Judge: California’s women on boards law is unconstitutional | Hacker News Reader

Judge: California’s women on boards law is unconstitutional

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178 pointsfortran77240 comments

> “More women on corporate boards means better decisions and businesses that outperform the competition,” Atkins said in a statement. “We believe this law remains important, despite the disheartening ruling.”

I don't understand this. Something being a competitive advantage is not a reason for a law.

Inequality is a reason for a law. The fact that it's a competitive advantage just means it's not a law that has to harm anyone in order to decrease inequality.

What I'm quoting isn't talking about inequality; it's only talking about competitive advantage. That's what I'm commenting on.

Laws are created all the time to create a competitive advantage for companies. Disney’s special tax district in Florida, industry cities like Emeryville and Vernon in California, tax credits for films, lax usury laws in South Dakota and Delaware for credit card banks, and the list goes on and on. It’s a reason, a common one, even if you don’t like it.

I'm not saying I don't like it :-) This isn't describing the same sort of thing as that.

To give an example, it would be like legislating that companies switch to email from postal mail because it's a competitive advantage to do so. I'm saying that that isn't a valid (or necessary) use of legislation. Companies will use email anyway to give themselves a competitive advantage.

I found these points of the court's judgement noteworthy:

-- If a California government action contains discriminatory classifications with the intent to reverse or compensate for discrimination, that original discrimination must be concrete, tangible, and a product of that government's other action.

-- The defendant (California government) could not / did not produce any case of an identifiable woman who was discriminated against in board seat selection (according to the definitions of illegal discrimination) which would have been justification for creating legislative discrimination to reverse the harm.

-- The history and debate about the Senate bill showed that the goal was not to reverse specific cases of discrimination, but to achieve the broad goal of gender parity on boards -- which is not a compelling state interest enough to justify creating discrimination.

-- The state was not able to (or did not) present compelling evidence either that lack of women representation on boards is a result of discrimination, or that having women on boards is a causal factor in improved corporate performance or positive benefit to the state, which would have been necessary to claim that the legislation is constitutional. During the bill's debate and passage, none of the expert testimony or contribution to its passage was able to cite compelling research linking female board members causally to such.

----

Let me just say I am all for all for women to have more representation on boards of companies -- by each individual's interest and merit (and equally, connections) to do so. I am not in favor of legislators passing such shoddy discriminatory legislation to force it to happen because they want to see a symbol of something achieved regardless of how it happens, and glossing over what it contorts others to have to do to make it so.

“More women on corporate boards means better decisions and businesses that outperform the competition,” Atkins said

This is an odd way to defend a law. If he actually believed this were true, why would he need to mandate it? Just let the better companies outcompete.

This "natural selection" argument presupposes that women are sufficiently prevalent on boards that the competitive advantage they provide is apparent and obvious to all other companies. This assumption is problematic in a context of low prevalence.

Article says 26% met the criteria already, so it's not that out there to expect to see an effect

The way State Senate leader Toni Atkins stated it - direct reference by the OP - "better decisions and businesses outperform the competition" means she believes that this is a 100% fact, and the competitive advantage is apparent to everyone but the foolish judges (quote: "legalities don’t match our realities"). She doesn't seem fazed by this assumption being problematic in a context of low prevalence.

If they aren't sufficiently prevalent to demonstrate the advantage, then on what basis is the claim being made?

When you do research, you select your sample judiciously, and you never really sample the whole population. Depending on the research question, you sometimes want to select a sampling technique that is not representative of the population.

It’s frustrating how the courts can take 4 years to decide such an apparently straightforward question. During which time people had to make important decisions under uncertainty.

It may seem so from our perspective, but the people who were in charge of rebuttal probably wanted to make sure their case is bulletproof.

I'd rather it take a little bit longer if it assures that procedure is followed and laws like these are legitimately struck down and set a strong precedent for the future.

Actually it’s the purpose of the side pushing for this. They want this to be put in practice before it’s officially shut down by the court.

Can someone help me understand why a law that mandates women on company boards (arguably the best position in the market) would be more beneficial than women being mandated into all jobs, including lower level men dominated jobs (like brick laying, plumbing, construction, metal working, etc)?

Because more female plumbers isn't something that middle-class college-educated women in the media and industry care about—and those are the women in a position to be heard and to influence policy.

And women don’t want these dangerous or dirty jobs.

Serious answer? Because boards of companies have control over many parts of those companies. Ensuring companies have a variety of people on their boards ensure a variety of viewpoints, and make sure female issues are represented. Are there are a wide range of other viewpoints still not represented? Yes, but let's try to make progress where we can.

Can men represent female issues? Of course in principle, but in my experience they often don't do well at it.

There are plenty of policies, including ones where governments spend chunks of money, to get women into (as you call them) "lower level men dominated jobs", these often involve advertising, and helping people get qualified to do the job. As there are no qualifications for company boards, that type of thing wouldn't help there.

Interesting insight. I see your point and I agree that more points of view can definitely be an asset to a company. But my concern in about mandating these jobs.

I tend to disagree with you that company boards have no qualifications. I think you need a pretty impressive resume to even be considered in a company board. So programs for less prestigious jobs that can help women gain the experience and build an resume where they get the job in a non mandated way could be more viable (IMHO).

I think if you start mandating these kind of jobs in the name of equality and diversity you: 1. Should mandate blue collar jobs in the name of equality and diversity as well 2. Should really make sure you have qualified and competent people to fill the jobs. Otherwise you risk filling those positions with unqualified people who, despite their best intentions, will not help the cause by under performing.

This is an area where there are (I think) no perfect answers.

One deeper problem is how boards tend to work in general -- often the people already on the board are involved in choosing new members, so things don't "fix themselves" over time. The best option (I think) would be to make sure as the most qualified and competent people take the jobs, I personally believe in that case you would end up with more women on company boards. One way to do that would be to have boards appointed by a completely independant group, but I suspect most company owners would hate that suggestion.

Mandating many blue collar jobs wouldn't work, as there simply aren't enough women with the necessary qualifications, so you would simply shrink the sector by (making up a number I admit) 80%.

It is for sure a very tricky problem.

I also tend to think that if we hire the most competent and qualified people the numbers would naturally tend to 50% or whatever the men/women preference ratio for that job is. What we should strive to do, IMHO, is make sure that everyone has the same opportunities and there is no discrimination preventing different people to get a job.

I agree that mandating many blue collar jobs would not work because of the low number of qualified women, but why would that not be the case mandating company board jobs? If we're saying we have very very few women in company boards, doesn't that mean we have very very few women that have experience for positions like those and consequently way more men that have experience and are more qualified? Since board members are such high end positions and paid very well you can't just double the number of such positions which means you'll end up picking women with less experience over men with more experience cause it's mandated. Hence you're picking the less qualified person for the job which will create friction.

I think a way better solution would be creating incentives for companies to hire women in the boards or funding companies created by women. That way women can get the same degree of experience as men and then can compete for these positions with similar qualifications which I think will increase their numbers.

But in my opinion mandating something like this creates a lot of friction. Government mandated people to wear masks and we all know how that went. So many people did everything in their power to resist that. I think it's human nature to try to resist when something is forced on you.

If the spirit of the law of corporations is to serve the publics interest, and profit-motivation serves the public interest by increasing the capital savings in private society, then why do a variety of view points matter in achieving the objective? How does a board member with more feminine care knowledge increase the available capital for lending into, say, nail salons, by being more proactive about such internal capital expenditures toward more femininity?

I suspect if they had worded the law as boards must have a minimum number of both sexes then it would have been less likely to run into legal trouble. Such a law would have had a similar effect so it puzzles me as to why they chose the explicit discrimination option.

If California was not a one-party state, the legislature wouldn't have wasted time on passing these unconstitutional virtue-signaling laws.

Good thing we have a court system and a constitution.

Winds are finally blowing the other way? The other completely unconstitutional but widely practiced things in US are "the employer has to prove its innocence" when it comes to hiring discriminations - which is not only blatantly unjust, but eats up enormous resources and potential. And affirmative action in education.

Shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Also it makes no sense. Why should, say, a men's health startup be forced to have women on the board?

Here is the text of the opinion: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/Crest-et-al-v-P...

Good.

European women generally sought help with carrying the burden of child bearing and child rearing and gains in terms of employment followed. American women generally took the very American position of "Don't tread on me!" and it hasn't been as effective.

There are better ways to address such issues.

In Germany and France, the women are fighting to get such laws going through.

My very personal take on the issue is that one needs such law to "change the habits" and then hope that the new normality later reduces the need for such laws.

Well, I am skeptical that such an approach is really a good idea. So I personally hope they aren't throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Are you skeptical of whether the approach is morally good, or of whether it's effective? Because it is often very effective over time.

My concern would be that it could lead to women getting positions for which they aren't really qualified and this undermining corporate health over time, among other things.

Having a smaller slice of a larger pie can be a better deal than a larger slice of a dying economy because people are being stupid in the name of ethics and equality.

That is more of a short-term concern: over the longer term, it is widely understood that establishing more equitable opportunities has the effect of redressing systematic inequities that are preventing full participation & competition of traditionally marginalized groups.

The classic illustration is that the increased prevalence of women/black/hispanic/indigenous role models in STEM, for example, encourages a higher degree of participation and competition from these traditionally marginalized groups in the field.

If there is no good reason to think these marginalized groups are inherently less suited for the role, then over time, they should be selected on the basis of merit in roughly demographic proportion.

Historically, "men" were made, not born. You had to prove yourself a man. You weren't granted that status based solely on the bits between your legs.

Women who join male dominated groups tend to feel the men are just being mean to them because male and female culture differs.

It's probably a waste of my time to try to discuss it here.

So I think I shall bow out without completing my thought in this comment.

> Historically, "men" were made, not born. You had to prove yourself a man.

I don't think women had the historical opportunity to be "made a man", so this very-rhetorical argument / play on words is not particularly persuasive.

You see such stories in media (and I would wager in practice, with any lady that enters a male-dominated group and ends up actually fitting in) frequently enough.

Do not worry. Women are totally qualified to get such positions. In fact, in Germany/France, they are usually more qualified than men. I don't know in the US, but on my side of the Atlantic women must be 10 times better than men to be considered for the same responsibility job.

For me as an external consultant for big companies, it means I really enjoy working with women. They are always extremely good in what they are doing as soon as they are one level up.

Boards of directors of public companies are normally elected by shareholders. I wouldn't say they're chosen based on their real qualifications, more so their reputation and popularity.

The number of seats is kind of arbitrary from what I understand, you could add more or have less seats.

Also what the board is responsible for is generally governed by government regulation in some jurisdiction.

The whole thing is about corporate oversight to some extent, supposed to be you have unbiased members that don't have skin in the game like execs and CEOs and other employees and who can represent shareholder's interests as well as government regulation.

I'm not sure how I personally feel about the law, but the idea that you'd need say a gender parity of board members isn't that insane as compared to say for hiring for a doctor, engineer, scientist, etc. If you think of the purpose of the board to be that unbiased oversight, you could argue diversity is a good way to optimize for reduced bias.

the idea that you'd need say a gender parity of board members isn't that insane

I'd like to shoot for a higher standard than "less nutty than some other proposal" personally.

But I'm weird that way.

I see it as window dressing at best. Getting a job on a board is great for that one person (they get money, influence, status), but doesn't do anything for the others. I've asked this before: what's the goal, and how does putting women (in this case) on boards help towards that goal?

> I've asked this before: what's the goal, and how does putting women (in this case) on boards help towards that goal?

It's all about overcoming inertia by pushing against it. There's a cultural bias in corporate boards to only or primarily hire men. Putting women on them can show that they are equally capable, and gives these women the opportunity to create the contacts needed so that other women in the future will also have access to them. All this is more difficult as long as the cultural tendency to discriminate in favor of men remains unchanged.

I suspect these laws bear out their effects in considerably more numerous (and more subtle) ways than many critics realise. I suspect most will understand (i) the law immediately addresses a numerical imbalance, and (ii) also creates visible models/ examples to inspire future women to go for board seats. But also (iii) it builds the CVs of the current crop of women benefiting from the law to get onto boards, meaning they'll be less at a disadvantage next time they apply for another board (people are often on multiple boards at once), boosting 'organic'/'natural' (non-discriminatory) gender balance in the competition for seats; and (iv) when it comes to replacing the female board member, the company/organisation can more naturally contemplate another woman also doing a great job in that seat (whether or not they hire one into that seat would be a question of available candidates, but at least the headhunters and board would be able to - at least - imagine a woman in the role). Those are all quite significant levers.

> Putting women on them can show that they are equally capable

How is that a goal? Putting someone on a board isn't visible, at all. Almost nobody sees board members, and certainly nobody sees their achievements (which is needed to demonstrate capability). And visibility/perception of capability hasn't been needed in the past. Women have stormed institutions that were male bastions once.

> so that other women in the future will also have access to them

That's circular reasoning.

Note that I'm not at all arguing against anyone in a board position. It's just that this seems to be a "feel-good" measure without any reason and effect.

> Almost nobody sees board members, and certainly nobody sees their achievements (which is needed to demonstrate capability). And visibility/perception of capability hasn't been needed in the past. Women have stormed institutions that were male bastions once.

Won't other board members see their achievements, and aren't board members responsible for choosing new members? Having women there should work to make their peers realize that being a woman is not by itself a handicap for the position (contrarily to the tradition of irrational beliefs that it does).

> That's circular reasoning.

No, it's compound interest. Getting the ball rolling is important so that the process will increase speed by building on the previous efforts, until reaching the point where the artificial pressure is no longer needed.

It's circular if the sole goal of putting women on corporate boards is to put more women on corporate boards. I doubt that's the goal, though.

Obviously. The goal is destroying the mindset that prevents having more women on corporate boards to begin with.

Ok. But I don't think that's going to be done by putting them there. Nothing suggests it would. Instead, it's a slow process of endless education. And I'm afraid the people at the very top are (on average) the more conservative, so it's a long, uphill battle. Giving a bunch of women a cushy job isn't going to achieve that goal. Chances of it backfiring are real, too: one foobar and the mindset is back again, rooted firmly in evidence this time.

For comparison: look what a black president has done against racism in the USA. OTOH, I don't believe putting women on a board of directors is going to make companies perform worse. So many seats are taken by mediocre bootlickers. But I still think it's not going to help women in general.

The idea is that membership of boards is often chosen by existing members of said boards, and that people (not always, but on average) have a tendency to choose people who are like themselves. And boards are typically male-dominated due to historical sexism, so the goal is to disrupt that inertia with an external push towards a more diverse group, with the hope that it will then be self-sustaining going forwards. And this is considered desirable because it means that opportunity and power is more evenly distributed across different sections of society.

If such law is effective and useful then we should use it in a gender neutral way in all places where gender segregation exist. A good verification that a law is good is when the usefulness of the law remain the same regardless of whom it is targeted against or whom favors by it.

Few laws got removed faster then when one such law was tried in Sweden, and the argument was the exact same thing as in California. No one likes discrimination, and when the "wrong" demographic benefited the political support goes into negative. Sweden has a worse gender segregation than US, and at the extreme end you got profession and educational programs that are practically single-sex. Gender quotas would force a change of habits, but you won't find much political support for it. Would even you be a supporter if it was used as a general tool against gender segregation?

The law is to force companies to let women onto boards. That's the aim. Claiming that some study says it's better for business is just something to fire back at the "leave it to the free market" people, in case of opposition.

That's unfortunate, we've had a similar law on the books here in Norway since 2006. There where some noise about it at the beginning. But the consensus now seem to be that it is a positive.

By "the consensus" you mean the press stopped reporting on objections and now tell you there's consensus?

There's obviously no consensus that it's positive. It's clearly, very obviously and very badly negative. It's blatantly sexist discrimination against men who have done nothing wrong, which is deeply immoral. It also many other subtle negative effects. It degrades the language and confidence in the rule of law because these laws that make people unequal are invariably presented as "equality" laws. It also makes it impossible to respect women on boards! Everyone knows they might be there only to satisfy a legal quota, not because anyone actually respected their abilities. I've actually heard quite a few women opine that they start out suspicious of women in powerful positions these days, because they know directly how easy it is to get there on the back of feminism, but they need competent services in that moment and not a job. If you want to create anti-female sexism where none should exist, forcibly replacing men for sexist reasons is a great way to do it across the board.

This sounds like you don't actually live here. I'm not a native in Norway, and what you describe isn't what I see at all.

Is there a small part of the population that is against it? Sure, and there probably always will be. There is also a small population of xenophobes and racists, but they definitely aren't the majority.

I've actually heard quite a few women opine that they start out suspicious of women in powerful positions these days, because they know directly how easy it is to get there on the back of feminism, but they need competent services in that moment and not a job.

Just to fill you in, people are suspicious of people in powerful positions. Right now, folks that agree with you blame feminism. Previously, they'd say it was obvious that she sexed her way to the top. I'd not take any of this seriously.

Instead of discussing imputed attitudes or motives, since the Norway law is already 16 years old, why not look at actual studies of quantitative results on company performance? (by company size, sector, age etc.)

I found 21.7K publications on Norway’s quota for women on corporate boards https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Norw...

Which are the most authoritative? What were their findings? (on actual company performance metrics, not just on the effect on gender representation on boards or executive search committees, or pay gaps)?

For what it's worth, even though I don't agree with you, your post really should not have been flagged to death. I don't see what rules it's breaking so I vouched for you to bring it back.

How many years after the Norway legislation did it take to measure the outcome? Can you cite any definitive studies on that? (other than https://www.economist.com/business/2018/02/17/ten-years-on-f... "Ten years on from Norway’s quota for women on corporate boards: Gender quotas at board level in Europe have done little to boost corporate performance or to help women lower down")

As to the California state law 2018/SB826 ('Women on Boards'), IIRC part of the reason the state acted was out of frustration that federal legislation on this topic had not happened despite years of discussion.

You are right that on the economically side the reporting and research, indicates that there is no measurable difference on economical performance between before and after law. But before the law was introduced there was worry that an influx of unexperienced women would undermine profitability, which did not happened.

The positive, (as seen from most Norwegians view), is that there are now more powerful women in Norwegian industry and private sector. This is obviously an ideological view, and if you view more women in powerful position as of no or negative value. Then it isn't a positive for you.

Wouldn't that disproportionately help mostly already wealthy upper class Norwegians who have the ability to qualify as CEOs? I think that matters, as often these types of measures don't take into account lower classes

The crux of the matter:

"The law voided Friday was on shaky ground from the get-go, with a legislative analysis saying it could be difficult to defend. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it despite the potential for it to be overturned because he wanted to send a message during the #MeToo era."

The true purpose of this law was political career boosting, not actual change.

That doesn’t even make sense - Jerry Brown was 79 years old when he signed that law and had already signaled his intent to retire.

Pushing through a law that requires discrimination based on race/gender/etc in a state that constitutionally forbids discrimination based on race/gender/etc does not make any sense (at least not on the surface).

Brown is not stupid, nor is the legal team that worked for him.

Just because you're retired doesn't mean you're out of politics and no back scratchers are beholden to you or you can't act as kingmaker or whatnot. There's a lot more to politics than the office itself. California is famously corrupt in this regard.

Alternatively he thought it was a worthwhile policy and hoped the constitution would be amended by the time it took effect, if not, then he had multiple years of his preferred policy in place..

Are all of the unconstitutional ratchet laws that were passed during the Roe era political grandstanding? Or do you think their authors and legislators passed them hoping for changes in the judicial branch that would render them “good law”?

> Are all of the unconstitutional ratchet laws that were passed during the Roe era political grandstanding? Or do you think their authors and legislators passed them hoping for changes in the judicial branch that would render them “good law”?

If we're being real, it's obviously a mix of both. Political grandstanding with plainly dumb laws is definitely a thing that happens. And politicians passing dodgy laws hoping it will work is also something that happens.

> Alternatively he thought it was a worthwhile policy and hoped the constitution would be amended by the time it took effect, if not, then he had multiple years of his preferred policy in place..

That is possible. They did try in 2020, at least for government and public institutions not companies: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...

> Alternatively he thought it was a worthwhile policy and hoped the constitution would be amended by the time it took effect, if not, then he had multiple years of his preferred policy in place.

So if I believe something I know to be blatantly illegal is "a worthwhile policy", doing it anyway is OK then, especially if I feel confident I can get away with it for a few years? Does this also apply to policies you personally don't feel to be worthwhile?

> Are all of the unconstitutional ratchet laws that were passed during the Roe era political grandstanding?

Trigger laws you mean? Of course it's political grandstanding, but there is still a night and day difference between having a law which explicitly says it won't come into effect until e.g. Roe vs Wade gets overturned such as here:

https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=188.017#....

and just passing some law you well know is unconstitutional but trying to enforce it anyway, till the courts actually stop you a few years later.

I don't think anyone ever tried to enforce it.

You are obfuscating. The distinction that matters is if there is an intent to threaten people into compliance with a policy position of yours by creating a piece of legislation you know to be unconstitutional or not. It seems pretty clear to me that this was indeed the attempt.

> The Women on Boards law, also known by its bill number, SB826, called for penalties ranging from $100,000 fines for failing to report board compositions to the California secretary of state’s office to $300,000 for multiple failures to have the required number of women board members.

> The Secretary of State’s office said 26% of publicly traded companies headquartered in California reported meeting the quota of women board members last year, according to a March report.

As you are probably aware, it is a common legal strategy to avoid setting a precedent for some dubious legal claim you know you would lose in court but that is an effective way to coerce others. This works for patent trolls for similar reasons why it likely worked for the state of California (because a lot of times a rational actor would rather comply rather than incur the often greater costs of fighting even if a win seems near certain). It's also quite different from passing some dubious law which plainly states that it does not currently apply and why, as a symbolic act to some constituency. For what it's worth, from memory I don't think all anti-abortion legislation has been mainly symbolic like this, I think there were also cases where legislators tried to coerce people with laws they full well knew would be ruled unconstitutional.

It was not my intention to obfuscate. I was just trying to share information. You make good points regardless.

> a law that requires discrimination based on race/gender/etc

This is a semantic matter that largely depends on context, but more typically, it is not considered "discrimination" in the legal or usual common sense when it's in reality a form of "affirmative action".

I'm just pointing this out to distinguish the case where "discrimination" can have positive meaning with that where it has pejorative meaning. When making value judgments either way, overloaded word choices can cause more harm than good.

Edit: for those who are taking issue with my comment, please see #7 before you downvote: https://www.usf.edu/compliance-ethics/equal-opportunity/ten-...

It's not a matter of "typically". A certain political side is pushing to define "discrimination" to apply only against certain groups.

That use is not typical especially when you consider history and the fact that it still differs from the view of the constitution. Moreover it strikes me as disingenuous (like the Soviets calling Western news disinformatzya).

Where does discrimination have a positive meaning?

I am pretty sure that the folks who are against this law will also be against it if you call it "affirmative action" or "positive discrimination" once you explain the meaning to them. From a meritocratic, humanistic, democratic perspective it is just morally wrong however you spin it.

This idea of a meritocratic system you have is very incomplete. I'd really recommend listening to what Michael Sandel has to say about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qewckuxa9hw

Even if you accept his caution about merit it is still morally wrong to make sweeping decisions on basis of sex if you hold to democracy, humanism, individualism... Actually an honest take of taking privilege into account will find that the most important factors are wealth and education, certainly not sex.

I'm not denying that wealth and education are major hallmarks of privilege, but you can't be honest and say that sex is not an important factor in privilege. That's a whataboutism.

> in a state that constitutionally forbids discrimination based on race/gender/etc does not make any sense

That's a pretty strong assertion you're making, that requiring equality is discrimination. I don't agree at all, and I'm not alone. Which means it's not on the face of it obvious if a law like that is actually unconstitutional - anymore than it's clear if the 2nd amendment applies to nukes.

You’re confusing equity with equality. You can’t have both because equity is an affront to equality. Fortunately, equality is the law of the land and racist or sexist equity laws are illegal.

Explain to me what's unequal about requiring boards to be 50/50 male-female? That’s not even how far the law goes, but let’s take it that far. There’s an equal number of men and women born in america. That gives every child born an equal shot at one of those seats. To allow unequal boards would be to allow people to discriminate based on gender when picking board members. To mandate that is to legally require a level playing field. That’s equality, not the equity you seem to have beef with.

If you believed that men and women are equal then you wouldn't have to care about any men-to-women ratios at all.

If you absolutely need proportionate representation somewhere it suggests that each group is unequal.

How wonderfully optimistic. Unfortunately, such a belief is built on an assumption divorced from how decisions get made and structural advantages (and disadvantages) not equally shared by groups.

I'd argue most believe that men and women are generally equal in terms of skills and potential given similar circumstances, but recognize that society does not afford them equal opportunity regardless of merit. This operates for more than just gender, of course.

Giving some group an advantage through a law will worsen its position in other areas of life.

Mandating a ratio will deepen the divide not fix it. I think the society is on a good track to fix this divide in time. Any attempts by social engineers may undermine it.

Equality means everyone is judged on merit instead of this dystopian view that you’re espousing where people should be considered on immutable physical properties above all.

It makes perfect sense for "legacy" purposes.

Sorry if I am missing something but... Why is this his problem?

If the legislature want to pass unconstitutional laws that will get struck down, at best he is saving the court sometime by vetoing it. But it is the legislature that is at fault for passing it, not him for failing to stop it, isn't it?

They're both at fault. Fault isn't zero-sum.

He put his signature on the bill after taking this oath:

> I (Governor) do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_California

A constitution is just a piece of paper. It only has meaning because people respect it. Passing a law you know violates a constitution is a direct attack on the rule of law itself, and should probably come with penalties attached. Certainly, the fact that politicians in the USA very regularly and blatantly pass laws they know will be struck down by the courts a few years later is one of the stronger arguments I've seen for why the UK shouldn't bother with setting up a written constitution. It's got no teeth. Governments can simply pass and enforce illegal laws, exploiting the lack of speed and capacity in the court system. Then when one gets struck down, just pass another in a similar way.

What you're suggesting for the UK sounds like a terrible argument. Without the constitution these terrible laws will never be struck down for being illegal because they wouldn't be illegal. Courts can, and do, issue injunctions to prevent laws from going into effect when they are likely to be struck down.

Well, I didn't say I agreed with it, just that it's one of the stronger arguments. Creating a constitution is a fraught project that requires referendums and the like, so people have to believe it works. If courts are willing to injunct unconstitutional laws then why didn't it happen here?

I'm not sure why it didn't happen here, but there are a lot of times where it does. Another article mentioned that no fines had been levied because of this law. That might be a reason it was allowed to stay in effect.

Presumably companies were simply complying rather than getting fined. Companies are generally way more law abiding than individuals, it's a rare legal department that would sign off on "let's ignore the law and hope it gets struck down before we get fined and dragged through the mud". Would that even be compatible with the rules around ensuring shareholder value?

Companies fail to comply with laws all the time. They suffer fines, recalls, and sometimes nothing for non-compliance. The Secretary of State at the time it was signed into law warned the Governor that it was unenforceable. The Secretary of states office testified during the trial that there was no intention of fining anyone over it.

Edit:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-says-california-...

Ok thanks, that's interesting. It sounds strange, but I can see how this isn't much of an argument against constitutions after all.

> The true purpose of this law was political career boosting

That's kinda the whole point of our systems, an attempt to marry personal interest and community interests. Since when is, "Politician does something his constituents want," a headline?

If they really believe that they would let the market make it happen. It is because they don’t really believe it that they are trying to enforce it by law.

Perhaps they also believe markets are imperfect, especially over the short to medium term timescales that the current and incoming generation of women (and other people who care about these things) actually care about?

Just because someone says that they believe in something, does that mean that they're right, and that they get to force others to do anything they want based on that belief? Including discriminating against yet others?

If you arrived at the snack table early and grabbed 10 juice boxes, and the teacher comes and takes five of them away from you and gives them to the other kids, you're not being discriminated against.

Thank god this kind of lazy and intellectually dishonest thinking (I hesitate to call it logic) gets checked by courts in the end.

Yes, a teacher, and the children that are in their charge. That's exactly the attitude these politicians have. How lucky we are that they know best!

I know you really want it to be top down patronizing politicians doing this kind of thing all on their own, but there are actually millions of Californians who agree this is a good idea. In my metaphor, those are the adults in the room.

I'm sure that's true - I don't disagree with you. Though I would maintain politicians have a distinctly high-handed approach to dealing with such matters, and are often highly dismissive of collateral damage from their grand schemes.

So these "adults in the room" are high and mighty about makeup of boardrooms but they refuse to build more housing? If hoarding is the metaphor, seems like that's the more apt interpretation. The average woman in California is much more affected by rent than access to board positions.

I never said it’s a perfect system. There’s lots of times when the government isn’t doing what ANYBODY wants, but that wasn’t what we were talking about. I definitely care more about housing than boardrooms, but that wasn’t what we were talking about either.

Your analogy is poor. A better one, if we’re going to stick with childish analogies:

You achieve straight A’s for a promised juice box reward, but the teacher refuses to give it to you because you’re a boy, and too many other boys got A’s in the past.

I understand your frustration because there really is the sentiment among some people today that “privileged” [1] people should be punished for the crimes of their ancestors.

However a law that says that the board of a large enough company can’t be all male (and then also not all female) is actually not the stupidest idea.

It should absolutely be considered a temporary stop-gap and automatically revoked as soon as some threshold of women on boards is achieved, but it actually is sometimes necessary to give people a little kick in the butt to get things going.

I don’t live in California so I don’t know the specifics of this law, just saying that the idea in general is not as terrible as some of the bad woke stuff.

[1] I say privileged in quotes because usually it’s enough that people look similar to people that are or have been privileged.

The explicit harm done to individuals by such a law is not a distant hypothetical; some non-zero number of people were discriminated against on the basis of their gender, by the government, in order to fill a mandatory quota.

It doesn’t do those individuals any good if you roll the laws back in a few years.

> some non-zero number of people were discriminated against on the basis of their gender, by the government, in order to fill a mandatory quota.

Your assumption is that board seats are being allocated to their rightful owners today, and this law would be a corruption of that. That’s a pretty big assumption. What rooms are you in where the ten most qualified people are _ever_ all male? Even in tech that’s not that common.

No, the reality — not my assumption — is that there are a limited number of opportunities and the government mandated that men should be discriminated against when being considered for them.

I get it, I’m a man and this does me no favours.

But it is also the reality that these seats aren’t really filled based on pure merit. It’s mostly (or at least a real prerequisite) a question if you belong to the right “club”. These laws expand the club a bit which I think is a good thing.

I agree that the idea that decision making will be better simply because there are women is suspect.

Looking at gender segregation here in Sweden, there are many class rooms where all the ten most qualified people are of the same gender. There are simply just many class rooms that have higher gender segregation than 90%, and many are practically single sex from the simple fact that all the students are of the same gender (teacher included).

Many profession are also above the 90% segregation line, and most of them are women dominated professions. Most of those work places will have rooms where ten most qualified people are of the same gender. Most of those work places also have women dominating from the top.

Tech is actually pretty much in the average in terms of gender segregation, at around 70%.

"Rightful owners"?

Wow, I really hope you're not in any position of authority.

When it comes to rights guaranteed in the Constitution, millions of Californians, especially if they want to trample on those rights, are not the adults in the room. Those questions have been removed from the democratic process (by the people, through the Constitution and our fundamental rights) and are not up for grabs just because enough people think that they should.

You may want to think hard about when millions of people have been wrong and trampled on rights you would wish for courts to protect. It may not always go your way based on your approach above.

Given the typically antisocial attitude of "entrepreneurs" treating them like children is unusually defensible.

To what extent do CEO's height compare to the average?

Actually they don't think that, they don't care one way or another. They just want women on boards, and they assume the market will make it work somehow.

More likely it just isn't true. Markets respond quite aggressively to even a small change in the bottom line. Often companies are quite happy to ignore the law, common sense or basic decency to achieve a bit more profit.

If they aren't lining up women for the boards voluntarily, it is because nobody with money thinks there is a benefit from doing so. The effect is probably just the so-called Berkson's paradox [0] and will likely disappear if hiring teams start seeking out female candidates.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

How would that happen? I'm curious because I've never seen markets as being specially good at enforcing policies that (some or most) parts of society see as morally good (as vague as these terms are). For example, markets never managed to prevent child labour (they still don't!), we had to pass laws to enforce them in Western countries.

What are your specific thoughts on how would this process unfold?

Edit: On a second read of the article and parent comment, I understand it now as an ironic take on a flawed justification for the law that tries to satisfy everyone ("We're doing this for the markets!").

The part he quoted was about running a more efficient business (i.e. outcompeting the competition), not being morally better. Markets are generally pretty good at promoting that.

Get it, then I think disagreement runs deeper than I thought. As a sibling comment mentioned, I believe that markets are meant to serve humans, not the other way around.

Edit: typo

The question is: is it more desirable for society to have the most competent people running a business or to have a balanced representation of gender, sexual orientation, skin color or <insert other arbitrary way to classify people here> running it? Free market proponents would argue the former is more desirable.

Free market proponents would be wrong.

If you're excluding a significant proportion of your population from leadership roles - which is what happens predictably, almost as if by magic, when "markets" make decisions about leadership - your markets are anything but free.

> your markets are anything but free

I believe you are using a non standard definition of "free market" here? Also I am not sure I understand what you mean by "excluding a significant proportion of your population from leadership roles". Of course, competency/qualification requirements excludes a large proportion of the population.

This question might be a binary over-simplification. We currently do not have the tools to measure who is "the most competent people running a business". Markets are never pure so I do not think that the current situation (predominantly white men in boards) is the outcome of rational optimisation over the years. If anything, free market proponents should welcome these laws as a way to experiment with different variables to empirically determine what's the best way to run a business.

I also do not think that (most) proponents of a balanced representation favour diversity over competency. Speaking for myself, I do believe (from experience) that having diversity in a team results in more resilient, efficient, and "optimal" decision-making. Again, we do not have sufficient tools to prove that empirically, so we better A/B test the hell out of it :)

"free market proponents should welcome these laws as a way to experiment"

Mandated experiments are not experiments.

As nice as this sounds, I do not think I follow. Can you elaborate?

If it’s widely accepted that placing more women on corporate boards delivers better results for companies, then investors will push companies to do just that.

Those that fail to do so will see their share price lag behind their competitors.

I understand now. However, I think it unfairly assumes that markets are run (or executed?) by rational actors that always make optimal decisions without getting bogged down by biases or passed down wisdom.

Sure, but then you’re replacing that with assuming the government is making the optimal decision and not being bogged down by biases or politically expedient self-serving moves.

Given that the feedback loop for government actions is slow and often time indirect, I’m not sure the government is making the best decision either.

I don't think I ever said that passing this law was correct or that governments were free from bias. I just questioned whether it was a good idea to let markets make decisions and expect them to be optimal, or whether optimising for competitive advantage is inherently good.

I think it's similarly fair to question whether it is a good idea to let governments make decisions and expect them to be optimal, or whether optimizing for equity in outcome is inherently good.

I agree.

Why do you think corporations aren't part of the government?

They certainly have huge influence over policy. IMO it's extremely superficial to believe that just because they're not part of the official party political process they're somehow not in a senior leadership role.

My guess is that GP means that it's not actually a competitive advantage, otherwise the markets would already be including women on their boards in equal proportions to men?

Markets don't tend to experiment that much when they have something that works unless further competition shows up, see electric cars for example.

Markets are meant to serve humans, not the other way around.

> How would that happen?

How would that not happen? Businesses are always looking for an edge over the competition. If it was clear that women bosses outperformed men, any smart investor would insist on having them run the joint. The only counter argument would be that investors hate women more than they love money, which is just patently absurd on the face of it, since they obviously love nothing more than money.

It's possible there is two competing market forces:

1. women on corporate boards are a competitive advantage for reasons stated above. 2. women on corporate boards are a competitive dis-advantage because of social factors based around the cultural idea that women are not normally on boards.

If that's the case, then the market won't unlock the advantages of the first factor unless something happens to disrupt the second factor.

I honestly don't know how anyone can believe the market will find the optimal outcome. At best it finds an optimal outcome within constraints put on it by the confused, reactionary, panicky, racist, sexist, bigoted people who are the things actually acting out "the market".

Wouldn't it be pretty easy to confirm or falsify the theory then? See how companies perform with more diverse boards as compared to those with less diverse boards? That information is public. This study [1] seems to have inconclusive results:

> We found evidence for a positive effect of women on corporate boards on both measures of company performance—ROA and PER—apart from the percentage of female executives in the case of ROA when estimated through pooled OLS. However, the outcomes of panel data fixed-effects and random-effects revealed the lack of connection between board gender diversity and ROA but a positive impact of the number and percentage of women on board on PER.

[1] https://jfin-swufe.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40854-...

Those studies didn’t happen in a vacuum. Imagine your company loses out on some big contract because when the some-women board shows up the all-men board at the other company’s unexamined prejudices kick in and they “just have a bad feeling about that company”. Or maybe it’s that the male faction of the board undervalues the female board members input and it’s functionally like having a smaller board. Those are kinda cartoonish examples of what I’m talking about when I say “cultural forces” - there may be all kinds of hard to quantify hard to control for effects at work. But if those effects would go away if the cultural stereotypes and biases went away, then maybe a law like that would push a skewed system towards one that provides equal opportunity for everyone

To be fair, that sounds a bit like a fallacy ... if a diverse board leads to comparatively better outcomes, it's the fact that they were diverse, but if it doesn't, it's the fault of everyone not trusting the female-identifying board members enough?

If you're bringing up a claim or a hypothesis in a discussion, you need to allow for the claim to be falsifiable.

I'm not making a claim. I'm describing a potential mechanism. The start of this thread was a question like "if women make boards better, why doesn't the market put them in those seats", so I was describing the type of system that could be at play - i.e. cultural inertia counteracting the benefits.

There is, I believe, plenty of evidence in the literature of cultural factors like stereotypes, preconceptions, and prejudices having a very real impact on group performance. But that's not a specific claim about WHICH factors are at play in this circumstance.

You posted a study that seems to show no impact when adding women to boards, so I was pointing out how a study that doesn't control for those kinds of cultural inertia factors can't say anything about the existence or non-existence of those factors.

As for the specific example "if a diverse board leads to comparatively better outcomes, it's the fact that they were diverse, but if it doesn't, it's the fault of everyone not trusting the female-identifying board members enough" which you describe as an un-falsifiable claim, but it's not. Something as simple as an analysis of meeting calendars or emails on diverse and non-diverse boards might be able to determine if the communication patterns are a negative or positive influence on performance.

In the end, from a corporate investor level, it's all about the bottom line. Overperformance and underperformance are well-defined terms. If there is a (positive or negative) correlation between ratio of male and female board members and performance, investors won't look twice at more obscure facets like 'meeting patterns' or 'cultural inertia'.

If the original claim ("Companies perform better with more women on boards") is not provable in a comparatively simple metric like growth, and if there are indications that in fact, 'other factors' like cultural inertia currently is diametral to female success in boards, then making a law that shoehorns more women in boards is not designed to make companies perform better, but to change the assumed cultural inertia at the expense of short- to medium-term economic growth. It becomes an experiment - with the countries that do not have that kind of laws and are unlikely to implement them as a control group (looking at you, China).

It only would be fair to tell that - instead of painting an unproven (and to some extend: disproven) claim a fact.

Well based on the study you cited, there was no significant impact of women on boards detected - so the worst case is performance stays the same but equality is increased. The best case is that gender-diverse boards perform better in the absence of cultural factors, and this law changes the culture and performance increases. Sounds like we win either way - more equality and stable performance, or more equality and increased performance. Where's the downside?

I should have been more clear: I was also refering to the index comparison shared by thematrixturtle [1].

Differently from you, I don't assume the idea that co-ed teams will eventually outperform more homogenous teams is a foregone conclusion. Which means that there are scenarios in which we don't all win.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/SHE#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6IndlZWsi...

What are we supposed to get from that chart? It looks like a subset of the data performs differently from the set? That's not useful information. Via regression to the mean the larger data set will always be more "normal" either lower or higher than the smaller data set.

If you wanted a good comparison you'd have to be comparing an equal sized subset of the DJI that only included boards with low diversity. Junk conclusions from junk data. When it was actually studied with rigor, e.g. the study you linked to (https://jfin-swufe.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40854-...) "We found evidence for a positive effect of women on corporate boards on both measures of company performance—ROA and PER"

Here's the SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF vs the DJI. Alas, so far the experiment does not seem to be bearing out the hypothesis.

https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/SHE#eyJpbnRlcnZhbCI6IndlZWsi...

There's no actual evidence that women on boards yields better outcomes, it's just another false belief propagated by junk studies.

But even if there was, would that be a good reason to act on it? This "logic" never seems to be deployed in men's favour. It's obvious that strong male firefighters will have better outcomes than female firefighters, that's why New York had to make the qualification tests easier in order to hire more women. Yet the rules were changed anyway.

"I honestly don't know how anyone can believe the market will find the optimal outcome."

Because of enormous amounts of history, theory and practice showing that it will? BTW the "confused, reactionary, panicky, racist, sexist, bigoted people" would appear to describe the people breaking the law in order to ban men from powerful positions on the basis of their gender, wouldn't it.

"It's obvious that strong male firefighters will have better outcomes than female firefighters, that's why New York had to make the qualification tests easier in order to hire more women."

Is it obvious, though? Sure, perhaps for a few specific things, but outside of a very limited set of things... probably not. You don't need to be a strong manly man to drive a fire truck nor to use hoses. The test probably didn't actually measure what was necessary before and likely disqualified women not because it was difficult, but because it didn't actually measure how fit for the job women were (example: Measuring upper body strength alone instead of measuring how well they could carry someone out of the fire or hooking up hoses). I mean, somehow women are strong enough to be lifting patients in a nursing home but not helping folks out in a fire? I doubt this.

> You don't need to be a strong manly man to drive a fire truck …

It helps if you’re going to be doing literally anything other than just driving the apparatus.

Also, why should men be relegated to the most dangerous jobs, just so that we can fill a female hiring quota by giving women the safer, less demanding jobs?

> … nor to use hoses.

You absolutely need to be built to man a firehose.

It takes your full weight and strength to keep control of a hose with the diameters and pressures used in firefighting.

With a 2.5”+ hose, it can take two full-grown men to keep control of the line with the nozzle open, especially when advancing.

Nevermind hauling a charged line into a building, up stairs, etc. The weight alone is tremendous.

> I mean, somehow women are strong enough to be lifting patients in a nursing home

Male staffers are generally asked to do the lifting, and sometimes medical services literally call in the fire department for a lift assist.

> … but not helping folks out in a fire?

The structure gear alone weighs about 70 pounds. By the time you find someone in a building, you’ve been using a heavy tools, in the heat, to sound floors and search rooms rapidly in the most exhausting way possible.

It’s so much more difficult than just lifting someone without all the gear on.

There’s also forced entry into doors, etc, which benefits substantially from weight, leverage, and upper body strength.

> I doubt this.

Only because you know nothing about firefighting.

The same is true for military standards, and potentially some police forces (SWAT).

Of course this should have nothing to do with a board position. Perhaps women would actually excel in board positions as those mostly have to do with building/having social networks, something women certainly seem to be better at than men on average.

Most of it is going to be speculation until we see larger numbers and can compare boards with women to boards without (and even boards with only women). It's tough to say, as the 'old boys club' seems to be dying out regardless.

As far as I can tell, your argument is: 1. There is no evidence that women on boards yield better outcomes 2. Even if they led to better outcomes, it's wrong to act on it. 3. Markets are efficient and therefore don't allow for discrimination

Re: 1, I don't know Re: 2, I believe that there is a place for affirmative action, especially in places like the boardroom where physical aspects of gender differences have no meaning. Re: 3, There's plenty of evidence showing places where markets are discriminatory in preference to being efficient: https://danluu.com/bad-decisions/

Gathering data to investigate this is tricky, you cannot really run a randomized controlled trial, so everything is always observational.

This meta analysis study suggests that the suggests that the effect size of having a woman in the board is negligible, but the average number of women in the boards of the considered companies was low:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276057102_Does_Gend...

However more recent research finds a positive effect if the number of woman is higher ( they do not report an effect size though):

https://jfin-swufe.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40854-...

This invites a "Laffer curve" like argument: surly we just do not have enough female board members jet.

> If they really believe that they would let the market make it happen

"The market" is not an entity. It's a collective of people, those people have prejudices and friends. Those primarily factor into what happens - thus, more of the same in-group ends up at the top. This is frankly such a base explanation it's bordering on bad-faith reasoning, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

You haven't spent a lot of time in large companies if you believe they always choose what makes the most economic sense.

Forgive the eye-roll, but this is classic HN reductionism.

How many things can you think of - right now - for which there is clear evidence of benefit yet society has not adopted action? Systemic change is slow, sometimes laws help advance systemic change. The gender disparity gap in leadership is closing, but network effects will continue to operate to create inequitible opportunity for quite some time.

In term of things that are more profitable, companies tend to be very good at optimising for that, that’s the nature of a free market, economic darwinism through competition. If your objective is equity, not economic performance, then it’s a different objective but that’s not the one quoted by the senator.

Companies exist within systems that are more than just "pure capitalism", and whose individual-level actors (who often hold decision-making authority) are motivated by more than just "maximizing company returns". The free market is not some independent force of physics, it's operating in a highly complex, multi-factorial society with individual actors and competing forces. For instance: I have seen people lobby for hires - yes, including two instances of appointing board members - based on personal associations vs. a sober-eyed review of qualifications (guess which gender typically benefits?).

The idea that "if it was better the market will make it so" may be right in the fullness of time, but we live in what is effectively a zero-sum society when viewing the present. Patience for the long-tail of change advantages the already advantaged.

>How many things can you think of - right now - for which there is clear evidence of benefit yet society has not adopted action

Which ones can you think of? Keep in mind the article is talking about markets and fiscal health of the company itself, not society as a whole. It's pretty easy to make the case "society would be better if we did the beneficial things", the question at hand is whether it's the governments place to push these on private actors.

Can it be true that the companies that have women directors do better only because they promoted the qualified ones organically and due to permit? Those that would be forced to due to quotas may not do better

Can all the women who have been added to boards because of this illegal law be kicked off with no liability?

Define "liability".

Without legal consequences? Probably (if the decision is not reversed on appeal).

Without horribly negative PR consequences? No way.

Why would you want to do that?

To state the obvious: You may have been forced to hire a less desireable candidate because of their genitals.

Because any modification to criteria other than optimizing for competency in the specific role for which you were hiring will be necessarily, mathematically, suboptimal.

You’re assuming that humans can be perfectly, mathematically, optimal, and this is basically never the case. Humans will always have biases, such as preferring those similar to themselves.

We are talking board seats - which has nothing to do with competence and everything to do with being connected.

The board you're describing doesn't sound particularly functional.

That doesn't sound unprecedented..

Agreed, but... big picture, aren't we discussing how we could make boards better? Haha.

All boards are like this.

>mathematically

The problem with reality is there is no mathematical metric function where you can plug as input a human and you get as output a number and then you can sort this humans out so you can hire the best. Even for small domains like programming with language X and framework Y is not possible to create a good such metric function, someone could be good at memorizing APIs, someone could be fast at creating good solution but others might be slow but their solutions are even better and others are good at debugging issues.

I think the term "mathematically" is used here broadly and metaphorically, and not literally meaning a symbolic formula. Perhaps "measurably" would have been a better term. No doubt you measure people on various skills during an engineering interview rather than the shape and color of their body, right? Board of Director positions also have measurable skills.

Are you really going to claim that there is some objective way to choose the best candidate during an engineering interview?

No, I'm going to claim that there is at least something better than judging on physical characteristics. In fact most companies agree. It's not a strange or unique opinion.

Most company want to meet and see you, why is that? why are so incompetent and not just give you a test and have someone check the results without meeting you and having a bias ?

Then don't fucking use math to prove a point if it involves only subjective shit like I think this dude has better social skills because I know it when I see it, or this dude has larger culture fit because he likes same movie I do.

If you can meassure skils then you should be capable of hiring people with this simple 2 steps

1 Person A administers the tests 2 Person B checks the results but he has no idea who the candidates are

No more problems with gender,race,culture,political affiliation

Someone explain me how you always have to meet the candidate because you have a skill to read they competence and cultural fit from their face and body proportions and you are special and this proven physical biases never affect you the special one. I mean "you" in a general term not the comment author.

You are just optimising for different things. One side is optimising for gender equality and statistical diversity. You are trying to optimise for competency.

But outside of a perfect mathematical universe competency is multi dimensional and difficult to measure. Bias does creep in. Treating it as a scientific process seems just as reductive as reducing a person to just their gender.

After many years of living in San Francisco I came to the couclusion that for most CA lawmakers US constitution is a pesky nuisance. Thus both CA and the rest of the country would greatly benefit in the long term, if CA secedes.

How about we get parity quotas for enforcing the ratio of men attending university, which is crushing? The fascinating thing about those "protections" is that they mandate a ratio for women without mandating a symmetric ratio for men, which means a world where men become very underepresented would be perfectly fine according to the law. And given that neither masculinism nor egalitarianism have a sufficient number of vocal proponents, those situations will happen as they are already happening in Education. Males issues such as suicide rate, egodepletion and loneliness are skyrocketing and it will only lead to more suffering and conflict in our society. Don't be a retard, be an egalitarianist.

The thing to realize is that all the "fairness logic" is made up after the fact, to rationalize the whole endeavour, and sell it to the population at large. Women want to do what men are doing, they want to be there in every vaguely high-status space, always on the scene. That's it. If a load of men get driven out of some place as a result, that's of comparatively little import.

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