
Ten years on from Norway's quota for women on corporate boards - rbanffy
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21737079-gender-quotas-board-level-europe-have-done-little-boost-corporate-performance-or?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/tenyearsonfromthefirstquotaforwomenoncorporateboardstheoldgirlsnetwork
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mvdwoord
Equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity... Many things have been said
by other, better informed and more eloquent people than me. I noticed this
however:

    
    
        “At least ten more years”
    

And that makes me wonder if and when this will turn into something akin the
"Communism / Captialism / Whatever concept has never been tried/implemented
_properly_"

Personally, I don't think striving for equality of outcome will do society any
good.

~~~
abusoufiyan
>Personally, I don't think striving for equality of outcome will do society
any good.

Well, isn't it just convenient that if we don't strive for equality of outcome
then life will just have to remain tilted in favor of white/asian men

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ramblerman
Does the fact that asian men are included not rule out racism and open the
door to examine the issue further?

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aninhumer
Uh, no not really?

That biases about race might be changing form doesn't "rule out" the idea of
racism. You might as well say the increased inclusion of Irish people in the
last few decades rules out racism in that period.

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ssijak
How do this quotas, with harsh penalties, work in practice in this example :

1\. company have all male board members

2\. company is great and successful and not one of the board members want to
switch the job

3\. deadline for quota is approaching

Do the company now need to fire 30% of this guys and is it a valid reason for
firing (company can`t get sued)?

~~~
shaki-dora
> Do the company now need to fire 30% of this guys and is it a valid reason
> for firing (company can`t get sued)?

There was a five-year period for the changeover, so under most circumstances,
natural fluctuation would have eliminated all need for firing. Some companies
could have also had the possibility to increase the board's size.

But yes, ultimately some firings may have been required. But note that a seat
on the board isn't much like a typical job. Board members almost always have a
_real_ job, are retired, or sit on multiple boards.

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thewhitetulip
> Xavier Fontanet, former chief executive of Essilor, a French eyewear
> company, quoted Charles de Gaulle as saying “one may not command without
> having obeyed”—his point being that women often lack the management
> experience that makes a good board director.

who would have thought that we'd hear this argument in 2017!!

Personally, I don't think things like this can be mandated. Yes, there is a
gender gap between men and women and yes that needs to be fixed, but you need
to target from the ground level and not from the board level.

What we, as a society need to do is to encourage men to be less sexist, for
instance, a manger who can hire a male and a female who are both eligble
should not hire a male because he 'doesn't want female', that needs to be
fixed.

But I think it is wrong to say "hire 5% female candidates"

Because that is not equality. I have seen the reservation system in India and
it is horrible, to be honest, it only helps the top % people but the bottom of
the food chain is exactly where they were since the start, the bottom of the
food chain.

Interestingly, 'reservation for women' was rejected by the female freedom
fighters of India because 'they didn't want the superficial equality rights
that women want in a few developed democracies' referring to obviously the
suffrage movement.

But that being said, the gap exists and it'd be stupid to say that it does
not.

~~~
abusoufiyan
>What we, as a society need to do is to encourage men to be less sexist, for
instance, a manger who can hire a male and a female who are both eligble
should not hire a male because he 'doesn't want female', that needs to be
fixed.

But there are no managers who will say that. They'll rationalize it a
different way that people will buy into.

> I have seen the reservation system in India and it is horrible, to be
> honest, it only helps the top % people but the bottom of the food chain is
> exactly where they were since the start, the bottom of the food chain.

I have also, and this is the point of the reservation system, to create
wealthy powerhouse families in a society which had very few from those castes.
For everyone who complains about it, there are many more who appreciate it for
the good it does and who understand that reservations are not meant to
eliminate poverty (else they'd be based on financial status) but are meant to
build power and concentrated wealth in communities which had no opportunities
to have such.

In India, before reservations generational wealth had cemented a very strong
hierarchy. Overturning that hierarchy cannot be done solely by providing
education equally, there has to be a balance shift somewhere. People are not
going to voluntarily give away their inherited wealth and status, so similar
wealth and status needs to be built in other communities. The best way to do
this is educate some select few in that community, then perhaps they gain
wealth from it, now their children get the same education they did, they
inherit wealth and build some more, repeat repeat and now you have powerful
families in underprivileged communities which could rival the ones in the
privileged ones.

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thewhitetulip
Do you really think that the reservations based on caste i.e. SC/ST not having
a creamy layer is balancing the act?

I had got 150 in IIT JEE, a friend had got 70. I missed the cut off by
30marks, I am from 'open' and he was from SC, he wore woodlands shoes, Rayban
glasses and he missed IITB admissions by 5 marks. Can you imagine? We were in
the same school etc

Reservations system has run amok, incidentally, even Dr. Ambedkar had said
that reservations need to be there only for the first 10yrs otherwise it'd
have drastic effects and they are.

I am reading India after Gandhi and I appreciate all that was done by our
founding fathers and mothers, I appreciate the fact of reservations, but the
madness has to stop.

People ahve started to treat reservation as their 'birthright'

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robert_foss
It would seem that governments mandating equality works, and that basic
equality isn't the end of society or successful corporate-hood as we know it.

Who would've thunk.

~~~
praha14
"Gender quotas at board level in Europe have done little to boost corporate
performance or to help women lower down"

Isn't the article saying that they _didn 't_ work?

~~~
peterlk
I think the article is saying that the results are inconclusive. They have had
little effect in either direction, so now that they are the status quo,
there's no reason not to keep them. Arguments of excessive regulatory overhead
may or may not be compelling, but they have an uphill battle to fight.

~~~
Shivetya
keeping stuff that doesn't show results but feels good seems an awfully dumb
thing to do. instead they need to determine why it does not do what they
expected. The reason I take this view is that too many will accept a state "we
feel good about it" and never work to solve the actual problem.

Its the #hashtag way of life, the lazy.

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Talyen42
Comments in this thread are all discussing the wrong topic. It wouldn't matter
if 100% of corporate board members were women and minorities due to how boards
are constructed over time through shareholder "elections".

Corporate boards are not a free market of ideas, they do not support or
represent shareholders, society, or employees, they are monopolized self-
serving power structures representing an extension of incumbent management.

Introducing diversity into a situation with already-disfunctional power
dynamics (which drastically favor incumbent management because all votes not
cast are cast in favor of incumbents) obviously have no impact. Corporate
governance laws and proxy voting processes changing is a prerequisite for
marginal board members to ever have any real power.

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staticelf
No matter how effective, I will always believe that this is outright wrong and
sexist.

I am amazed that my home country, Sweden, has not followed since it is
basically the feminist capital of the world.

~~~
abusoufiyan
Yeah but most of the outright wrong and sexist things our societies allow seem
to disadvantage women. This doesn't make it even, but it's a good step.

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Chris2048
Which things?

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robert_foss
Are you asking what sexist biases exist within society that are working
against the interest of Women?

How about:

\- Income inequality

\- Unequal domestic workload

\- Only 22% of elected parliamentarians being female

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Rainymood
I kind of like Dr. Peteron's view on these kind of questions, try flipping
them around. Don't ask "Why do women earn less?" Try framing it as "What are
the reasons men earn more?" Another one, "Why is it that there are so few
women in high level management positions?" frame it as "Why are there so much
men willing to put up with the stress and pressure of high level management
positions?"

There are a lot of reasons for the inequality between men and women. I'm not
saying they are "justified" or "fair" but there are some obvious (painful,
even) but true reasons why men and women don't earn the same. Of course, these
reasons do not specify the whole margin but they explain quite some of the
variation.

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louhike
> "Why is it that there are so few women in high level management positions?"
> frame it as "Why are there so much men willing to put up with the stress and
> pressure of high level management positions?"

What does it change if the answer is "It is easier for men because they have
to put up with less harassment, less pressure and are more encouraged"?

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akerro
Side-note, there are more woman in science in countries that's font enforce
equality by law and have less woman-promoting courses at universities/clubs.

[http://www.euronews.com/2018/02/11/which-three-eu-
countries-...](http://www.euronews.com/2018/02/11/which-three-eu-countries-
have-more-female-than-male-scientists-and-engineers-)

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vegardx
This law only affects "allmennaksjeselskap" (ASA), which there was less than
300 of in Norway last time I checked. In short they are listed on Oslo Børs
(OSE) and are publicly traded. For smaller companies, also called
"aksjeselskap" (AS), there are some regulation there as well, but nothing
compared to this. It has more about female representation in the company in
general.

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chicob
In principle, a quota rule can be used for power consolidation by (arguably
douchebaggy) men that already occupy a relative position of power. I can
imagine members of an all-male board using quotas as a means to move
competitors or newcomers out of their way to the highest position.

Though it doesn't have to be quota for women, of course.

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ryandvm
If they really want to try something progressive they should explore
male/female quotas in prison populations.

