Some comments here focus on transgender and gender fluid people, but that's completely missing the point; those are such a tiny percentage of the population they don't figure in these quotas at all.<p>The point of these quotas is that some companies, even after decades of society striving for more gender equality, banning sex discrimination, etc, still prefer to hire one gender over the other for some functions, and especially for executive roles, this often happens through old-boys networks that exclude women. They may claim that they can't find women suitable for the role, but that's because the networks they hire from tend to exclude them.<p>It's also been known that people tend to hire people who look like the people already working in that particular role. Even when the people doing the hiring do not look like that. Even when they are aware of this effect.<p>If we want people to be hired for their ability and not their gender, we need a way to rid ourselves of these effects. For men and women to have the same opportunities to get hired, they already both need to be represented in the pool of people that have already been hired. And they need to be equally represented in the pool that people are hired from.<p>These sort of quotas are an ugly way to accomplish that, but so far, nobody has been able to come up with a better way of reaching that goal. Don't like quotas? Come up with something better. Because not doing anything is clearly not fixing the issue, and perpetuating the existing inequalities.
Well I am sure that this will be unpopular on HN, with the usual argument thrown whenever this kinds of laws pop-ups.<p>I do understand the worries about recruiting under qualified personnel due to diversity laws but overall, I support this kinds of laws. There is an objective over representation of man in management and higher management position. We know that people tend to recruit people they "fit" with. Recrutement is incredibly biased. This tend to lead to men recruiting more men and women recruiting more women. In a man dominated field, like higher management, it means that it is very hard for a woman to enter the field, this lead to <i>less woman having experiences in this field</i> which create a vicious circle. This kinds of laws might indeed lead to some less optimal recrutement in the short term, but I would argue that it is better in the long term because it allows to enlarge the worker pool and allow for more diverse profile to get the experience to be a better worker.<p>Also, maybe it is more cynical of me, but I have seen higher up recrutement in many companies. The actual worker skill is just one of the factor at play, and sometimes it is far from being the biggest factor. We are already doing sub-optimal recrutement right now, we just choose the criteria ...
Honest question - why only on corporate boards?
Why not trashmen (trashwomen)?
Why not miners?<p>Why all the mundane jobs are OK to be performed only (or mostly) by men?
As it isn't noted prominently in this announcement, it is worth clarifying that the directive does not apply to small and medium-sized enterprises, and applies only to listed companies.
This is the kind of thing that can break entire economies: forcing you to hire people you don't want to hire, people who may be entirely unoptimal but you have to hire them anyway due to a quota. Of course the consequences will be too gradual to see at first. People will only implement this stuff slowly, fines will probably not appear for a decade and by the time these changes are actually in effect nobody will know why the economy runs X% worse than before. It will be as if it has always been slightly bad and economists will ponder for years and years how to improve the ailing continent.
I believe this is the full text of the law:<p><a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/1_1_200090_dir_gen_cor_en.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/1_1_200090_dir...</a>
Great. Now do the HR or DEI boards :D<p>HR and DEI (ironically) are almost 99% female and wield almost absolute power over the corporation. When will we have proper gender-representation there?
This is mostly PR and will likely not do any serious damage :) But it might do some good by setting a positive goal.<p>First off, it doesn't specify how biological men temporarily identifying as female during the hiring process are to be treated, which seems like an obvious loophole to me.<p>Second, the actual resolution says: "Where two candidates of different sexes are equally qualified, preference shall be given to the candidate of the underrepresented sex" and that "equally qualified" is another huge loophole. The average male candidate will have a lot more experience, simply because it's been a male-dominated field.<p>Thirdly, it is up to the member states to come up with appropriate punishment for failing to meet this and "could include fines" doesn't sound that strict to me.
<i>By 2026, companies will need to have 40% of the underrepresented sex among non-executive directors or 33% among all directors.</i><p>Identity quotas do little but foster distrust of the members of the assisted category. How does this even work as more and more peoples' gender identities deviate from the classical male and female? Does a non-binary person count toward the quota? Do they count only if they were assigned female at birth? Can executives change their legal gender to manipulate their stats? Are companies similarly required to have at least 33% males on their boards? How does telling a company who they must hire, as opposed to who they're not allowed to discriminate against, not violate the right of freedom of association?<p>This is a whole damn mess.
Why not have at least one woman and one man in combination with one being old, one being young, one being black, asian, etc, one being gay, one having a disability, etc
I don't know a single person who is for gender quotas. Do I live in a bubble or are policymakers bringing laws that are highly unpopular and go against a will of the people they serve? How could that be?
Silly question: aren't directors in listed companies elected (at least nominally) by the share holders? What happens if they keep picking too many of the same sex candidates? Can the CEO overrule them? Are members of the majority sex not allowed to stand anymore if to many are elected?<p>Also, since this is a Directive it just tells member nations governments to do it right? If it did it itself, it would be a Regulation. Like MiFID (told nations to do X) vs MIFIR (did it at the EU level directly). Similar to a US "unfunded mandate".
The scope of EU laws is growing. Do member countries enjoy having social-economical policies dictated from above? This is meddling in what should be internal matters of sovereign states. Then they are surprised anti-EU sentiment is growing.
What about focusing on solving why parts of the EU have regressed to 3rd world economic status, capital cities that mostly look like ghettos, lack of energy supplies, and poor administration? The EU is gradually becoming a joke. Not that gender issues shouldn't be taken care of, but this is not the way to solve them.
This is meaningless when you've destroyed the meaning of the word 'gender'.<p>Any company not meeting quotas could simply have half the men start identifying as women.
How about balancing HR? Teachers? Or jobs regarded as dangerous and/or unpleasant, like miners or garbage collectors? What about prisoners? I heard there are huge gender balance issues too.
Why not let businesses decide? I'm pretty sure that higher positions are being hired mostly based on effectiveness and not just because they're male?<p>Like if women mostly get smaller salary for same work (as media claim), everyone would jump and hire them over man because its more efficient lol
My opinion:<p>If you support free market companies, you should not tell them how to hire (put quotas like the one now mandated in the EU).<p>A govt can put quotas on it's own organizations. Sure. No problem there, as it is not a market-force company to begin with.<p>Next up the C-family invents some new Cs (CWO, CQO, CJO, CYO) and puts some women on it just so the CTO/CFO/CEO can be men. In Nigeria foreign companies have to hire locals: they sit all day on "the locals bench" waiting for their shift to be over. I wait for this to happen on EU company boards with women.<p>Great move EU! /s