‘This Behaviour Must Stop’: California May Soon Require Women on Boards
Nearly a year since the Harvey Weinstein scandal first convulsed the world, a
Almost certainly not, says Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Democrat senator from
“It’s my firm belief that with more women on these corporate boards this behaviour will stop, and will not be allowed,” Jackson says. “Boards now understand the impact of this behaviour, how negative it is to the workforce, and how it impedes female workers and executives from doing the best job they can do.”
The
As of , more than a quarter of the 445 publicly traded companies in
The legislation would not have affected the
A number of
The
“One law doesn’t change the world. But when we step forward and make it clear through a variety of laws that gender discrimination, sexual assault and harassment will not be tolerated then we will see the culture change,” says Jackson.
Pointing to the MSCI data, Jackson argues that companies with women on their boards are more profitable and productive. “Once we achieve critical mass, companies will be more profitable, more transparent, and there will be more accountability for misbehaviour in the workplace at every level,” Jackson asserts.
But when Brown sits down to sign SB826, he will do so in the shadow of one of the largest post-Weinstein harassment scandals – the departure of the CBS chief executive Les Moonves. Concerns over board strength linger over the fate of Moonves too. Yet it took six weeks between the first allegations of sexual misconduct against Moonves to be published in the pages of the New Yorker and his exit from the company.
That left many to argue that the CBS board was too slow to act and was blinded by its loyalty to Moonves until the clamour from shareholders and a fall in the value of CBS stock became impossible to ignore. Moonves denies the allegations.
“The issue is not how quickly you act after allegations are made, it’s how quickly you act after you determine the truth of it,” says Charles Elson, a corporate governance expert at the
The Californian legislation is not unique to the US –
In 2003,
The gender diversity push is increasingly being taken up by investors. In March, the powerful
The share of companies with all-male boards on the Russell 3000 Index, which includes most public companies on major US stock exchanges, fell to 17% this year, down from nearly a quarter in 2016, according to the Gender Diversity Index published by
The study also found that nearly one third of new director seats went to women in the first quarter of 2018. The co-author of SB826 hopes that