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I wouldn't call it being hopelessly naive, but is it possible you're experiencing a bit of survivorship bias? There tends to be little outright conspiring to k

I wouldn't call it being hopelessly naive, but is it possible you're experiencing a bit of survivorship bias? There tends to be little outright conspiring to keep outsiders on the outside, but people tends to include and give benefits to those who look/think like themselves, or have similar backgrounds to themselves. That doesn't justify having quotas, but there's more at play than blatant racism/sexism that keeps minorities from positions of power and influence.

trendia 8y ago
"Those who look/think like themselves" has much more going than just sex/race. An individual choosing another board seat will likely a preference for people who went to the same Ivy League schools, who have the same wealthy family backgrounds, and, most important, share the same concept of how they want to run the business. Making a law forcing a woman to be on the board won't eliminate those preferences, it will just mean that they'll choose a woman from a well-connected family who went to HBS and would be willing to support the voting positions of whomever is appointing them. You haven't changed the voting behavior too much, just the sex/racial makeup of it. If the goal is to change how businesses behave, we would want people from entirely different fields. That is, we'd want representation from differing perspectives in the company -- perhaps from engineering or from labor. In Germany, for instance, there is an expectation that the labor union has representation on the board [0], which would do much more for the people working in the company than having a female version of the male boardroom exec. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
- ikeyany 8y ago
  Even among rich perspectives, their inclusion of women would likely bring in views that tend to be overlooked by male perspectives. But yes, if the goal is diversity in the truest sense then including those outside of elite/rich backgrounds may be more effective. It seems like the topic is about gender, however.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I listened to an episode of Freakonomics I believed where the (now former) CEO of PepsiCo said that it was harder for her to promote a woman because people would think that she was promoting them based solely on gender. Can you imagine the uproar if Obama had appointed "too many Black people" to positions of power? He would have been called the "first affirmative action President". He was already being accused of being "a secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law to the United States".
scarface74 8y ago
I agree and I accept the system for what it is. I graduated college from a small unknown historically black college (HBCU) in the mid 90s, the few people that graduated in Computer Science went on to work at small companies using antiquated mainframes either in the private sector or government contracts. The only reason I got out was because the year before I graduated I got an internship with a company in the major metropolitan city where I still live with a company that partnered with HBCUs across the state. When I graduated, because of help from my parents, I was able to take a low paying job that I was overqualified for as a computer operator just to get back to the city. Another anecdote is that anytime I was able to get someone from my alma mater a job. I did. I got two Black women (really underrepresented in tech) that graduated from the same college a year after I did a job at the same place. That was thier stepping stone. That goes on everywhere you recommend people you know. I have a younger relative who was thinking about going to the same school I went to for computer science. I recommended to him and his mother for him to just go there for two years and transfer to a school in my city - it really didn’t matter which one. Just get into the best state school up here he could. Not for the curriculum but for the exposure and networking opportunities.
- ikeyany 8y ago
  > Another anecdote is that anytime I was able to get someone from my alma mater a job. I did. I got two Black women (really underrepresented in tech) that graduated from the same college a year after I did a job at the same place. That was thier stepping stone. That goes on everywhere you recommend people you know. Do you suppose that for cases like boardrooms, this exacerbates the pipeline problem? It would imply that more dire actions are needed.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Of course it does. I didn't recommend them because they were Black. I recommended them because I knew them. It was statistically 99.9% chance that anyone who went to my HBCU would be Black. The same would happen in the opposite direction.
    - 8y ago

trendia 8y ago

"Those who look/think like themselves" has much more going than just sex/race. An individual choosing another board seat will likely a preference for people who went to the same Ivy League schools, who have the same wealthy family backgrounds, and, most important, share the same concept of how they want to run the business. Making a law forcing a woman to be on the board won't eliminate those preferences, it will just mean that they'll choose a woman from a well-connected family who went to HBS and would be willing to support the voting positions of whomever is appointing them. You haven't changed the voting behavior too much, just the sex/racial makeup of it. If the goal is to change how businesses behave, we would want people from entirely different fields. That is, we'd want representation from differing perspectives in the company -- perhaps from engineering or from labor. In Germany, for instance, there is an expectation that the labor union has representation on the board [0], which would do much more for the people working in the company than having a female version of the male boardroom exec. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

ikeyany 8y ago
Even among rich perspectives, their inclusion of women would likely bring in views that tend to be overlooked by male perspectives. But yes, if the goal is diversity in the truest sense then including those outside of elite/rich backgrounds may be more effective. It seems like the topic is about gender, however.
scarface74 8y ago
I listened to an episode of Freakonomics I believed where the (now former) CEO of PepsiCo said that it was harder for her to promote a woman because people would think that she was promoting them based solely on gender. Can you imagine the uproar if Obama had appointed "too many Black people" to positions of power? He would have been called the "first affirmative action President". He was already being accused of being "a secret Muslim trying to bring Sharia law to the United States".

scarface74 8y ago

I agree and I accept the system for what it is. I graduated college from a small unknown historically black college (HBCU) in the mid 90s, the few people that graduated in Computer Science went on to work at small companies using antiquated mainframes either in the private sector or government contracts. The only reason I got out was because the year before I graduated I got an internship with a company in the major metropolitan city where I still live with a company that partnered with HBCUs across the state. When I graduated, because of help from my parents, I was able to take a low paying job that I was overqualified for as a computer operator just to get back to the city. Another anecdote is that anytime I was able to get someone from my alma mater a job. I did. I got two Black women (really underrepresented in tech) that graduated from the same college a year after I did a job at the same place. That was thier stepping stone. That goes on everywhere you recommend people you know. I have a younger relative who was thinking about going to the same school I went to for computer science. I recommended to him and his mother for him to just go there for two years and transfer to a school in my city - it really didn’t matter which one. Just get into the best state school up here he could. Not for the curriculum but for the exposure and networking opportunities.

ikeyany 8y ago
> Another anecdote is that anytime I was able to get someone from my alma mater a job. I did. I got two Black women (really underrepresented in tech) that graduated from the same college a year after I did a job at the same place. That was thier stepping stone. That goes on everywhere you recommend people you know. Do you suppose that for cases like boardrooms, this exacerbates the pipeline problem? It would imply that more dire actions are needed.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Of course it does. I didn't recommend them because they were Black. I recommended them because I knew them. It was statistically 99.9% chance that anyone who went to my HBCU would be Black. The same would happen in the opposite direction.
  - 8y ago