California Becomes 1st State To Require Women On Corporate Boards

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/01/653318005/california-becomes-1st-state-to-require-women-on-corporate-boards

California will be the first state to require publicly traded companies to have at least one woman on their board of directors.

The law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday, requires public companies whose principal executive offices are located in California to comply by the end of 2019. The minimum is two female directors if the company has five directors on its board, or three women if it has seven directors by the close of 2021.

The bill was sponsored by state Sens. Hannah-Beth Jackson and Toni Atkins. "We are not going to ask any more," Jackson said in August in a floor speech on the bill, the Los Angeles Times reported. "We are tired of being nice. We're tired of being polite. We are going to require this because it's going to benefit the economy. It's going to benefit each of these companies."

"It's time that we burst that man-cave and put women in the boardrooms," she said. A quarter of the 445 publicly traded companies in California don't have a single woman on their boards, KQED reports.