The debate of the fairness and efficacy of quota systems heated up this week after German legislators have passed a law requiring the top 100 companies to allot at least 30 percent of the seats on their boards to women within the next two years. The bill also mandated increased in women in upper level positions for some 3,500 companies. The companies could face sanctions if they cannot find enough women to fill the quota.
I have long been a critic of quota systems and this is no exception. While I certainly agree with the motivation behind the law, the emphasis of regulations should be to tear down barriers to women — not to force hiring based on gender. I am a firm believer that the market works against discriminatory values and practices. Women have made amazing strides in business and politics, as vividly shown by the leadership of Germany by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
There is clearly an underrepresentation of women on these boards. However, the way to erase that differential is to guarantee opportunities for women and to combat discriminatory practices in my view.
What do you think?
Source: NBC
davidm2575, in an earlier comment: “So your statement, “… hey, feel free to reach erroneous conclusions” is really inappropriate. You are not engaging in logical analysis of the studies. You are just parroting the propaganda or opinion that you want to see.”
Oh my. Said by the same fellow who said this:
“Unfortunately, they became feminists and lesbians which has led to homosexual marriage and the destruction of the family. Women have forsaken their God given role to complete a man, and men have forsaken their God given role to complete the woman.” davidm2575, somewhere up-thread
You’re a hoot, davidm2575.
Not knowing how the corporate laws are structured in Germany…..but if this policy were mandated by the US Government it would be a severe violation of the rights of the shareholders of the Corporation/Company. It could even be considered “an unlawful taking”.
As I explained. In this country, the shareholders of a company are able to vote for the people that they want on the Board of Directors. Their votes are based on the number of shares or the amount that they have at risk in the company.
The reason the shareholders get to vote is so that if they do NOT like the direction the Board is taking their company or wish to put into those seats people who will direct the company in a manner that the shareholders wish….they can do this by voting their shares. This is their right as OWNERS of the corporation.
If the government decided to institute this policy that 30% of Board Members must be X, Y or Z……this would have in effect taken away the right of the shareholders to protect their capital investment from undesirable Board Members.
Corporations belong to the shareholders who generally have a great deal of capital at risk and they have the right to protect their investment.
Jim22:
“The presidential hopeful graduated magna cum laude from the Law School in 1991” (from the link posted by Elaine in an earlier comment)
http://law.harvard.edu/current/careers/ocs/employers/hls-grading-policy/index.html
4. For students who matriculated as of, or after, Fall Term 2008, the summa cum laude will be determined by the requirement of a 4.75 GPA. The honor is exact and does not involve “rounding off”; ie., a GPA of 4.749 does not result in a degree summa cum laude. If, in a given year, no student earns a GPA of 4.75 or higher, summa cum laude will be awarded to the student (or students in the case of a tie) with the highest overall GPA.
5. The magna cum laude will be awarded to the next ten percent of the entire class.
issac – “It is common knowledge that Obama made it through his undergraduate and graduate years with finances resulting from scholarships and grants. He was in the top of his classes or he would have not had the opportunity. Bush who as a dismal student obtained entrance to Yale because of his father and his father only. Bush did rise to the level of captain of the cheerleaders, though. And then he went on to grace our history as the worst President ever, a shame, and a stink that is still yet to be fully experienced. It is through quotas such as Affirmative Action and financial aid for academically deserving but financially strapped students that the best get to the top. ”
All your opinion very little facts. So again, what were President Obama’s grades?
Darren
I understand your point regarding diluting the top by allowing those, perhaps less aggressive, access. However, in the case of Affirmative Action the condition of the US at the time, and to some degree still, was one of extremes. The black position in society was extremely disadvantaged and extreme moves were necessary. The problem, obviously, needs to be addressed from both ends, when a child is starting out and when a child makes that decision regarding its future. The idea of Affirmative Action was primarily to make available to the millions of black children who were wondering what would become of them, a reality of a professional life. With no role models to whom to refer, the future was bleak. Regardless of whether this is to be seen as a band aid or an institution it is only necessary until the situation equalizes, or blacks are represented throughout all strata of society, equally. This was also the easiest and fastest move in the equation. The more important one and one that will take more input and time is how to extricate black and/or minority children from this problem from the beginning.
This is, obviously, for the greater good as all of society will suffer if the problems of inequality based on race, ethnicity, gender, etc are not addressed. And, there will be some negative results. However, if you look at the make up of the government, military, leadership, etc of America sixty years ago and then now you will see a remarkable difference. That difference is primarily due to devices such as quotas, scholarships, strict laws against bias, etc. Why would a young black man with the ability put his back into a military career if there were no top ranking soldiers of his race? Opportunity needs to be illustrated. Left to itself, the status quo will propagate the status quo.
Finally, quotas are designed and hoped to be temporary and followed by other devices based on the successes and failures of those devices that have been instituted, experienced, and studied. If, after a time, it was found that a quota of 30% women in upper management levels provided an overall good result for a society, even with some men losing out, then the quota would in all likelihood be raised, to achieve even better results. If a quota of 30% was proven detrimental to society then it would either be left at 30% or relaxed. If you study the recent, if not all, history of Europe, the US and other advancing nations you will see programs that have bent the rigidity of the status quo and succeeded and those that have tried and failed. The greatest aspect of the US and other Western Nations is the freedom to experiment. There will always be those who fear change and range from a doubter to an anchor and those others who range from irresponsibility to intelligent foresight. Luckily for us the anchor can be dragged despite itself.
Late night and morning BDS. It seems the failure of Obama and imploding Hillary has cause BDS to metastasize. Isaac is stage 3. Mespo obviously stage 4.
In addition this 30% requirement, as I made fun of early in the comments, is mathematically impossible to meet in some cases.
As in a 5 person board. 30% = 1.5 people. It isn’t easy to change the composition of a Board for a corporation either. That is part of the charter and would have to (at least in the US) be voted on by the entire group of shareholders in order to make such a fundamental change to the group. It isn’t impossible. Just time consuming and COSTLY to make such a change.
J asked: shareholders don’t elect their boards? I have a fund with holdings there….how shall they vote?
If you directly own stock in a company you will be able to vote on the Board members. Sometimes shareholders will band together and vote to oust or elect a particular person. Since very few people own enough stock on their own to do control the vote they will give their ‘proxy” (right for someone else to vote their shares) and let one person vote for everyone.
When you own shares in a fund you don’t really own the shares of the underlying stocks or other investments. You have a piece of the big giant pie and in the prospectus (which unfortunately no one ever reads but we are required to give to you) it will state that the company will vote in proxy. So if you have a Vanguard fund with S&P components, the fund manager(s) will be getting a whole lot of information on the boards of the many companies in the fund and he is your Proxy and will vote for you. You don’t get a choice.
Jim
It is common knowledge that Obama made it through his undergraduate and graduate years with finances resulting from scholarships and grants. He was in the top of his classes or he would have not had the opportunity. Bush who as a dismal student obtained entrance to Yale because of his father and his father only. Bush did rise to the level of captain of the cheerleaders, though. And then he went on to grace our history as the worst President ever, a shame, and a stink that is still yet to be fully experienced. It is through quotas such as Affirmative Action and financial aid for academically deserving but financially strapped students that the best get to the top.
I am making the point that society, with financial assistance, quotas, and other seemingly unAmerican/Daniel Boone concepts, push the evolution of our society along. Quotas are no different than scholarships for those who show ability but don’t have the financial resources to obtain access to institutions that will advance them and our society as a whole.
Women have historically and even now fall into a category of victims of a past America could well do without. America is still more a land of privilege than a land of opportunity. This does not mean that opportunities do not exist in America. It means only that the future of any society depends on accessing the best from all participants. In the West the last hundred years have shown us that society is better with more women participating. It has also been apparent that the status quo needs to be addressed collectively by devices such as quotas and financial assistance.
You selectively missed my point which was the concept, the whole concept, and just as selectively you used part of my argument to serve yours, and in doing so fell behind. I term this activity ‘cherry picking bush whacking’. You would need your own money.
Elaine M., So all we have are some college professors opinions. Got it, he must be a genius then.
Obama Left Mark on HLS
Profs fondly recall Law School alum as he launches presidential bid
By MARIE C. KODAMA, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER January 19, 2007
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/1/19/obama-left-mark-on-hls-days/
Excerpt:
The presidential hopeful graduated magna cum laude from the Law School in 1991; his wife earned the degree three years earlier.
Obama Left Mark on HLS
Profs fondly recall Law School alum as he launches presidential bid
By MARIE C. KODAMA, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER January 19, 2007
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/1/19/obama-left-mark-on-hls-days/
Excerpt:
The presidential hopeful graduated magna cum laude from the Law School in 1991; his wife earned the degree three years earlier.
Barack Obama did not graduate with honors at Columbia and so his acolytes make much of his time at Harvard where he was president of the Harvard Law Review and where he graduated magna cum laude. Many ignore that his magna cum laude honors may well not been magna cum laude today. Under the system in place when Obama was a student, only one third of a graduating class did not receive honors. For the class of ’95, a whopping 71.3 percent of the student body graduated with honors, doubling the number of students graduating with honors since 1972 and tripling the numbers receiving magna cum laude. Receiving magna cum laude may be impressive, but it is less so, if one in six students win it.
So he still could be at the bottom of his class with all of this micromanagement of numbers that Liberals do
issac – “Put it this way, who would you rather have as President, a C- student that performed for a status quo or someone who made it on merit and ability alone? You might get lucky with the first and unlucky with the second but the numbers that go into the equation point to ability above all. ”
You are making our point for not having quotas. Who would you rather have in your business, the smart person or the one with less ability. Glad to see you have come around.
issac – “Regardless of politics and what one might think of Clinton and Obama. They both were of the top of their classes with no special help from family or wealth. Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Obama made it on ability alone.”
How do you know that about President Obama? Do you have his transcripts?
It is funny how empty barrels can make the loudest noise sometimes.
Here are a few impressions I was left with from my short 4-year working life in Germany. I can only speak as an American (with dual citizenship) who worked in German companies in the 80s. Granted, it was quite a while ago, but some things haven’t changed. For example, it is still required to register your physical address with the “Einwohnermeldeamt”. And while at that ‘amt’ or office, you will find long lines of people (largely from eastern block countries in the 80s, but really from all over creation) who are all trying to also live in Germany. The US simply has more physical room to absorb the ‘huddled masses’ of humanity. Germans are getting squeezed as more and more immigrants are coming all of the time. Of course, they do not feel that they can turn them away due to their history. Every time I flew to the US and back to Germany, I had the sense that the country was shrinking. I became more aware of just how crowded the place was and how buildings were 5-6 stories high with people six layers deep. You can never really escape this. So, although we don’t have unlimited speeds on the Autobahn like in Germany, what we have in the US is breathing room!
Germany
Population = 82,652,256 (July, 2014)
Inhabitants per square kilometer = 232 people (2014)
United States
Population = 322,583,006 (July, 2014)
Inhabitants per square kilometer = 34 people (2014)
Germany has some disadvantages regarding its location. While I was there, there was a little accident that happened in Chernobyl (1986). But Europe didn’t find out about it until alarms started going off in Sweden. The Swedish reactor soon discovered the problem was from the fallout in the clouds outside of their reactor. The Green Party in Germany did a great job of keep us informed about where the contamination was in the food chain (pushed each Thursday in the newspaper). In the grocery store, we paid attention to “herkunftland” (land of origin) for produce, etc. We didn’t buy any meat from the east for instance. Of course, France chose to build most of their nuclear reactors on the border to Germany.
But here is the real difference that sets the US apart from Germany. In Germany, I was riding a bus once when a mother and her Downs Syndrome child got on the bus. Immediately, an elderly man on the bus said in German (loud enough so that we could all hear) that this child would have been gassed during the war. On one of my visits back in the US, I was at a Wendy’s in Alexandria, Virginia. And there was a young adult with Downs Syndrome wearing a Wendy’s uniform and he was proudly sweeping the floor. This you will most likely never see in Germany. We simply have a more tolerant society. You get second chances in the US. You would be luck to even get a first chance (for a job) in most European countries.
Starting to ramble there counselor. It’s a decent hour here on the West Coast. I am heading to bed. You might want to consider doing so yourself. Many of your comments after 1AM are often the ones you wish there was a self delete function.
Yeah, FDR got complete victory over our enemies; Condie hosted a banquet for them. And who pointed that out? Ol Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney. Here’s a point by point refutation about any competency by Condie in either job she held by none other than that liberal rag the Wall Street Journal:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304050304577375851104232184
You must have dementia to forget this bonehead’s screwups, but maybe she’s what you mean by a strong woman. You need a red nose and big shoes.
The 9/11 meme about Condi is racist. Dems despise successful, conservative, black people.
FDR screwed up Pearl Harbor. But, he’s a Dem.
None of the other public crooks you, oh obtuse Nicky, mentioned got 3000 people killed because they couldn’t figure out what “determined to attack,” “hijacking planes” and “surveillance of buildings in New York” would add up to.