The Vagina Mandate-alogue
From a Quillette piece by psych profs David C. Geary and Gijsbert Stoet:
"Hakim's studies of the number of women with a work-focus (14 percent in her study), home-focus (16 percent), or a balance of the two (70 percent) is consistent with this expectation--only a minority of women are as intensely work-focused as the average man."
Women's greater tendency to go for work-life balance, from my science-based column: https://t.co/725yTEDavU pic.twitter.com/ZsW3GeDJwg
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) April 29, 2019
So why might women not be as represented on corporate boards and the corner office? Is it possible it's not discrimination against women but discrimination by the women themselves in choosing work-life balance over what I have: work, work, work "balance"?
Well, California legislators just know it's "the patriarchy" and all its pushers that make for mostly- or all-male corporate boards and they are forcing companies to staff up their boards with token women and other "diversity" representatives.
Nick Goldberg, who is to the left of me on probably most issues, gets it right in the LA Times:
It is terribly presumptuous of state government to get so deeply and prescriptively involved in the private sector's business. Do we really want legislators telling shareholders of companies who should sit on their governing bodies?One big justification for the law -- asserted repeatedly in its preamble -- was that companies will be more successful and more profitable if they have women on their boards. Some studies suggest that is true; others don't.
But how best to make money is a decision companies should make for themselves.
Furthermore, it's not clear that such a drastic measure was necessary. The number of women on boards has been steadily rising on its own. In 2020, the Spencer Stuart report found, 95% of Fortune 500 boards nationwide included two or more female directors, an increase from 56% in 2010. In 2020, 47% of the new appointees to corporate boards were women.
Several months ago, Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), one of the law's supporters, told me: "I don't believe we should leave it to capitalism to solve society's problems. We'll use the Constitution and the authority we have to create as inclusive a society as we can."
But not all problems are government's to solve. Besides, it's one thing to remove obstacles to advancement. It's quite another to set quotas and impose mandates, legislating not just equality of opportunity but equality of outcome.
Many lawyers -- and the pending lawsuit -- argue that the law violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which forbids any state to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." They say it mandates gender discrimination.
"Serious legal concerns have been raised," Gov. Brown acknowledged. "I don't minimize the potential flaws that indeed may prove fatal to its ultimate implementation."
Let's hope.
There's a word for a system of government that forces companies to be beholden to the government. Starts with "F" and was admired by progressives in the US about 100 years ago.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 9, 2021 7:18 AM
If that were actually true, more women would be invited to sit on boards.
Seems to me the choice of sitting on a board is not so much a work/life balance issue. Sitting on a board is not a full-time job. However, what it takes to rise high enough in an industry that one gets noticed and invited to sit on a board requires a commitment level that it seems many women simply may not be willing to make.
Conan the Grammarian at August 9, 2021 9:04 AM
Mandate that women (or any other category) sit on boards of directors and thereby assure that they will be viewed as tokens, and not taken seriously. Any member of such a "protected" group should be vigorously opposed to mandates.
Jay R at August 9, 2021 9:35 AM
Men are judged harshly by prospective and current mates. The most guaranteed way to lose your wife is to get laid off. The highest chance of not being married for a man is to have a lousy income. So for men it is like all or nothing. The stakes are high. Want you wife to be happy? Get a raise.
Women do not face the same reward structure. Most men are happy if their wives stay home and raise the kids and will take on overtime or higher risk to allow it.
As to the corp boards thing, the Left is all about force and discrimination. It is none of their business. Same with min wage which actually raises unemployment for esp young black men.
cc at August 9, 2021 12:06 PM
Does this mean that the Huffington Post will now give up half of its board to men?
I doubt it. This is just yet another symptom of attempting to blame others for one’s own failures.
Radwaste at August 9, 2021 4:26 PM
WTF? The Left is all about "equality" yet insists we embrace "diversity" as well. So which is it? I don't understand why people (mostly on the left) think that equality of opportunity automatically equals equality of outcome. You get out of it what you put into it, whatever "it" is. If you don't make the same effort as someone else does, you're not going to see the same outcome. Gender has nothing to do with it.
Flynne at August 10, 2021 7:21 AM
The Left assumes that equality of opportunity is only evident when there is equality of outcome; that the distribution of intelligence and ambition within each "community" is equal. Therefore the outcomes must be equally proportional. No consideration is given to cultural or behavioral differences. All differences in outcome are assumed to be solely the result of systemic discrimination.
You'll notice the Left doesn't assume the same equality of inputs when assessing sports outcomes - like a 75% African-American NBA or the fact that East Africans dominate long-distance running. The Left accepts those outcomes without comment.
Conan the Grammarian at August 10, 2021 7:46 AM
This entire conversation is also why there is the fictitious "wage gap."
People who are outraged by it are making incorrect assumptions about what is being compared.
ruralcounsel at August 11, 2021 7:02 AM
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