61–70 of 82 posts
https://debatereport.com/canada/alberta-man-identifies-as-wo...
I love the idea that there is a scarcity of "golden skirts" that make this too hard. It presupposes that the current male members are all "golden trousers", the cream of the crop, the best of the best. I've met many many board members over the years and they are often very unimpressive. I'm sure we can find some equally unimpressive women to replace them! Better still anyone with even a modicum of talent would do!
"I've met many many board members over the years and they are often very unimpressive." This is an extremely difficult thing to assess frankly. There are so many reasons for board members. Often they could be from a family fund. Maybe they are from an institutional investor who own a lot of share. They are not there to provide strategic guidance, rather just to sit there and keep an eye on things. They may be simply…
Before the comments go too far down a rabbit-hole, I encourage everyone to respond to the article instead of answering the question in the headline. The article is talking about boards, not employees, and states that there is no causation proven, despite some correlations found in Europe after they required quotas on company boards.
Why is the scope so narrow defined as to exclude any criticism on how state and government operate as the largest group of organizations with paid employees. Seems very convenient from the position of power that government and states enjoy.
I remember 2nd term math lecture. There were students from different engineering disciplines. There were 600 students with ~15 females among them. Some years later situation is no different: ~100 people on the floor, 5 females here: 2 secretaries, 2 export specialists and senior researcher with PhD degree. Where find suitable candidates for these quotes when women avoid technical stuff at university level?
I read a study last year, that at least in the US actual STEM graduates are more and more balanced between male and female with females having better degrees. When they looked at the jobs the graduates got it was not at all representing of the quota that graduated. E.g. 30% of graduates were female but only 3% of accepted job applicants (nmumbers are made up, just to demonstrate the point of the study).
The conclusion they had is that by drop rates and gender segregation get amplified in every step between first year student to long term employee.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are not numbers. If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company.
There are plenty of numbers associated with humans in workforce. For example, their salary. > If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company. I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of numbers associated with humans in workforce. For example, their salary. > If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company. I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.
Female-dominated professions generally doesn't suffer from lack of diversity at the top. There are less male nurses, but plenty of male doctors. There are less male teachers, but plenty of male professors. Etc. That is specifically what quotas for company boards deal with long term. Because a de facto career filter for gender is equal to the filer example you mentioned.
No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.
"This is mathematical nonsense." Board members might be the least likely of all people related to the company to have the right credentials. It's networks, power, relationships. Not usually talent. Though I'm totally against board quotas, it's very easy to see how women are locked out of this game. Far, far more so than for normal roles within an organization.
It's the friends of low level managers who get hired who sometimes have the least credentials.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I've met many many board members over the years and they are often very unimpressive." This is an extremely difficult thing to assess frankly. There are so many reasons for board members. Often they could be from a family fund. Maybe they are from an institutional investor who own a lot of share. They are not there to provide strategic guidance, rather just to sit there and keep an eye on things. They may be simply…
"maybe we should just tell the people that benefit from the sexism that the sexism is bad, surely they will stop"
So until your own project isn't blatantly gender biased, maybe you should refrain from waiving the 'sexism' card to broadly. Because I'll gather your probably not trying to 'oppress women' over there, rather, there are any number of other more nuanced and complex reasons for the absence of female contributors.
There are many reasons boards are mostly male, and most of it is systematic. They're no more trying to 'keep women off boards' than you're trying to stop women from making contributions to open source. Approaching boards with information, and especially access to women's business networks where boards can find qualified women has actually worked in other areas (Finland) and it's a considerably more responsible approach. (Although in Finland there is mandating as well).
FYI PouchDB is amazing, by the way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That story seems to come up a lot in these discussions. IIRC it appeared in a prior HN discussion of the same thing. The bursary in question is only £3,000 which is nothing. And the total fund is only £30,000 - so enough for 10 nurses. This doesn't even begin to compare with organised political lobbying on a continental scale to force women into jobs where people earn £3,000 for simply sitting in a single board meeti…
This doesn't even begin to compare with organised political lobbying on a continental scale to force women into jobs where people earn £3,000 for simply sitting in a single board meeting. Of course, because no such jobs exist from which men are mostly absent. You can't expect a response of the same size when the problem is nowhere near the same size.
You responded with an article about a sum of money so trivial it would cover 10 men for perhaps a couple of months depending on where they live.
If that's the best you can find, this doesn't really disprove his point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Female-dominated professions generally doesn't suffer from lack of diversity at the top. There are less male nurses, but plenty of male doctors. There are less male teachers, but plenty of male professors. Etc. That is specifically what quotas for company boards deal with long term. Because a de facto career filter for gender is equal to the filer example you mentioned.
A professor is not above a teacher. A professor doesn't tell a second grade teacher what to do. They have almost nothing in common.