California May Become First State To Require Companies To Have Women On Their Boards (techcrunch.com) 782
Two female state senators from California are spearheading a bill to require companies to have women on their boards. "SB 826, which won Senate approval with only Democratic votes and has until the end of August to clear the Assembly, would require publicly held companies headquartered in California to have at least one woman on their boards of directors by end of next year," reports TechCrunch. "By 2021, companies with boards of five directors must have at least two women, and companies with six-member boards must have at least three women. Firms failing to comply would face a fine." From the report: "Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas," said Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, who is sponsoring the bill with Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego. "It's not only the right thing to do, it's good for a company's bottom line."
Yet critics of the bill say it violates the federal and state constitutions. Business associations say the rule would require companies to discriminate against men wanting to serve on boards, as well as conflict with corporate law that says the internal affairs of a corporation should be governed by the state law in which it is incorporated. This bill would apply to companies headquartered in California. [A] legislative analysis of the bill cautioned that it could get challenged on equal protection grounds, and that it would be difficult to defend, requiring the state to prove a compelling government interest in such a quota system for a private corporation.
Yet critics of the bill say it violates the federal and state constitutions. Business associations say the rule would require companies to discriminate against men wanting to serve on boards, as well as conflict with corporate law that says the internal affairs of a corporation should be governed by the state law in which it is incorporated. This bill would apply to companies headquartered in California. [A] legislative analysis of the bill cautioned that it could get challenged on equal protection grounds, and that it would be difficult to defend, requiring the state to prove a compelling government interest in such a quota system for a private corporation.
forcing of diversity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
My exposure to board-level people is that the positions are sinecures meant to demonstrate the bonafides of the company and provide inside access to the resources that board member is associated: eg. inventment banker, or someone from a VC firm, or the President's son. In other words the notion of "most qualified" is laughable.
California is attempting to address the chicken-and-egg problem of increasing the number of women in a position to be influential enough to ask to join the board in the first place.
This bill is a pretty blunt-force approach, but corporations are creatures of the state and this isn't an instance where a quota would have an impact on anything that could pretend to be a meritocracy.
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and provide inside access to the resources that board member is associated: eg. inventment banker
In other words the notion of "most qualified" is laughable.
Didn't you just contradict yourself? That definitely seems like a qualification to me right there.
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and provide inside access to the resources that board member is associated: eg. inventment banker
In other words the notion of "most qualified" is laughable.
Didn't you just contradict yourself? That definitely seems like a qualification to me right there.
You can't just invent your own qualifications to save up for when you need them.
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
He's pointing out that "qualifed" just means a member in good standing of the financial nobility. Skill, intelligence, etc usually associated with "merit" have nothing to do with it.
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
He's pointing out that "qualifed" just means a member in good standing of the financial nobility. Skill, intelligence, etc usually associated with "merit" have nothing to do with it.
In this instance, the qualification is distinctly called out. It is based upon the genitals of the qualified person.
We'll overlook that those who are born as a male are specifically denied x number of positions based upon their sex.
Regardless, this is an incredibly sexist and bigoted bill.
I guess I just don't understand how sexism is eliminated by sexism.
It isn't even affirmative action.
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Or... We should use the system and choose to identify as the sex desired for the position. At least at the office.
I don't see why I couldn't be a man who identifies a woman who is gender queer and hyper masculine.
I can see this is going to end up with a peen and vagene inspector eventually.
Re:forcing of diversity (Score:4, Insightful)
and provide inside access to the resources that board member is associated: eg. inventment banker
In other words the notion of "most qualified" is laughable.
Didn't you just contradict yourself? That definitely seems like a qualification to me right there.
You left out the other (and far more relevant part):
or someone from a VC firm, or the President's son.
With all things equal, qualifications are the great equalizer. But not all things are equal. Never underestimate the power of social capital, and we don't have that many true meritocracies (we have self-perpetuating systems - read Chris Hayes' "Twilight of the Elites".)
I don't necessarily agree with the bill, but I see where it comes from. It won't necessarily alter boards' to deleterious effects, and it *might* extend the benefit of social capital to other capable people (women) that typically lack access to it.
It is neither a silver bullet panacea, nor stake in a board's heart. Time will tell how well it moves the needle (positively or negatively.)
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas
... is bollocks. In my experience at least, fresh perspectives and innovative ideas are fostered by - surprise, surprise - intellectual and cultural diversity. You get that in a multicultural environment (which you don't necessarily get by hiring the Officially Sanctioned number of each color of person), but cultural diversity between men and women from a similar cultural background is minimal. And the higher up you get, the smaller the difference seems to get.
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
A key point is that people's cognition, their worldview, grows and develops, just as a small child can't form certain concepts, as adults grow, they can develop wider, more sophisticated ways of viewing the world. And this is key, because it applies to everyone. And we don't really know why it happens differently in different people, but it is something about the individual and their experiences.
So as you say, diversity of thought, or rather, people whose thinking is more sophisticated, yeah, it helps to have those people running things.
Where things seem to go wrong is when we take what is a cognitive stage, which could appear in anyone, and start mandating that we should mix a certain proportion of labels (woman, black, chinese, tarns, indian, whatever), and that by mixing those labels, you will generate that higher level of cognition and worldviews. It is not so simple. You cannot force people to grow. What difference if the woman on the board has the same male traits of obsession with ruthless cuts as any other male? (Usually, men have greater focus, and narrower outlook.)
The pomo current adds yet another problem in that, it want this better world, but it disavows making value judgements about people, yet it makes value judgements about people. So, if women are no different to men, and the very notion of gender is a social construct, and yet women are supposed to have all these wonderful qualities which men don't. If men and women were no different, then there is no reason why we should include women more. If men and women were no different then there is no reason why men would be oppressing women any more than women would oppress women. Basically in pomo world, nothing makes sense.
But if they allowed clear value judgements, like saying that certain traits are being more highly valued and so we need to look at why women don't seem to value those traits, and why those traits are valued in business, and whether those traits make sense for the goals of the work, then you can start to have a debate about, what is it about corporate culture which is needlessly making it incompatible with other traits, and making itself unattractive to women? Is it just the long hours? Is it too much travel? Is it just too f***ing depressing that most women don't want to do it?
Pomo always wants to label victims and perpetrators. It is never women themselves making choices. Like how nurses are mostly women, and engineers are so often men. Nobody says women are oppressing men out of nursing. The question should be, why is a particular kind of work done in a way which promotes certain traits and not others? COULD that work be done in more effective way, if some of those other traits were valued more?
But if you merely mandate quotas out of some notion of justice, you just don't even touch that problem. It is like your code crashing all over the place but always returning "ok!" You have simply erased the warning light, not handled the underlying problem.
Anyway, that's just a couple of examples of how these issues need to be seen with value judgements and with discernment about making distinctions about things. It ain't just labels. The tricky part is to do it without introducing bias, but pomo is already so magtastically biased that you could only improve things at this point.
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:4, Informative)
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The tide is turning in medicine, albeit slowly. But note that you are talking about graduates, ie folks at the start of their careers. It's going to be 20+ years before that will ripple through to the upper echelons of the profession.
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not even close to being right. But the narrative must survive!
There are plenty of studies that clearly show that women are generally not oppressed in the workplace, but rather make different value judgements with regard to careers. There are plenty of studies that show these differences, and how they are not societal constructs, but rather rooted in biological differences.
Men tend to like things. Women tend to like people. It is why boys play with Trucks n balls, and girls play with dolls and social games (tea party). This explains why more women go into nursing and more men engineering.
This isn't to say that ALL women are one way, or ALL men are another, as with most things in life, it all falls along a sliding scale.
But the SJW/Womyn Studies narrative against the patriarchy must go on!
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:4, Insightful)
Um. If I ignored the sentiment, I would have had to misquote you and remove the words "tend to". So no, I'm not ignoring that. I don't see that it helps either bolster your argument or weaken mine. You made the link between men and things and engineering; and women and people and nursing. I provided counter-examples. Not that tricky to follow, surely? Especially with your special manly man logic. I know, because I have the same special manly man powers of rational deductive reasoning too. They lead me to conclude that you are more interested in obfuscation than debate. Else you would have responded to my original challenges by:
1. Providing some evidence to support your claim that "there are plenty of studies", especially when challenged on this
2. Responding meaningfully to my counter-examples of medicine, law and politics.
Feel free to go ahead and do that any time you like.
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[Gender diversity bringing a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas] is bollocks. In my experience at least, fresh perspectives and innovative ideas are fostered by - surprise, surprise - intellectual and cultural diversity.
Your experience doesn't mesh well with the research. While cultural diversity does provide more value than gender diversity, both are still valuable. A McKinsey report [forbes.com] shows that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity are 21% more likely to have better than average profits. Just because top quartile cultural diversity companies are 33% more likely to have better than average profits doesn't mean gender diversity is not important. Both seem to provide significant value.
While this is just one study
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:4, Interesting)
When will California adopt similar diversity quotas for State Senators?
Also, I'm curious how this legislation defines "women"?
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:4, Funny)
Re: forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
And nurses? Firefighters? Garbage collectors? Strippers? Elementary school teachers?
And...***insert long list of jobs where gender (sex?) discrimination is obvious because one sex or the other dominates***?
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And nurses? Firefighters? Garbage collectors? Strippers? Elementary school teachers?
And...***insert long list of jobs where gender (sex?) discrimination is obvious because one sex or the other dominates***?
Those careers you mention aren't susceptible to social capital the way boards are. And some of them have that gender tilt because of gender or cultural preferences, not because of glass ceiling barriers or lack of social capital.
I don't necessarily agree with this bill, but your counter-argument is reaching into the realm of the far-fetched.
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People who do not own the knowledge of the skills to solve a problem offer a "solution" for a problem they do not understand or know how to solve
I think you just defined "politics".
Re:forcing of diversity (Score:4, Interesting)
Since there is absolutely no history of liberals coming up with ideas that they regret when conservatives do them twice as big (*cough Biden rule *cough senate justice nuclear option *cough) I wonder how long it will be until there are 'intrusive' rules requiring a certain number of conservatives on company boards and college professorships. You know, for the sake of diversity.
Re:forcing of diversity (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Less qualifed men should WORRY (Score:5, Insightful)
There are fewer women on boards not becuse women are less intelligent but because there are fewer of them at the top of corporations , fewer of them with the depth of experience which would actually br beneficial to a company. The reason for that is not discrimination, it's that women overwhelmingly make different life choices than the men who fight their way to the top of these companies. It's perfectly clear ftom the internationsl data thst this is their vhoice. That is their right.
There are women who are accomplished and sit on boards , run companies etc., just a lot fewer.
What gets me is when women encounter the real level of competetive viciousness inside companies, they think they're being targeted because they're women. Wrong. They do the exact same thing to men, it's just that men eat it.
Women are smarter in a certain way. They see how bad it is and decide it's not worth it earlier than men do. They preserve more of their vital years for thing that matter than men do. This has to be counted as a form of intelligence.
Ihave a friend who works at a hospital. She watches high powered men die all the time. They almost all regret how they dpent their lives.
I would not want to have accomplished what Steve Jobs accomplished if it came with the price tag of being the person we now know Steve Jobs to have been.
You buy things with the hours of your life. Some peopel, men mostly, buy command psoitions in corporations and all that goes with that. That is their due. You can't just hand it out to people who didn't earn it.
Re: misogynist rationalisations (Score:3, Insightful)
as expected you misquoted me via ellipsis, cherry picked a recent news item to deflect from decades of substantive academically rigorous studies and then dismissed the most humanly relevant part of my post.
Feminists are just people with personality disorders they've politicized.
Re: misogynist rationalisations (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because no woman has ever been attacked in a highly highly gendered fashion, called "bitches" when aggressive (though less than their "go-get-it" male counterparts), accused of sleeping around, or of being pre-menstrual, etc, etc, etc. You're livin in fucken dreamland matey.
I know - my wife was the highest paid person in her company - Higher indeed than the owner. It was a company involved in flooring and construction, so lots of "traditional men" worked there.
All those things happened.
She was called a bitch - by women.
She was accused all the time of sleeping with the boss - by women.
All of that stuff that people try to attribute to men. Man, there were some nasty sexist bigot women there.
One thing both she and I learned was that there is a interesting relationship between loud people and what they say, and what they do.
These women were very loud about how they were oppressed because of their sex, but if a woman did well, they made excuses for that success based soley on..... sex. Projection 101. They were sexist bigots, and the only positive thing they got out of their bigotry was a cheap easy excuse for their own lack of success.
Their projection was not unlike the Social Conservative gay hating folks who rail on about the unholy sinful acts of sodomy, but then are caught having sex with another of the same sex.
This is no accident, it is projection. Accuse others of what you are.
there are sexists of both sexes, obviously. I merely point out that if we use sexism to cure sexism, it will never work.
And since Animojo will chime in here, telling me I am doing the same - no, I'm not.
If I wrote something stupid like "All women are sexist", that would be a pretty good indicator that I was projecting, and probably am guilty of what I am accusing others of.
No, I just react, noting that a system that determines qualification for a position based on the equipment between a person's legs, is the very definition of sexist. These sexist women are trying to pass an overtly sex based law. To deny that is to be sexist.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) There are very few females in the top ranks of genius
2) It may well be that at the tail end of the bell-curve, there are fewer women than men.
2 does not necessarily follow from 1. My daughter lives towards the top end of the curve. Getting her TESTED only happened because we noticed issues she was having, and had the resources to privately test her (it costed about 4k$ by the time it was all said and done). The school didn't notice because she was a B student, they don't pay much attention to quiet, g
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"Women do not like confrontation or long hours"
Do you even hear yourself? This is the stuff you tell yourself, there's not a shred of evidence to demonstrate it. Specifically, I challenge you to find any half-decent studies showing a meaningful difference between women and men on their preference for confrontation or working long hours.
I'm too lazy to google it, and I'm not saying the study is accurate; but I did read one study a long time ago that looked into why women still earn less and earn fewer promotions held on to personal dynamics. Yeah, sexism plays a major role too- but when it comes to office politics, women were shown (in this one study) to be more likely to hold onto a grudge and remember a disagreement more than men. Women were 4 or 5 more times more likely to say that they have a boss or coworker who they consider a "foe
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Um. You're not very good at following a debate, are you? If you were, you'd have noticed that when Quenda posed their very exciting simple question about men and women above the neck, they did so as a means of ... what's the word I'm looking for ... oh yes, "dodging" the challenge I put to them: "find any half-decent studies showing a meaningful difference between women and men on their preference for confrontation or working long hours".
As it appears to have escaped what passes for yours and Quenda's tiny
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If they were better qualified than the available men, then they would already be appointed to the boards without needing any legislation. Companies are not going to appoint less qualified people unless they're forced to (eg by legislation like this)...
Re:Less qualifed men should WORRY (Score:5, Insightful)
Gesetze sind wie Würste, man sollte besser nicht dabei sein, wenn sie gemacht werden
--Bismarck
If they were better qualified than the available men, then they would already be appointed to the boards without needing any legislation.
Riiiiiiiight!
Companies are not going to appoint less qualified people unless they're forced to ...
What are you talking about? They clearly do!
Nor is this just a male/female thing either, among others, it's famously a "what school did you go to" thing as well. Maybe for the crucial technical jobs qualification win, but companies are full of humans making decision on a very human basis: first and foremost they decide in favour of "people-like-us". You cannot seriously believe that the better qualified guy has never lost out on a job to the better connected guy. (It's not what you know ...)
Plus we are talking company boards here. How do you spell sinecure?
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Being on a board does not require any qualifications.
It requires connections!
Re:forcing of diversity (Score:5, Insightful)
In situations like this forcing in a small wedge can be what is needed to start a move towards a genuine meritocracy and a system that doesn't exclude women.
I can't really see how you can conclude that, given what you just said:
Look at the average board and it's full of cronyism and nepotism.
Thinking that a cradle of cronyism and nepotism magically becomes a place of genuine meritocracy, by just including women, is just a baseless delusion.
It is either a meritocratic place or it is not: throwing women into the equation, you get either a meritocratic place with a few women more (possibly less meritocratic then) or a meeting of cronies (now both male and female cronies).
In the end it does nothing for "women", it is good only for a few, already privileged, women, namely the president's daughter, the CEO's lover and the venture capitalist's sister.
If you do not believe what I just said, look at how well "coloured quotas" worked in South Africa for coloured people (and South Africa at large).
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> In situations like this forcing in a small wedge can be what is needed to start a move towards a genuine meritocracy and a system that doesn't exclude women.
Here's the problem. These are **private** companies. They should be allowed to "exclude women" if they want. They should be able to choose their board however they damn well please. Women are not prevented from being directors of companies, they can start their own whenever they like, but forcing certain numbers of board members of private companie
Diversity, but not for all (Score:5, Insightful)
What about companies with all female board of directors? Will they be forced to have males on board or does equality only matter when you have a vagina?
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So are young Jewish men, like Ben Shapiro, bad?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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So are young Jewish men, like Ben Shapiro, bad?
Believing in wrongthing negates any identity points.
Re: Diversity, but not for all (Score:4, Insightful)
If that's all it takes to dismiss his religion on the hierarchy of the oppressed then I could just as easily claim Sanders is a dishonest actor, and therefore gets no "points" based on his age, gender, religion, or whatever. What proof do I have that Sanders is dishonest? He's a politician for Vectron's sake!
What about? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm confused. I thought California had officially settled on 1,000's of genders. Is this not discriminatory to Neutois demi-boys? Or woodsprite pansexuals? I mean, I understand there is a need to keep out Apache Attack Helicopters but we need balance here!
What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this is an easy low hanging fruit law. It is just simple numbers. There are only 2 genders, but several different races and nationalities, ethnicities to consider, that is until we decide to cross into the LBGTQ etc territory.
This allows those in support of these laws to claim that they are for equality without having to actually go the distance, hence the cheap low hanging fruit comment. The idea is to introduce "feel good" laws that serve no purpose other than to advance an agenda.
The problem with things like this is others get left out, in your case your Hispanic origin and still leaves you directly discriminated against. As this progresses at which point do we call it done? There are potentially an infinite number of minority configurations possible. Gender, Race, Religion, Politic, Fraternity, Age, Ugly, Pretty? This is why "individuality" needs to be the ideal. There is no greater minority than the individual, which means any other form of classification only results in a caste/class system where one group gets special treatment at the expense of other groups. It creates division... and right now much division has been created under the guise of inclusion.
Re: What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Funny)
This is CA. There are more than two genders.
Re:What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Interesting)
That solves it! Just have one of the board members identify as a woman!
Re:What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gender is not a social construct, it is a biological fact...
The social construct is how the genders are typically expected to behave, and is largely arbitrary and stupid. How you behave doesn't change your biological gender.
Re: What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Society is arbitrary, as evidenced by the fact we have so many of them each with their own artificial constructs...
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What about blacks, disabled, etc.? :(
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How about the poor and downtrodden 'NATIVE AMERICANS', whose ANCESTRAL LAND land was forcefully taken away?
What do you think Mexicans are? What do you think many, many natives are mixed with? In working for and hanging out with Pomo I've noticed that many of them are Pomicans, for example. Their word, not mine, btw. I'm only Mexican-American so I'm not allowed to have a culture
Re:What about Hispanics? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm only Mexican-American so I'm not allowed to have a culture
I'm American. This is why civic nationalism is dead in this country. Nearly every non-white person identifies as a hyphenated American.
That is so 20th century (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about the intersectional thing now. A woman? Why not a black muslim woman? Or better yet someone who is transgender or gender fluid? That law is so behind the times. You have to be a member of a grievance group to get attention.
Sadly - this identity politics thing is fueling the rise of white nationalism. Which is another identity ground centered around grievance as well. Strangely - many far left and far right groups are in solidarity on socialism. Weird.
Re:That is so 20th century (Score:5, Insightful)
More or less. I agree with you - but "white nationalism"? A grand total of 20 people showed up at the so-called "Unite the Right" rally this weekend, billed as a major "white nationalist" gathering. This is more-or-less what always happens at neo-Nazi get-togethers, a few morons giving Sig Heils to each other, and 2000 protesters.
"White nationalists" are neither "right", nor "nationalists", and they are nothing and mean nothing to national politics, aside from being dim-witted pawns in a game by the hard-left to stereotype conservatives.
There is nothing that is remotely conservative or "right" about these nitwits. Being conservative in the USA means believe in individual liberty, natural law, and limited government. Socialism/"National Socialism"/Facism/Communism or any other form of totalitarianism couldn't be any less compatible with that idea, and is fundamentally incompatible with the constitution.
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The fact that 20 people turned up to Unite the Right this year is because they badly misjudged the reaction of the nation last year. They convinced themselves that many ordinary people agreed with them but just needed permission to come out and say it by seeing the nationalists march openly and proudly.
What actually happened is that they lost their jobs, someone got murdered and the expected widespread support never materialised. The bubble they had been living in burst.
They are called nationalists because
Re:That is so 20th century (Score:4, Insightful)
This is absurd stereotyping. The vast, vast majority of the people who created the modern western world were "Christian Conservative"s. The people who started the slavery abolition movement were "Christian Conservatives" on the principle that it was fundamentally against Christ to treat your fellow man like property - they wrote the words "all men are created equal", which you may be familiar with.
I am not a Christian, but it's absolutely ridiculous to categorize an entire - very large - group of people with these ridiculous narrow definitions. It's a sign of your own ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and need to play identity politics that leads you do it. Learn something about the development of Western Civilization, and grow the hell up.
Re:That is so 20th century (Score:5, Insightful)
Go tell Japan that.
Re:That is so 20th century (Score:5, Interesting)
Absurd strawman of the academic left is blamed for a long-standing undercurrent of the political right --modded +5 insightful.
I just thought I would point that out
How is that a strawman? Both groups are screeching about non-existent oppression that they are subjected to.
The far right is indistinguishable from the far left.
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Absurd strawman of the academic left is blamed for a long-standing undercurrent of the political right --modded +5 insightful.
I just thought I would point that out
How is that a strawman? Both groups are screeching about non-existent oppression that they are subjected to.
The far right is indistinguishable from the far left.
Strawman? How dare you? I'll thank you to use the gender neutral strawperson and next time check your microagressions.
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Mind you, I say this as a t
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Do you really think gamers and scientists are trying to eliminate non-white people? Because that's who the far left are going after. They've gone so far left even the socialists are "far right" to them.
Gamergate is about sexism, not conservatism, though I can see how you'd be confused since conservatives are generally sexist. And antifa is not attacking the scientist with the sexy shirt, either. You're frothing.
You're freaking out about PROPOSED bills. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of intentionally provocative/trollish bills california congress - which actually have weak effects, and are mostly pushing for industries to self-regulate, and are NOT actually expected to pass, but reach compromise.
You know, all the stuff that some folks compliment Trump on pushing as genius strategic moves.
More importantly, which a lot of these summaries (and this article) seem to gloss over - this is only for the California senate - not the US senate.
None of these things are positions asked for by Democrats in general, or even these Democrats, except as a starting point of negotiation.
Ryan Fenton
Re:You're freaking out about PROPOSED bills. (Score:5, Informative)
There's a lot of intentionally provocative/trollish bills california congress - which actually have weak effects, and are mostly pushing for industries to self-regulate, and are NOT actually expected to pass, but reach compromise.
If it isn't expected to pass, then why was the largest committee tally of "noes" only 2 votes and why did it pass the floor vote with 66% "yeas" of those who voted and 56% "yeas" if include the non-votes? Don't believe me? Then see for yourself [ca.gov].
That doesn't seem like something that has no chance of passing. It is has a chance at passing and as a result a chance of being profoundly damaging.
Re:You're freaking out about PROPOSED bills. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is has a chance at passing and as a result a chance of being profoundly damaging.
It's not going to be profoundly damaging. At worst companies will "relocate" their headquarters to Delaware. At best it'll be immediately struck down for gender discrimination at the federal level.
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Would it be "profoundly damaging" if it had the intended effect? How would having at least one woman on every board cause this profound damage?
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Would you want to occupy a position you knew you got not because of your abilities, experience or dedicati
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But hey, why fix
So equality no longer desired? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought we were working to make everyone treated the same?
Now, women need preference quotas to fill chairs.
Got it. I'm SURE that will give them the respect they precisely deserve.
Re:So equality no longer desired? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So equality no longer desired? (Score:4, Informative)
I imagine the thinking is that having a woman on the board will make corporations less likely to do evil shit like dumping poison in a lake.
You've not met many women, have you?
Less talent (Score:2)
Of all the reasons not to give a shit... (Score:2)
I'm all for states regulating companies that do business within them. I mean, I get that all of Silicon Valley decided to incorporate in Delaware, but they live in California. Let California regulate them.
Re:Of all the reasons not to give a shit... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm all for states regulating companies that do business within them. I mean, I get that all of Silicon Valley decided to incorporate in Delaware, but they live in California. Let California regulate them.
You do realize that they can chose to not live in California, no? California already drove out a handful of aerospace companies because of their stupid laws. They wanted to regulate "rocket fuel" as a toxic substance. I don't know if they realized this or not but "rocket fuel" is no different than jet fuel, fuel oil, gasoline, or any other hydrocarbon fuel. There are already rules on this on the state and federal level. But it's "rocket fuel" now and so the state wanted all kinds of paperwork to burn "rocket fuel" in their state. Well, that just meant they lost a lot of future business in the space launch industry to Texas, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, etc.
I don't much care what the restriction is on a business, so long as a company can free themselves from a state restriction by moving out of the state then California will lose businesses. I believe that if California did not have such great weather that they'd have gone bankrupt a long time ago by now. There's only so much that beaches and sunshine can buy.
Maybe someone could argue that this rule serves some "greater good" but it won't. Here's why, can you define a "woman" for me? Seems simple enough, right? Well, there was a story going around the internet a week or a month ago on how a Canadian man got himself a discount on his car insurance by declaring himself a woman. He didn't take any hormones, he didn't undergo any surgery, he didn't change his name or his "pronouns". He simply wanted the lower insurance rates that women get and so found a physician willing to sign a form and got his sex changed on paper. So, legally speaking, he's a "woman".
I don't know if it's the same people that are trying to hold these two conflicting ideas at once, or two different sides of this debate trying to make conflicting points, but whatever this is it will end up eating itself in the nonsense. If gender is just a social construct then there is no man and there is no woman. Men cannot oppress women if this is a social construct because then women can gain the same "male privileges" by declaring themselves men. If gender is not just a social construct then they will have to admit that men and women are different, not that men are better, only different.
If men are different than women then there are things that men will excel in that women will not. Also, there will be things that women excel at that men will not. If men and women are different then this will be exposed in things like men being more prominent in being on corporate boards.
If this nonsense continues then we'll see board members leave as "Bruce" one day and only return the next in a dress and lipstick as "Cait". And who will dare to say this person is not a woman?
Re: (Score:2)
Sure I do. And if they decide to move, maybe California will change it's laws to keep them. I'm not a particular fan of this law, but I am a fan of states being able to regulate the companies who do business within them. Otherwise, people who want to live in an area where, I dunno, businesses have to hire 10% homeless people or businesses have to allow open carry or whatever cannot exist. Some laws (and I think both of my prior examples) ar
Re: (Score:3)
You do realize that they can chose to not live in California, no? California already drove out a handful of aerospace companies because of their stupid laws. They wanted to regulate "rocket fuel" as a toxic substance. I don't know if they realized this or not but "rocket fuel" is no different than jet fuel, fuel oil, gasoline, or any other hydrocarbon fuel.
There's loads of different kinds of rocket fuel. Kerosene is used for the first stage. Hydrazine and DNTO are both very nasty and popular in satellite ro
Constitution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, that old thing? What's all that talk about "equal protection clause"?
Business Discriminates Quite Well (Score:2)
Reference article for Equilar Gender Diversity Index
women on Russell 3000 boards increased in Q1 2018 from 16.5% to 16.9%
Considering that women are, what 50% of the population, I find it hard to believe that woman are not being discriminated in one way or another
Russell 3000 companies with all-male boards dipped below 20% for the first time(19.5%)
Notice we are not talking about corporate boards made entirely of women here, 19.5% male only boards are nothing to be proud about.
Some observers have also suggested the focus on gender diversity has marginalized racial and ethnic groups who are also far underrepresented on boards. At the recent Equilar Board Leadership Forum, co-hosted with Nasdaq, one panelist commented that African American and Hispanic professionals often feel like they are being left out of the conversation.
It is not only women whom are left out of the board room, but race should also be a part of the di
Re: (Score:3)
Considering that women are, what 50% of the population, I find it hard to believe that woman are not being discriminated in one way or another
Really? Women are being discriminated against, that's the only possible explanation?
Dr. Jordan Peterson spoke about this in a number of his lectures and interviews on YouTube. His explanation for this is that women are more sane and therefore less likely to take on the insane job of being a board member. I'm not quoting him, as he puts it more "diplomatically" for lack of a better word, I just paraphrased what I heard.
To be a board member means being hyper-competitive, exhibiting anti-social behavior, ha
Why not be able to use the best available? (Score:3)
With this type of reasoning, there will soon be NFL teams with women in wheelchairs as linemen.
Typically bard members are all of similar socioeconomic backgrounds.
They're all either very wealthy or politically powerful.
Why not force companies to have a certain number of members from different financial, ethnic or religious backgrounds?
Just making them choose more women for their board is offensive to pretty much everyone.
The best place to start enacting policies like this would of course be California government hires and candidates for election.
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Just making them choose more women for their board is offensive to pretty much everyone.
Women should take the most offense to this. If women are to claim that they are as able to do anything as any man then they will have to be able to prove it without the government clearing a path for them. This isn't a "victory" for equality, this is making some people "more equal than others".
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Bizarre logic.
Two people are running a 100m race. One notices that there are hurdles in their lane. They suggest that to make it a fair competition the hurdle be removed, and you tell them that they need to prove themselves the "equal" of someone running down a clear lane. Furthermore, the mere suggestion of levelling the playing field should offend them.
Consistency (Score:5, Insightful)
James Damore got in trouble, because his memo said that women don't think the same way that men do.
But Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson says, "Gender diversity brings a variety of perspectives to the table that can help foster new and innovative ideas."
So do women think differently from men, only when this difference should make you want to hire women?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
However, if all that he had said in that middle section was, "Men and women think differently." he would not have gotten fired, his
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
James Damore got in trouble, because his memo said that women don't think the same way that men do.
That's only part of what he did, and not why he got fired. Damore wrote a memo with lots of logical gaps. The reader naturally had to fill in those gaps. Most readers didn't realize they were gaps and filled them in according to their own fears and preconceptions. That's why a lot of people filled in with their presumption that he was a nasty person making sexist arguments, and other people filled in with their presumption that he was a reasonable person making valid points. The different audiences were res
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You just made a value judgement. Every comment here is a value judgement.
I suspect you view anyone who expresses an opinion contrary to yours as "hostile".
See, I just made a value judgement too.
They'll work around this (Score:2)
Women or self-identified women? (Score:2)
I'd like men to live as long as women (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like men to live as long as women, and to have a suicide rate that's equally low. Can we get more funding for research (and subsidized medical care) to level the playing field? And how about criminal justice interventions which stop our prisons from being full of men?
Equality is great, unless it's applied unevenly. And frankly, I will worry about boards of directors after I worry about healthcare and unequal application of justice.
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Equality is great, unless it's applied unevenly.
Some people are more equal than others.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not the parent, but I think it was your alleging that "toxic masculinity" is responsible. I gather that the official feminist position is that "toxic masculinity" is not a term that is critical of men, but when you use it in public (outside the walls of a feminist theory lecture), it's naive to assume people won't take it that way. I usually take it as a bit of mild but willful aggression, but I admit you may interpret words differently than me.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem isn't masculinity, it's toxic ideas about what masculinity is.
And yes, toxic femininity does exist too. Women's lib back in the 60s helped move away from the idea that a woman's worth was in how she looked, getting married and providing her husband with children and dinner on the table. Nothing wrong with doing those things if you want to, but not doing them was see as a dereliction or failure.
What we really need is men's lib. Get away from those old ideas about what a man should be and accept m
Loophole --> hilarity ensues (Score:5, Interesting)
The bill contains this little nugget in the footnotes:
" “Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth."
I was already hoping the bill would pass because of the silliness of it, but with the above it's gonna be comedy gold.
Re:Loophole -- hilarity ensues (Score:3)
The bill contains this little nugget in the footnotes:
" “Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth."
I was already hoping the bill would pass because of the silliness of it, but with the above it's gonna be comedy gold.
I look forward to the coder bro CEOs having to come to work in dresses as "Mary".
I mean, those who don't do that already ...
Its like they say! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the old adage goes - Democrat Ideas: So great that they have to be enforced.
Re:Its like they say! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, that was wrong:
Democratic Ideas: So Great that they have to be mandatory.
Oh for fucks sake (Score:3, Interesting)
On the plus side stuff like this is very popular with a certain kind of Democrat. To whit: right wing "corporate" Democrats who need something to throw to the base besides economic issues. This let's them run in left wing districts while opposing stuff like single payer healthcare, college for all, ending the 8 wars we're in, The New New Deal etc, etc. It's the Democrat equivalent to Dog Whistling and just as despicable.
Do they not know how board members are chosen? (Score:3)
business opportunity (Score:2, Funny)
I am starting a company that supplies randomly sourced women hookers for board seats. Great hourly rates plus many of those women might end up being smarter than the rest of the board.
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Re:Great idea (Score:5, Informative)
WTH. No NSFW tag. At least you should give a little warning.
Off to wash my eyes out at the eye station.
Re: (Score:2)
Shouldn't we get to know each other a little better first? Maybe have dinner? Go see a movie? We just met.
Re: (Score:3)
I believe that there are too many Democrats in the legislature, we should have a law that all political parties need to be represented equally.
Why are you pretending to be ironic?
Actually most countries in the world either have such laws or simply handle it that way by code of honour.
The idea in the US, that a new government purges the administration from people who are in the wrong party or vote for the wrong party or support the wrong party, reminds us about soviet Stalin russia.