official EU press release
What kind of law is that? Ruling by the sanction of the victim [1]?
Also, you can be gender-fluid [2], right? You can be a woman while serving on the board, and a man otherwise.
[1]: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/sanction_of_the_victim.htm...
Notably, it was struck down by a California court as violating the California constitution.
> under what authority does the EU meddle in business like this?
According to https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_... the policy represents an agreement among the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament, with the latter two still requiring a formal vote. And the EU mandate will actually be on member countries to pass enacting legislation within their jurisdiction.
Prudent policy or not, I don't think there's any way to spin this as an EU end-run around the democratic process or member state sovereignty.
And I don't think this policy applies to foreign corporations, only to companies incorporated in a member jurisdiction. (But I haven't read anything specifically mentioning the scope.)
However don't get the wrong idea that this was just decided by someone in Brussels and it's a directive now. This is just a draft for a potential directive. This has not been approved by the European Parliament or the European Council. [1] Long way to go still.
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[1] "Once Parliament and Council have formally approved the agreement" https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/et/press-room/20220603IP...
So no authority needed. But it's an interesting legal question whether the EU could impose such a requirement (backed by fines, for example) on unwilling member states.
By the way, the directive's wording is actually gender-neutral, talking about an "under-represented sex". If a company has a board dominated by women, it becomes a quota for men.
If a 40% of a board’s males identify as women, does that solve this quota?
Nope.
And I'm not trying to be glib here either, this segment of society literally claims that a woman is whatever anybody wants it to be while at the same time demanding special treatment for anybody who claims to be a woman. It doesn't follow any rules of logic at all.
Their press release seems to imply this will be the case but, well, you never know these days. There's a lot of confusion and contention around this issue.
Here's an interesting article about a similar consultation in the UK and its outcome, in terms of collecting statistics on the female to male ratio in boardrooms: https://sex-matters.org/posts/the-workplace/fca-women-on-cor...
Gender identity vs Gender equality.
I guess the authorities might find themselves in the position of having to judge the authenticity of a gender identity claim, something which they would not want to do, so I suspect they would wave any claims through
It really does make a mockery of the struggle women continue to have to achieve equality in this still largely male-dominated area.
