
Japan's all-male boards face rejection by foreign investors - doppp
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Japan-s-all-male-boards-face-rejection-by-foreign-investors
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cmdshiftf4
American investment companies are free to do what they want, and similarly
Japanese companies are free to take American money if they want.

I'm personally of the opinion that plays like this will ultimately drive
people into the arms of the Chinese, Saudis, etc. and further reduce America's
influence in the world, but that's only my guess on the matter.

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NAMMXLOW
_Better diversity "brings economic as well as cultural benefits," Legal &
General Investment said when announcing the new policy. The company described
the goal as "moving the needle on diversity in Japan._

Citation needed. Better diversity lowers the salaries so that Goldman Sachs
(mentioned further down in the article) can get even richer. Speaking of
which, isn't a certain ethnic group over-represented in finance?

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mimikatz
Better diversity is the effect of a well run company not the cause.

~~~
powerapple
maybe it doesn't matter. Replacing male A with female B makes no difference in
running the company, so diversity can be achieved without really affecting how
well the company is. The main reason to enforce diversity at this level is
because that top level diversity will drive diversity from top, it is a good
start point.

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roenxi
This decision is probably for the best. Boards being somewhat independent from
management is desirable and this might be helpful breaking up the Old Boys
Club style effects. Can't complain about foreign influence either, if the
company has been sold to foreigners. And it is just implausible that all the
best candidates are men.

But the social situation is relevant here and an overarching risk needs to be
mentioned. The best candidate will be male ~50% of the time (possibly more
often after accounting for differing work patterns between the sexes) and if
the difference between "best" and "good" is detectable then that should be the
priority. Pushing social changes is fine, but corporations are the engines
that drive all the prosperity of the modern era. Good governance and
systematically excellent competence at the highest levels are both critical
properties. Of course the difference at this level probably isn't detectable
so good on them for keeping people on their toes.

Asset management firms aren't supposed to be Social Engineering priority 1,
Running Assets priority 2. I don't think that is happening here, but it bears
repeating that if they do over-prioritise social goals that would be a
corruption of what their role in the market actually is. We need them to be
pushing the limits of economic efficiency, because a 0.5% difference at that
level is significant to a large number of people's lives.

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belval
It's an interesting idea, as investors they can set whatever requirements
attached to their money and I believe board diversity it good.

Thing is, I said I _believe_ and from the article it doesn't seem like they
have much hard data. It can be done simply on principle for sure, but if it's
true why not include a nice chart showing that those 10% companies in the US
that don't have a woman director are underperforming?

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Udik
> why not include a nice chart showing that those 10% companies in the US that
> don't have a woman director are underperforming?

Because most probably they're not, once correlations are excluded. It's
annoying that we keep trying to justify what is ethically desirable with made
up facts.

~~~
happytoexplain
This is hostile for no reason. Why "annoying" and "made up facts" rather than
simply presenting evidence that they do not perform better, or citing lack of
evidence that they do? Hell, even just saying what you _think_ is probably the
case without evidence would be a fine way to express yourself. But you felt
the need to make it an ideological insult.

~~~
Udik
Well, it would be annoying in general (beyond this specific case, let's assume
an instance we agree on) because it confuses an ethical stance with a factual
statement. In this case, _right_ with the _profitable_. Say that tomorrow we
find out that more diverse companies perform slightly worse- what do you do?
Do you change your opinion on diversity? I guess you don't, because diversity
is ethically desirable, whatever its consequences. So wouldn't be more honest
to say that we don't really care about the effect on the company's
performance?

And for the specific case, I think it's very hard to prove that more diverse
boards make companies more successful- there are a ton of spurious
correlations and confounding factors, plus an understandable desire to obtain
one result and not the other. Do you have any good research to point me to?

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collyw
Better diversity "brings economic as well as cultural benefits,"

Is that actually true? When I looked into it a bit further the results seemed
mixed, on the economic part at least.

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x0re4x
Facts and evidence are the Tools Of The Patriarchy. You supposed to shut up
and blindly belive. Do not question the western state ideology of
progressivism.

(P.S.: as an unbeliver you won't be able to "see" the "Benefits™")

~~~
collyw
Indeed it has become a new religion. Gad Saad has some reasonably funny
youtube videos about it.

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scottlocklin
It's funny; we in the west can pass laws that companies boards must have a
certain arbitrary number of gonads[1], but forcing them to operate in the
national interest (I dunno, let's say, not exporting everyone's job to some
foreign hell hole), suddenly it becomes "muh free market decision, we must
obey the free market, muh shareholders."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/us/california-
boardroom-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/us/california-boardroom-
gender-quota.html)

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ezoe
Says Nikkei, a company with all-male all-very-old board members.

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growlist
No worries, I'm happy to keep investing in the most profitable companies
regardless of the current misandrist prejudice that seems to be everywhere.

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quotz
... its their culture let them do whatever they want

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simonh
An investor in a Japanese firm, that has a vote in that firm's board elections
is unambiguously a participant in that culture. They have responsibility for
the way they cast their vote, and have a shared interest in and responsibility
for the actions and behaviour of that company and it's management.

If the owners of a company aren't responsible for how a company is run, who
is?

~~~
yostrovs
Isn't there any room for respect for traditional Japanese culture? They do
have a different understanding of things over there and perhaps it's up to
them how to change their ways. They have changed completely as a society at
least twice before on their own. They may decide to do so again.

~~~
cthalupa
>Isn't there any room for respect for traditional Japanese culture?

Is culture a blanket excuse for bad behavior? Just because a country has a
history of doing something doesn't make it worth respecting. Bad things are
bad no matter how long they've been practiced.

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hbogert
bad according to your cultural background?

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totony
The hivemind strongly believes moral relativism isn't a thing and western
culture is the only valid one.

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cthalupa
This is nice and snarky, but I don't think it's morally relativistic to say
that actions that subjugate and control people based on race or sex are
acceptable just because it's their "culture"

Human rights should be universal and not something that should be limited just
because you were born a certain way in a certain place.

~~~
totony
>Human rights should be universal and not something that should be limited
just because you were born a certain way in a certain place.

Why is it that you think so?

Why is it that your definition of human right, which seem to include being
able to occupy that board of directors, should apply to anyone else?

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cthalupa
I wasn't speaking specifically of being on the board of directors - my point
was that plenty of things happen because of "culture" that are simply
unacceptable - like FGM. You cannot allow something to keep happening just
because that's how it's been done, and yes, I would argue that not being
mutilated is a basic human right. Thankfully Japan doesn't practice FGM, but
being on the scale of "Bad shit" at "Discriminating against women" instead of
"Horrifically mutilating them" doesn't earn them congratulations and a pat on
the back.

It was American culture to not let women vote, to keep them as stay at home
parents, to load them up with children constantly to build our families. That
doesn't mean that that treatment was right.

But, as for the board of directors, women have been working full time in
professional roles in Japan for decades now. Japan, to this day, still has
famously sexist workplace culture. More than half of all adult women in Japan
are employed, yet even those with college degrees have a hard time finding
full time employment, compared to men with the same degrees from the same
schools. Women are not treated equally in the workplace in Japan. 2nd highest
gender pay gap in the OECD, behind only Korea.

"Be sexist towards women" isn't something you get a pass on just because it's
your culture. This isn't moral relativism. Human beings are human beings, and
shouldn't be discriminated against because of their gender, skin color, etc.
Unless you want to argue that women are biologically less suited for being
members of a companies board?

This requirement tells Japanese companies they need to do one of three things,
if they want foreign investment: They need to either find qualified women
within their company and promote them and bring them onto the board as they
should have been doing all along, find qualified candidates from outside, or
begin actually hiring and developing women in their company if they have not
been doing so.

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totony
You haven't answered why. You simply stated it's unacceptable and america
chose to go a different path.

They have no obligation to share your view on any of these things.

Stating "sexism is bad" is indeed not moral relativism, it's idealism. Saying
that because america did things a certain way, Japan should follow is moral
imperialism.

Even if your argument were based on some objective metric (and not an ideal)
they still wouldn't have any reason to care. That's what I mean by moral
relativism. Forcing your views of social dynamics on them is direspectful to
their views and autonomy as a society.

