California becomes the first state to require a woman on the boards of directors

Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Sunday making California the first state to force state-owned companies to include at least one woman on their board to promote gender equality and help break the glass ceiling companies.

Bill SB 826 of Senses. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara and Toni Atkins of San Diego aimed to combat prejudices against experienced and skilled employees in the workplace.

"Yet another glass ceiling is broken, and women will finally have a seat at the corporate meeting rooms," Jackson said on Twitter as she thanked the governor for signing The law project. "Businesses will be more profitable. It's a giant step for women, our businesses and our economy. "

In a rare move, Brown included a message with the signing of the bill.

"There have been many objections to this bill and serious legal issues have been raised," said the governor. "I do not minimize the potential flaws that could indeed be fatal to its final implementation. Nevertheless, recent events in Washington, DC – and beyond – clearly show that many have not understood the message.

Brown went on to say that businesses have been "considered as people" for a long time, even before women are allowed to vote.

"Given all the special privileges that companies have enjoyed for so long, it is high time that boards include people who make up more than half of the" people "in America," said the governor.

Rights groups also applauded the signing of the bill on Sunday.

"We've seen a lot of tech companies struggle to diversify," said Bruce Mirken, director of media relations at the Greenlining Institute, an Oakland group working on racial and economic justice issues. "You have to think that if these voices were more present in their boards, they would be better."

The legislation would require all publicly traded companies in California to have at least one woman on the board by the end of 2019. By the end of 2021, at least two women will sit on the boards of five directors. At least three women will be members of boards of directors of companies with at least six directors. Companies that do not comply will be fined $ 100,000 for their first offense.

Many large California companies have had women in prominent positions. In 1999, Carly Fiorina became the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008 and Hewlett-Packard from 2011 to 2015, where she chaired her strategic split and is a member of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's board of directors.

But by June 2017, 26% of the 445 publicly traded companies in California had no women on their boards despite some studies suggesting that companies with women in their boards of directors were more successful.

Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee and a San Francisco lawyer, was opposed to this legislation, even though she claimed to have been discriminated against on the basis of sex in her own legal profession.

Although she agreed that "the boards of directors of American companies – women and minorities – would be better for American companies," she said that "the government had a completely ridiculous mandate and against -productive.

"When you have money orders, you will ask every woman who gets this appointment if she understands," Dhillon said Sunday.

But the co-author of the bill, Jackson, felt it was necessary because she saw no progress. An "ambitious" resolution that she drafted in 2013 urging boards of directors to voluntarily add women "fell in the ear", the percentage of women in boards of directors from 15.5% in 2013 to 16% five years later.