First the Left wanted to force open girls’ bathrooms to boys — now it wants to compel corporations to put women on their boards.
At issue is a bill passed by California lawmakers August 30 that would mandate that “corporate boards include at least one woman by the end of 2019 and as many as three by the end of 2021, depending on size. Companies that fail to comply could face a fine up to $300,000 from the California Secretary of State,” writes the Sacramento Bee. It’s part of “The New Chivalry” phenomenon, yet almost universally overlooked is that such proposals actually hurt women and girls.
Conservative CNSNews.com asserts that the California legislation, Senate Bill 826, is unconstitutional. “Courts have struck down gender-balance requirements for government boards,” writes the site, and also “requirements that regulated entities (such as private companies) to adopt racial or sexual quotas, or gender-balance requirements, governing their own workforces.”
Yet even liberal NBC ran an op-ed opposing the bill, writing, “Diversity is a vitally important goal, but one that the government should not mandate.” The author has it half right.
There is no evidence that diversity is beneficial at all.
Illustrating absurdity by being absurd, pundit Ann Coulter once pointed out that proclaiming “Diversity is our strength!” makes as much sense as saying “Nicolas Cage is a two-cycle engine.” Both propositions are buttressed with the same amount of good evidence: none.
Moreover, diversity is always applied selectively. Why don’t we try to “diversify” the NFL, which is 100 percent male; nursing, 92.1 percent female; or workplace fatalities, 93 percent male?
Diversity™ has become such dogma that few ask a simple question: why? Would the NFL and nursing be better were the sexes equality represented? Would our people be happier if 50 percent of those killed on the job, or half our military members, were female?
Of course, this case is hard to make regarding athletic performances because they can be easily quantified (e.g., stopwatches don’t care about political correctness). That the 800-meter-run record for 14-year-old boys is better than the women’s world and that an under-15 boys’ soccer team beat the fifth-ranked (in the world) women’s team in 2016 tell the tale. But what of other endeavors? Is it logical to assume group proclivity plays no role in group representation?
And, actually, this is part of the Diversity Police’s argument. Citing a study, the California bill’s sponsors have argued that “‘publicly held companies perform better when women serve on their boards of directors,’” reports the Washington Times.
Yet this well-known correlation doesn’t equate to causation. As Hans Bader, Competitive Enterprise Institute senior attorney, points out, “It seems more likely that companies’ success leads to more women on their boards — as opposed to their success occurring because they have women on their boards,” the Times also informs.
An even more significant factor, however, may be that successful companies generally have high profiles and large workforces. This means they’re also potential targets and will try to ensure diversity to avoid a costly Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit. Remember, most of the laws the unconstitutional EEOC enforces are only applied to companies with a certain minimum number of workers. So the businesses not subject to them just happen to be the same ones most likely to fail: small start-ups.
Unsurprisingly, the corporate-“gender”-quota nonsense originated in Europe. In Norway, for instance, a 2006 law required that women constitute 40 percent of publicly traded corporate boards. The outcome? The Times tells us that “stock prices plunged and firm values dropped as boards added less experienced female directors, while the numbers of public firms decreased and private companies increased.”
While the paper makes its case well, know that performance outcomes don’t matter to the Left — ideology does. Were the former the priority, leftists wouldn’t still be supporting socialism with it having wrought a century’s worth of death and economic destruction.
Yet also evident here is the danger of equality dogma. After all, if every group were equal in terms of worldly abilities and inclination (as the Left generally claims), differences in group performance could only be due to discrimination. Following this logic, you then institute social engineering to cure this perhaps non-existent disease — ergo, quotas and affirmative action.
Part of problem with quotas is that even if groups could perform equally in a given field, they don’t always want to; inclination varies. Just consider the excellent documentary The Gender Equality Paradox (video below); it cites studies showing that women are more likely to enter traditionally feminine fields (e.g., nursing) — and avoid typically masculine ones — in highly “egalitarian” countries such as Norway than in more patriarchal nations such as India.
Explanation? Women in poorer nations must go where the money is to survive, which means entering fields such as IT. Women in wealthy countries such as Norway can afford to follow their hearts’ — which lead them to things feminine.
The irony here is that these sex quotas hurt women while purporting to help them. Consider: Why is it that men relative to women work longer hours; enter higher-paying fields; take less time off; and, to the point here, are more likely to strive for high positions and accept promotions? Sure, sometimes its ego gratification, money-lust, or careerism, but there’s another factor as well: necessity.
Men are more likely to be their families’ primary or sole breadwinners. This means that anything reducing men’s earning capacity — instituting policies encouraging the lowering of their wages, replacing them with female quota hires, etc. — hurts the women, the wives and daughters, these men support.
This damages the traditional family, as women who might prefer being stay-at-home moms may be forced into the workplace to make ends meet. This isn’t too good for the kids, of course — but it sure helps the daycare business.
Oh, there’s another irony here. Since psychologists actually define “gender” as your perception of what you are, we must wonder: Can men masquerading as women fill the “gender”-quota positions? Could this be criticized? We’re not supposed to question people’s “identity,” after all.
So after the “gender”-quota law, we may soon witness another first in the land of fruits and nuts: Traditionalist men identifying as women (to game the system and support their families). My, leftists really can work miracles.
Photo: Ulianna/iStock/Getty Images Plus
