Companies headquartered in California can no longer have all-male boards.
That’s according to a new law, enacted Sunday, which requires publicly traded firms in the state to place at least one woman on their board of directors by the end of 2019 — or face a penalty.
It also requires companies with five directors to add two women by the end of 2021, and companies with six or more directors to add at least three more women by the end of the same year.
It’s the first such law on the books in the United States, though similar measures are common in European countries. [cnn]
I think it’s time to admit that the experiment of having men in the workplace has failed. They’re too sensitive, egotistical, and they tend to like to ejaculate into potted office plants. Or worse. Elon Musk’s a great example of the problem – he just cost himself $20 million because he couldn’t stay off Twitter when he’s high – and he’s going to lose a defamation suit against that Aussie guy who will henceforth be known as “Mister MuskSpanker”
Telsa’s shareholders have been enjoying a bit of a roller-coaster ride lately thanks to some of Musk’s antics. I think all the stuff that’s getting press attention is piddly stuff – Tesla’s been producing cars and is doing OK. Yes, Musk’s team decided to attack auto-making by first ignoring all the collective lessons learned by every other auto-maker, and then decided to ignore all the collective lessons the Japanese and Germans learned about using robots to make cars; they have been re-inventing the wheel and – sadly – it doesn’t appear they have had any great break-throughs while doing so. If Tesla’s owners (the public) wanted a red flag, that’s what they should have been looking at, not Musk’s discovery that weed can be a cure for asshole. [It can’t? Oh, well – resume the War On Drugs then.] The amazing thing, to me, is that Musk’s never had someone sit him down and say, “listen, you can’t run a rocket company, a car company, a tunnel-digging company and sell flame-throwers. Only a woman who has raised 3 kids on her own can multi-task that effectively.”
There was a time when I thought that if women ran everything, there would be no wars. I was naive about that.
Joking aside, the real reason this is important: substantial settlements for sexual harassment are approved by the Board of Directors. In some of the dick-dominated companies like Fox News, you can see what happens when the good ole boys are in a position to cover for eachother.
Stock investors tend to look at the short-term, which does look like Musk’s extracurricular acting-up has caused some movement in the stock. But, seriously, Tesla’s stock is still doing great if you’re a long-term investor and not a day-trader.
There seems to be some evidence suggesting that men tend to be more aggressive and competitive, while women are more cooperative and seek peaceful solutions to conflicts. Such personality traits are hard to measure and obtain reliable statistics about. In my personal life, I have also met plenty of aggressive women and peaceful guys.
Anyway, assuming that there might be a correlation between gender and behavior, I wonder about the causes (the old nature vs. nurture question). My personal experience is that I used to be more aggressive as a child. Back then, I was tall for my age, I was the strongest child in the group, I could easily beat up boys. When I was the strongest child around, using fists seemed like a good way how to solve conflicts, because I had the advantage in a fistfight. Then came the bitch puberty and I lost all my advantage, instead I ended up being the weakest person around. At that point I had no other choice but to learn to seek peaceful solutions to conflicts. I knew damn well that if things escalated towards aggression, I’d be the one at a disadvantage. At least in my case being peaceful was a learned behavior enforced by me constantly being the weakest person in the room. Thus, if men got used to being unable to achieve their goals through aggression, they might change their default response to conflicts.
This one sounds like learned behavior to me. A woman has experienced how it feels to be the victim of sexual harassment. Due to this personal experience, she is more likely to sympathize with the victim and choose not to defend the perpetrator. This is an argument for why boards of directors should include also various other minority groups who have personal experience with various forms of discrimination.
It’s a thing here in Oz, too… the time has come.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-21/liberal-party-women-quotas-scott-morrison-sexism/10289148
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leva,
Cultural artefact, that, IMO. Epiphenomenon.
Hey, I grew up with three sisters and a mum, and no dad.
Trust me, peaceful and placatory they ain’t. Nor are you! ;)
(I’m under no illusions about the so-called gentler sex)
Ieva Skrebele@#1:
My personal experience is that I used to be more aggressive as a child. Back then, I was tall for my age, I was the strongest child in the group, I could easily beat up boys. When I was the strongest child around, using fists seemed like a good way how to solve conflicts, because I had the advantage in a fistfight.
Richard Rhodes, in Why They Kill [wc] makes a pretty good argument that violence is a learned response – when we’re young, we may employ violence to resolve one of our problems. After that, it becomes part of the tool-box of life – just another way to get people to do what you want.
I’m not saying you’re a violent person, it’s a data point in line with your experience.
This is a great idea… I wonder how long it will take those emotionally overwrought men to try and get that one off the books, or at least weaken the law. Like they have worked so hard to destroy laws written during the civil rights movement, that were intended to help cultural diversity.
As Mark Twain said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” I think it also helps if you end up in the workplace with a variety of people, finding out that, “Hey, people from Puerto Rico? And Iraq? And Chile? They’re HUMAN BEINGS just like me! Maybe I should treat them like human beings!”
It’s weird to think that people need to figure out that women are human beings but apparently this is the case. Although alas, it is no cure-all to put women in charge of everything. They are just like any other group of human beings: you have the good, the bad, and the in between.
kestrel@#4:
They’re HUMAN BEINGS just like me! Maybe I should treat them like human beings!”
Paraphrasing Henry Rollins, “It’s hard to shoot at someone once you find out that they’re also a Ramones fan.”
Although alas, it is no cure-all to put women in charge of everything
My high school sweetheart, Rachel R., used to wear a T-shirt that read “if we can send one man to the moon, why can’t we send them all?”
Marcus @#3
Or we observe other people employ violence to resolve their problems. Fighting was common among the children I grew up with. I witnessed other children fight with each other all the time. Then there’s also the problem with children who are spanked by their parents. Or who witness domestic violence at home. At home, a parent hits their child in order to make the kid obey. Afterwards, the child goes to school or to kindergarten and hits a classmate in order to make them obey.
I vaguely remember an anecdote about the conflict in Bosnia, where two neighboring towns had mostly members of one group each; it may have been Bosnian Muslims in one and Catholic Croats in the other. There was so little animosity between the people of the two towns that the “fighting” was limited to taking shots deliberately aimed to miss, or something similarly minimal.
But, alas, someone higher up the chain of command on one side or the other noticed this, and decided to rotate in soldiers of their faction who were from elsewhere, and who aimed to kill. The bloodless conflict turned bloody pretty quickly.
#4 Kestrel
“It’s weird to think that people need to figure out that women are human beings…”
A not so proud moment in Canadian history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Canada#Women_ruled_legally_to_be_%22persons%22
Ieva, @ #6: It’s even worse than that, because we live in a culture where violence is the default means of “solving” problems, both in real life and in fiction. Even kids whose own lives are largely free from violence are surrounded by cultural products where the way you deal with “bad guys” is to beat the snot out of them, or shoot them, or subject them to various horrible tortures on the grounds that they “deserve” it. And of course the whole premise of the so-called “justice” system in most countries is fundamentally violent – break the rules and we will hurt or kill you.
I honestly think it’s kinda surprising (and hopeful) that most people are so non-violent, all things considered.