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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  2004 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: THESE TECH COMPANIES WILL NEED MORE WOMEN ON THEIR BOARDS

paint me a picture. What is this room? Who is in it? Where is the resentment? Is this resentment from capable women that are overlooked again and again or is resentment from men who had to put women on their board to appease a mandate?

Also a good friend of mine made this point:

    I thought of a consequence that didn’t immediately come to mind. Some number of competent, effective female board members will have to deal with questions and uncertainty about whether they are only there to satisfy the rule.

This friend also wrote me

    If about 50% of board members were female everyone would be fine, because that would reflect the overall population. But no one expects the board to be 20% under age 20, or 25% obese, or 27% foreign-born, or 50% below median intelligence. (Demographics of California) Obviously I won’t say this in public, it will be taken as a claim that women are less capable than men. In fact I don’t know why the board/sex ratio is skewed; desire to be an executive is a plausible explanation.

Very interested to know what people think of all this. wasoxygen kleinbl00 mk lil

Thoughts?





user-inactivated  ·  2004 days ago  ·  link  ·  

the resentment is from everyone

"it took a law to get me on this board that i should have been on etc etc"

"she's only on this board because of a law"

not like corporate boards are brilliant salons to begin with so who cares

i just want to know how drop-dropbox.com will respond

oyster  ·  2003 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    "it took a law to get me on this board that i should have been on etc etc"

We’re already beyond fed up, at least now some women can be just as fed up from a position of authority.

    "she's only on this board because of a law"

As if this isn’t already said about women and minorities.

kleinbl00  ·  2004 days ago  ·  link  ·  

http://time.com/4101749/justin-trudeau-women-cabinet-parliament-government/

California is asking for ZOMG two female board members in like three years. If this is threatening to you you need to move back to 1867 or some shit.

thenewgreen  ·  2002 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have a female friend that said that this was “not her kind of feminism.” I suspect that she is already on a number of boards. Why? Cause she’s a badass. I’m not suggesting that this isn’t a problem, I’m just not sure this is a good solution.

She writes:

    I would love to see more women on Boards of Directors, but I have no interest in quotas or forcing that.

    Thank you, government, for now making it so that if any woman accomplishes this, we never know if it's because we earned it or because they had to pick us.

    And by thank you, I mean fuck you.

    And for those keeping track at home, this is your friendly dissident feminist saying this ain't my kind of feminism. I believe in equal rights, not special ones. #NTKOF

I’m not so sure this is as simple as “if you oppose this you should “move back to 1867.”

kleinbl00  ·  2002 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I do not find your anecdata of one to be compelling. Neither should you.

    I suspect that she is already on a number of boards. Why? Cause she’s a badass.

Statistically speaking, she is among the 50.47% of Americans who are women. And if she's on the board of a publicly traded corporation, she's among the 21.2% of female board members. So statistically speaking, she's 2 1/2 times as badass as any given man doing the same job.

That might be why doubling female participation in board membership increases profits. By bringing more women on board, corporations are effectively being forced to hire competent individuals, as opposed to whatever schlubby friends Joe made at Wharton.

As a private citizen, do I have a right to give a fuck how you run your corporation? Fuck to the yes I do. You operate within the regulations of a federal organizing body paid for by me. More than that, my retirement has been given over to the performance of said-same publicly-traded companies. And what I know is that (A) Europe has vastly more stringent requirements for female participation (Norway has required 40% female board members for ten fucking years now) (B) I can't think of a more tone-deaf concern than the braying of rich white men outraged that their boys club might have to put up with skirts, particularly when half of America is dealing with the fact that Date Rape Dougie is being ramrodded down their throats by the highest electoral body in the land.

Of course your friend is opposed to this. She's already a board member. Therefore everyone knows she's fuckin' 1337. Should the law pass? OH SHIT suddenly she's only twice as competent as you are, rather than 2 1/2 times. You see this whenever elitism comes down; as soon as they recentered the SAT back in 1994 millions of fuckin' 19 year olds were stomping around in high dudgeon maintaining that they got a 550 verbal "back when that meant something." It comes down to whether you'd rather punch down or up - should you give a shit about the people secure in their position because they busted their ass or should you give a shit about the people who will never make it because they can only bust ass twice as hard as any given man?

'cuz fuckin' hell yo we both got daughters and neither one of them should have to be 2 1/2 times as good as your son in order to achieve the same level of success.

Relevant_Anxiety  ·  1889 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If someone doesn't believe that women belong in high-level roles, they'll try to find questions to ask whether or not there's a quota enforced. Usually the other thing they assume is that she slept her way up, so assuming you're a quota hire is pretty tame in comparison. As a woman who's had people assume that I'm a "diversity hire", the only thing you can really do is keep your head up and continue to excel at your job. The types of people who like to ask these kinds of questions usually either change their minds eventually or end up shooting themselves in the foot.