California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law today that requires major companies with headquarters in California — including many household-name tech firms — to have at least one woman on their boards by next year, and depending on the size of the board, up to three women by 2021.
The law is the first of its kind in the U.S., and proponents say it's needed to equalize the representation of women in corporate boardroom. Currently, a quarter of California's publicly traded companies do not have a woman on their boards. Companies that fail to comply with the new rule face fines of $100,000 for a first violation and $300,000 for a second or subsequent violation.
The law already faces opposition from business groups, which could challenge the basis of preferential hiring toward women. In signing the bill, Gov. Brown acknowledged the bill's "potential flaws" that could prove "fatal" to implementation, but nevertheless supported its passing, citing "recent events in Washington, D.C. — and beyond — make it crystal clear that many are not getting the message" around gender equality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:47PM
A woman is inherently valuable for the fact that she can bear children, and she's inherently invaluable because of her relative physical weakness; if you're going to spend resources building an educated mind and a productive body, it's best to spend it on males, who are otherwise pretty worthless. This was especially true in the not-distant past.
Strangely, the statistics seem to show that wealthy families birth more males than females, whereas poor families tend to birth (or at least nurture) more females than males. It's not much difference, but it's there. Maybe that's mother nature's way of mixing the classes. So, yes.