[NeedMoreTea]

Fascinating to see all comments against this at the moment.

Some level of mandatory female board presence seems to work OK in plenty of places elsewhere in the world without a great backlash. No visible campaigns to repeal because of the great damage or tokenism that's resulted.

[stmfreak]

This outlaws freedom of association. If I am a woman creating a company for women’s products and want an all woman board, why should that be a problem or any business of the government? If the shareholders don’t like it, they can vote in/out whomever they want.

And if an all woman board is okay, then what hypocrisy is this new law?

[arcticbull]

Hey let's cross that bridge when we get there maybe?

[hueving]

Your response to blatant hypocrisy is really just saying it doesn't matter right now?

[arcticbull]

Ah I see what you're saying. That's fair criticism, let me try again.

This does only apply to publicly traded companies, and lots of other employment legislation does similarly limit association within companies does it not? For instance, discrimination on the basis of race or gender in the hiring process is illegal (making exception on the basis of “bona-fide occupational qualifications”). Setting aside the gender component here, it would seem that this is settled law, does it not? It appears if the argument is restriction of free association, that ship sailed, and you do not have that right at work on an absolute basis.

Is it hypocritical? Yes. Without sounding like a broken record, I don't believe that only old white men are capable of being on boards, yet they're massively overrepresented, which tells me there's some other intrinsic issue with the system or society that is creating this environment. I support this measure as an attempt to rebalance the scales. To me, the ends justify the means. If it doesn't work out, it can of course be rolled back.

Hypocrisy isn't illegal. I'm not sure whether this runs afoul of any other legislation but I'd imagine that's been thought through.

To me, the argument is: "if I am a woman creating a company for women’s products and want an all woman board..." -- you're not. Statistically, nobody is. That's the problem. If they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. And when that changes, we can absolutely revisit this.

[mooseburger]

Which are the other places in the world that have done this?

[skybrian]

Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Norway and Spain have quotas according to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_on_corpo...

[tokyodude]

neither pro or against but just googled it and this came up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_on_corpo...

[patrickg_zill]

Of these companies how many are competitive with American business?

[arcticbull]

I forgot how America's man-only board driven companies are the only competitive ones in the world :P Thanks for reminding me?

[patrickg_zill]

It's a simple question. Are you able to answer it?

A Danish state owned power company or some other local to EU, protected company, doesn't really have any effect on the world market, does it? It does not have anything to offer in terms of innovation or management skills.

[NeedMoreTea]

Like BASF, Siemens, BMW, BP, HSBC, TATA etc are all backwater protected companies having no effect on the world market?

Seriously, it's half the G20 with either mandated quota requirements, or a requirement to document in the yearly report company progress toward diversity targets and justify progress - or lack of (model used by UK, Sweden and others).