, ultimately setting the cause back further.

I don’t know what the right answer is to fix the gender imbalance in boardrooms, but lawsuit-bait like SB 826 only serves to further muddy the waters while sacrificing public faith in the legislative process.

> many are not getting the message

Passing a law to send a message to political opponents in a faraway state, that's admission to pure abuse of power. Can US governors say that with a straight face and without repercussions?

The governor in any of the handful of one-party states can probably get away with it.

It's problematic to say the least. It beats me why they didn't just make this a more targeted amendment e.g. to a California b-corp statute. Let founders decide if they want to have this restriction in place. I think such a narrow opt-in kind of statute would pass constitutional muster. Obviously no Article IV problem, since it is only that state's chartered corporations. And I don't see it as a freedom of association or equal protection issue, since it would be opt-in.

>By the end of July 2021, a minimum of two women must sit on boards with five members, and there must be at least three women on boards with six or more members. Companies that fail to comply face fines of $100,000 for a first violation and $300,000 for a second or subsequent violation.

This is so utterly bizarre. I suspect that this law will be struck down in court fairly quickly, and the politicians who pushed it through were just doing it for the sake of virtue signalling.

Affirmative action what?

Definitely possible.

I'm curious why they went the punitive route rather than providing some kind of incentive structure. In some ways it works out to the same thing, but tax breaks for businesses committed to the cause seem way easier to enact and defend than authoritarian quotas.

Anyone with public policy or legal experience who can chime in here?

I don't have any experience here, but, fines are revenue for the state and tax breaks are costs.

The really interesting part is that the amount of money seems to be one that would be extremely harmful to small companies but basically chump change to large corporations.

I can just see the attack ads from the opposition now. "So-and-so voted to strike down legislation that would promote diversity in the work force"

Sadly you're probably right. It woudln't surprise me if it's even further reduced to "So-and-so is anti-women".

Also you can tell that the proponents of the law didn't even really mean it.

A $300K fine? are you joking? It's a rounding error for lunch buffets for a lot of companies. What a joke.

ALso, I'm against the law and I'm glad to see they didn't really mean anything by it.

> high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America

Why everything need to match the country's overall demographics?

This is legislating a desired outcome without regard for basic logic and sovereignty. Are they also gonna force NBA to become racially diverse? Or for K-12 to have an equal amount of male to female teachers? You know the answer is no, but why not?

This is nothing but stupendous, overreaching, smug political posturing.

Does this mean companies with no women on their board need to fire a current board member on the sole basis of their gender? Isn't that discrimination based on a protected class?

Technically, no -- the person selected to be fired could not be fired on the sole basis of their gender because they are the same gender as everyone else on the board.

..unless there is a woman on the board?

That's the technicality -- you only have to fire someone if there are no women on the board, by assumption.

The way the law is written, if there are 5 people on the board and 1 woman, you need to fire one of the men and add a woman.

On the flip side though the Equal Opportunity Employment act disallows hiring as well as firing based on gender or discrimination thereof.

So if it can be proven that someone has a hiring preference for women over men that is a violation of existing law.

No. You can expand the board.

What if you can't afford to?

You can have board members that aren't shareholders like Al Gore being on Apple's board. You pay them in options like board advisors but they can vote.

So you give votes on your board of directors to token representatives with no skin in the game?

Like all major corporation boards? Amazon and Google have college professors, Oakley has Michael Jordan, Tesla has the owner of Ebony Magazine, Boeing has the former ambassador to Japan. Can you name a company that all board members have skin in the game? I can't.

options cost money.

I cannot believe this would be the case.

The actual law[1] says you can expand the board:

>SEC. 2. Section 301.3 is added to the Corporations Code, to read:

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.

But it goes on to say:

>(b) No later than the close of the 2021 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 comply with the following:

>(1) If its number of directors is six or more, the corporation shall have a minimum of three female directors.

>(2) If its number of directors is five, the corporation shall have a minimum of two female directors.

>(3) If its number of directors is four or fewer, the corporation shall have a minimum of one female director.

So it appears that if you currently have, for example, five directors that are all men and they continue to be directors until 2021, you'll need to fire two of them and hire two women directors OR hire three new female directors.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

no, it's called a grandfather (no pun intended) clause

I don't see anything in the actual law[1] that grandfathers existing corporations. It states the law is applicable to:

>a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Being the only female board member sucks. A lot of people would assume this is the reason why you are in the position no matter how capable you are.

Even if you've received your position by merit, this law will be the reason you remain - your merit can't be questioned because the law supplants it.

I can't help but feel like this is falling into the trap of Goodhart's Law[1]. While granting that the relationship can be somewhat complex and potentially reinforcing, it feels like this is really primarily treating the symptom and not the cause.

This may be a good proxy for gender equality with regard to economic opportunities; however, forcing it to hit a certain threshold merely makes the measure meaningless without appreciably impacting actual gender equality (this only impacts a vanishingly small percentage of the overall population).

I strongly support efforts to increase gender equality, but I also believe they should be evidence-based and ideally on their face gender neutral (for example: banning gender-based discrimination is neutral, even though it would currently be far more beneficial to women than men).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

So if a board position opens up and a male is denied an opportunity solely on hos sex, how will CA reconcile the lawsuit?

Because he can't being denied a position which wasn't legally available for him to have in the first place.

> which wasn't legally available for him to have

That's exactly the problem- you can't create a state law that trumps federal law. The law itself is illegal, it's existence violates gender discrimination laws already.

How about a law that requires a certain percentage of non-black, non-gay people?

Why limit that bill just to executive positions? Why not force companies to have women in every type of position that the company has?

I guess you know the answer, but: for the same reason it doesn't apply to all those other jobs with high mortality, or crippling dangers, or plain nasty ones.

There’s a lot of people getting riled about this but recent history in Europe shows that it has little effect either way. Not a great way to solve the imbalance but it’s not going to cause anyone’s collapse.

The Economist sums it up: “While quotas have not been the calamity that many had feared, they have also so far failed to achieve what governments had promised they would.“ https://amp.economist.com/business/2018/02/17/ten-years-on-f...

Europe is only globally competitive in the entrenched industries that were created before WW2. It entirely missed the computer revolution. The general economic direction of Western Europe is downward.

Hardly. Europe who you can credit for inventing the www missed the computer revolution? Funny how banking, payments, government services, car tech, happen to be at a higher level than in the US.

People tend to underestimate Europe and the EU. When asked what the world's leading financial power is almost half of people say the USA. The USA is third, with China first and the EU second. The EU's share of the world's GDP is shrinking because the rest of the world, especially the developing world, is catching up, which is a good thing.

What people think depends upon perspective. US tech companies are in the news more but there are unicorns and big tech companies in Europe, some of which I couldn't tell you what they do. As well as many large older IT companies there are also big new tech companies like Spotify, ASOS, Just Eat, skyscanner, Deliveroo. All big, all tech, all headquartered or started in the EU recently.

This is also ignoring the current shift to offshoring development to Europe. Eastern Europe is getting the lion's share of that but the western side is home to a lot of big divisions of international companies.

It does like you have the tech blinkers on, which happens to a lot of people working in tech. "Tech is the future and tech is everything." People tend to forget that the traditional industries are massive (the biggest companies in the world by revenue aren't tech companies) and they tend to play a larger role in a country's economy that tech does. These are companies that build their own towns if they need to and cause massive effects when they move.

Manufacturing is huge and ultimately everything tech uses is a product of manufacturing. Foxconn is as much a manufacturer as a tech company. The biggest companies working on self driving cars are the traditional car manufacturers, including European giants Volkswagen and Daimler. Other players like Uber use other people's cars. And when these cars go on sale half or more of the profit will be to the company that makes the metal.

Finally, a large part of Trump's promises were to bring back these old industries to the US because they're the industries that create long term jobs and transform towns.

For "publicly traded corporations headquartered in California".

I wonder how hard it is to legally change your headquarters. I hear Delaware is nice this time of year...

Texas is calling.

You are confusing incorporations and headquarters. You can be incorporated in Delaware (as is popular) and headquartered in California (this already happens).

Yes, for example both Google and Facebook incorporated in Delaware and having Principal Executive Offices in California.[1][2]

[1] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000165204416...

[2] - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680116...

Is there a legal definition for when transgender people count for legal purposes? I'm genuinely curious here.

AFAIK, there is a process by which you change your legal gender. Each person is also assigned a legal gender identity; AFAIK, it's used for which prisons population you go to, what it means to request same-gender officers/doctors/etc.

IANAL in any way, but my guess would be the same set of laws and systems would apply.

The more interesting thing is if/when there's someone legally identified as neither male nor female.

In California: "Gender identity is a person's understanding of their gender, or perception of their gender identity (which may include male, female, a combination of both, or neither of those), a gender differing from the one assigned at birth, or transgender."

So it's essentially whatever the individual defines their gender to be. A person can have their gender changed by court order on various documents if certain criteria are met; federal documents are more difficult to change than CA-issued documents.

But is the law written in the context of gender or sex?

According to CA SB 826:

(f) For purposes of this section, the following definitions apply: (1) “Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

Is someone allowed to self identify as more than one gender? Is there any burden of proof on identity?

That starts getting into difficult territory. A strict interpretation of SB 826 would require a person to self-identify as "female" and nothing else. It would be a legal question to be decided by a court if genders such as "genderfluid" or "non-binary" would be acceptable.

There is a law in CA that prohibits employers from asking for documentation of your gender or sex. However, I don't think board directors are considered employees. They are either volunteers or independent contractors.

I've read that only like 90 corporations are headquartered in CA for which this law is applicable. Most of the others are headquartered in Delaware or other states. One exception I've heard of is Apple.

Depends on your interpretation of "headquartered". The article points out that many companies are headquartered in California, but incorporated in Delaware.

Yes my mistake. I meant incorporated.

The text of the bill defines this:

whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California

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

And it would be PR suicide for any of those corporations to re-headquarter any time in the next couple of years, now...

Why is that?

I would be impressed if they did so. This law is BS and circumventing it is heroic.

Well, it would look like they were moving headquarters specifically to avoid having to hire women. Whether or not that was actually the case.

This is good for 49 states.

Is there any requirement in the law that the women on the board actually do anything other than be a member of it? Would anything stop a woman from offering to sit on your board and pinky promise not to vote for $1k a year? Someone could do that with a whole bunch of companies and everybody wins.

What’s stopping a lobbyist from paying them a lump sum greater than their NPV of $1k/yr to just vote once at a decisive moment?

Also, what is such a person supposed to do if they’re the tie-breaker vote?

A few years from now, a lot of board members will start identifying as female.

Government overreach.

They can also add "paper women". There is probably even an opportunity for a service company to provide a catalog with profiles, from which to add paper women to your board:

"Add a paper woman to your board! Cheap and easy! $9.99/year excl. sales tax"

bindersfullofwomen.com

Does that also mean that current all women boards have to include some men?

No. Interpreting CA SB 826: a board of all women would be in compliance. The bill itself does not mention men at all.

i swear i'm about to give up on california

While I'm all for women serving on boards, I'm not keen on this being a legal mandate. I'll be sure to not incorporate in CA. Furthermore, how do they determine "female"ness?

Uh, the gender the person identifies with. That's all.

Then I hardly see how this law changes anything. Can't one identify one's gender fluidly, sometimes including both at times?

No, legally one can't. One can change their legal gender, but one has to decide.

Ah, of course. Thank you for helping me realize what should have been painfully obvious. (but seriously, though, thank you)

So Alphabet will need to add two women (currently 8 board members, 1 woman). Apple, Tesla, and Facebook will need to add 1 (7/2, 9/2 and 9/2 respectively). Uber surprisingly enough already has 3 female board members, so they’re all set. That’s all assuming that this bill sticks of course. I’m sure there’ll be some heavy opposition to it.

I’m a bit surprised Alphabet’s board is one of the more gender imbalanced right now among the giants.

Alphabet seems to have [1] 11 directors, two of which are women. So they can either (1) hire one more women director, or (2) fire six of the male directors.

[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/other/board.html

Edit: the law only requires three women directors for board over six in size, not 50% of the board. Corrected.

Ah, you’re right, I was looking at an out of date list of board members.

So they’ll only need to hire 1 additional woman. The bill requires there to be at least three women on boards with six or more members. Not pairity, just 3.

You are correct and I fixed my comment to reflect that.

I look forward to a bunch of white males in their 50's who have 100M+ stock portfolios identifying as "female" real soon....

There is a real problem with underrepresentation of women on corporate boards. It's not hard to find talented women

Thank you. Instead of acknowledging this reality, many here seem to be proposing technical ways to get around it.

What about algorithmic laws.

People complain about affirmative action, because it favors one group of people over another.

What if you algorithmically defined quotas instead of saying group X you say of the n groups that are underrepresented in the subset population relative to their existence in the larger population of the country they are weighed favorably by a multiplier of X.

This way you can get around writing policies that expressly prefer one group over another. Instead of saying we prefer black people over Asian people into our institution, we prefer "women" over men. The policy should be written as we prefer the lower X% represented ethnic categories to ensure preventing homogeneity and ensure a level of diversity.

Of course the issue with this becomes how do you define group identity. People can be divided into infinitesimal categorizations, and how do you define what qualifies as being part of a group. Is Barack Obama black or white? What percentage of genetic markers, indicate that someone deserves a specific label or categorization. Why is that percentage accurate? Why do we prefer one class of discriminated people over another class of discriminated people? The questions go on and on.

People can be divided into infinitesimal categorizations

Down to the person. Which is why merit has been and will be the best measure. And also why identity politics are so damaging.

Last submission of this news was sunk or flagged by HN moderators within an hour. Let's see if this one lasts.

What posts are you referring to? This topic has already been repeatedly discussed on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18109162

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110316

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17885236

The current submission is clearly a dupe, since it's the exact same news from 4 days ago. Moreover, the discussion is predictable; it consists of the same two things over and over: (1) "discrimination"; (2) "it works in Europe". Plus trolls. Nobody participates in these threads out of intellectual curiosity, so they're actually off topic by HN's core standard: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

It's bad both ways: having these news creates sort of unconstructive discussion, but removing it creates a perception of bias/censorship.

I think between these two bad options not removing them is a better option: news of this magnitude are rare and it will blow away after a few days. It relates to California corporate law and thus is pertinent to HN nevertheless I think.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. No question it's pertinent. I'm not sure we need a fourth thread though.

Re perception of bias/censorship: that's a tough one. This perception arises no matter what we do; there seems to be no way to avoid it.

At least now we can feel good about being exploited... because they are inclusive!

This legitimizes tokenism for every diversity agenda. But it raises the problem of how do you set up, say, a 5 member board with the correct numbers of white, black, asian, women, Indian, gay, hispanic, etc. on it?

Well, a woman can be both gay and of any given race.

This may come as a shock but people often have multiple backgrounds.

If you're a bi-racial gay woman, you'd be in high demand!

Why wouldn't they be already? If that person is still a high functioning adult then they have an accessible insight to people you and I do not.

He means they'd be in higher demand than someone who's equally high functioning but checks fewer diversity boxes.

I've seen people kept around for that exact reason in govt contracting. For example, one employee never pulled her weight, and managers always wanted to fire her, but she was a black senior citizen. Since she allowed them to check off 3 diversity boxes when bidding for govt contracts, the company wouldn't let anyone fire her, so she kept getting promoted because that was the only way the managers could get her off their team.

In the trades it's common to have a personal LLC so you can expense your work truck, your lunch, etc and to have your wife own the LLC so you can have a woman owned business (which makes you a more attractive sub for government jobs)

Around DC a lot of small government contractors are minority women owned. It's much easier to get contracts but the staff is usually not that diverse.

you left out about 100 other subcategories one could choose to focus on...

The assumption implied in many comments on this post is that this policy change will hurt companies.

Is that really how people feel? If so, how come?

Because people think that you should hire someone based on their qualifications, not based on what is between their legs.

The implicit argument you're posing is that board membership is a meritocracy where there are no implicit or explicit barriers to entry based on certain groups.

I don't think I need to go into the result of holding that belief with the current makeup of boards of directors.

Why do people so often assume -- as Brown has here -- that more women in power will lead to progressive outcomes?

41% of women voted for Donald Trump. 37% of women currently approve of his performance. These numbers are lower than men, it's true, but not that much lower (52% and 45%, respectively).

Even though more women believe Ford than men, there is little difference in opposition to Kavenaugh by gender: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/01/poll-kavanaugh-for...

Many progressives seem to view women as a voting bloc that will ensure left-leaning results. The numbers do not support this view.

The reason is pretty simple. Women have husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. It's not women vs men.

For example, a female colleague of mine a few years back had her son forced out of university and ruined due to an allegation of rape that was entirely he said / she said. She did a lot of crying about how unjust that was.

Will this mean we'll see job postings in the future that state, "Men need not apply"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com