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[Reelya]

People who take breaks from their careers could be compared to people who are training for the olympics but take a break from training. Sure, you can do that but it's not rocket surgery that the person who didn't take a break gets ahead. Good evidence for this being relevant to the discussion is that women who never decided to have kids don't seem to have any sort of pay deficit compared to a comparable man.

And the fact is, going off the data we've looked at in this thread, taking a career break (which is almost always for kids) is the biggest single reason that pay and promotions slip. So yeah there is a bias, but it's against people who took a break from the job (male and female equally suffer for this).

[RedKing]

Again, these are corporate board positions. You don't go to "Board School", you don't get an MBA or a Ph.D. in "Board Governance". These are more akin to judicial appointees, with the difference that (as stated above) they're really not "skill" positions.

[SirQuiamus]

Don't worry; once the far-right populists have attained total ascendancy in Europe, you won't have to worry about affirmative action ever again.

Seriously though, the one thing that annoys me about this sorta thing is that these quotas encourage people to talk about bloody corporate board members as if they were a vanguard of egalitarianism in a fight against the forces of social injustice. I mean, come on! The only women who would ever benefit from this policy are already well-off by definition: they are highly educated upper-middle-class professionals who have already made successful careers in the business, and getting on the board would be little more than an added bonus for them, as it would be for their male colleagues. These women talk about "cutting back" and "spending more time with their families" because they actually have a choice between climbing further on the corporate ladder and backing down to live the easy life with their stock options and million-dollar Roth IRAs. But when you're a single mom working two jobs to keep your kids alive, "spending more time with your family" is a luxury you simply can't afford – you need that third job and you need it now, and if someone refuses to hire you because "hurr durr wimmin r lazy and shit at errythin' dey do," then we're getting a bit closer to real injustice.

[i2amroy]

Personally I'm all for balance in the workplace, but I think that negative punishments and quotas, are not the right way to be going about it, because time has shown that punishments like that often end up causing way more problems in the long run than they ever solve. Instead I think we should just give some form of a positive incentive to encourage diversity without actually forcing companies to do it. I assure you that if there was a small tax break for having diversified upper management levels in your business that companies would be falling all over themselves to try to make it happen.

And along with shifting the drive to diversify away from the government and onto the individual companies, having positive reinforcements instead of punishments also greatly lessens the burden of paperwork/etc. on the governments part. No longer do they need to keep an eye on every single company, instead it is up to the companies to file for the benefits if they want to seek them out.

[Reelya]

@RedKing: You're probably right there, and overall it won't be a huge difference either way. The board members don't really "run" the company the way that employees actually do. We just have a top-down view that the "top" people create the profits. Not really true.

What's more worrying is the talk about quotas for STEM classes, via Title IX. This is a good balanced article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15tier.html?_r=0

Here's an excerpt about "biased" numbers in physics and computer science:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Only 10 percent of physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the possibility of bias. But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to doctorates, teaching jobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The gender gap is a result of earlier decisions. While girls make up nearly half of high school physics students, they’re less likely than boys to take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree in physics.

These numbers don’t surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University, David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more than 5,000 mathematically gifted students for 35 years.

They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed more interest in “organic” subjects involving people and other living things. Despite their mathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.

But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents’ interests and balance of abilities — not their sex — were the best predictors of whether they would choose an “inorganic” career like physics.

A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that information technology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.

Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.

Now, you might think those preferences would be different if society didn’t discourage girls and women from pursuits like computer science and physics. But if you read “The Sexual Paradox,” Susan Pinker’s book about gender differences, you’ll find just the opposite problem.

Ms. Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (and sister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don’t know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education — and not because they had faced discrimination in science.

Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn’t enjoy. “The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices,” Ms. Pinker says. “Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they’d pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy.”

[Antioch]

Again, these are corporate board positions. You don't go to "Board School", you don't get an MBA or a Ph.D. in "Board Governance". These are more akin to judicial appointees, with the difference that (as stated above) they're really not "skill" positions.

Actually rereading the Dutch proposal it seems to be more generally worded than corperate boards, more as "top business functions".

[RedKing]

Then in that case, it's probably more needed as well. Looking at my own company, while the board is about 33% female, there's only 1 female (the CEO) in the top 11 executive positions in the company.

Companies are perhaps more comfortable appointing women to what is more or less a ceremonial position, and less comfortable with them in positions of actual authority.

[Antioch]

Then in that case, it's probably more needed as well. Looking at my own company, while the board is about 33% female, there's only 1 female (the CEO) in the top 11 executive positions in the company.

Companies are perhaps more comfortable appointing women to what is more or less a ceremonial position, and less comfortable with them in positions of actual authority.

I have not seen any evidence as of yet that supports that this is due to discrimination and not due to the different career choices women make.


In fact I would really like to see the numbers of the number of applicants and appointees for these positions from both genders.

[RedKing]

Good luck with that. That's all typically confidential information.

[Antioch]

Good luck with that. That's all typically confidential information.

Well if the numbers aren't even known how can people claim there is discrimination?


What if 10% of applicants are women and 20% of appointees are women? Would that spark a wave of outrage because men are discriminated against?

[alway]

Women are not a minority. Women are not inferior to men. If there is a difference in preferred jobs, it is only because culture is assigning people gender roles through inherent sexism somewhere in the system; often in the form of the glass ceiling or gender stereotypes. If only 10% women are applying to a job, that is a problem. Likewise if there are only 10% men.

Basically, read through this: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male

[RedKing]

I'm starting to pick up a distinct whiff of MRA in this thread. Let's not go there.

Given that the gender balance in the US workforce is roughly 60/40 (and the EU averages even more parity), I'd expect that a 70/30 split in the boardroom would be a reasonable and achievable target to move towards true representation. Especially as that balance is expected to shift over the next 20-30 years towards more of a 55/45 split in the US, and probably closer to 50/50 in Europe.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Employment_statistics

[Trapezohedron]

I don't really get gender quotas; why is there a need to pick someone over their gender instead of their merits?

True, discrimination exists, but I don't think this will improve anything; people can just say women stole their positions, and that would still propagate the issue.

[Antioch]

Women are not a minority. Women are not inferior to men. If there is a difference in preferred jobs, it is only because culture is assigning people gender roles through inherent sexism somewhere in the system; often in the form of the glass ceiling or gender stereotypes. If only 10% women are applying to a job, that is a problem. Likewise if there are only 10% men.

Basically, read through this: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male

Only? You think there is no difference whatsoever in male and female interests?

I'm starting to pick up a distinct whiff of MRA in this thread. Let's not go there.

Given that the gender balance in the US workforce is roughly 60/40 (and the EU averages even more parity), I'd expect that a 70/30 split in the boardroom would be a reasonable and achievable target to move towards true representation. Especially as that balance is expected to shift over the next 20-30 years towards more of a 55/45 split in the US, and probably closer to 50/50 in Europe.

http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Employment_statistics

Like I already said total workforce balance has extremely little to do with how much men/woman work in a particular field (like engineering which I mentioned).
I still haven't heard why male/female career choices within businesses should be expected to be the same, when their choices for which study to choose are not even the same.

[Cheeetar]

Antioch, do you believe that women and men are fundamentally different and always will be, and in what ways?