October 1, 2018

Brown signs bill; women must be on boards of directors.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-governor-women-corporate-boards-20180930-story.html
Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed a bill into law that makes California the first state to require corporate boards of directors to include women, saying that despite potentially “fatal” legal problems in the measure, it is time to force action.

“Given all the special privileges that corporations have enjoyed for so long, it’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” Brown wrote in a signing message.

The new law requires publicly traded corporations headquartered in California to include at least one woman on their boards of directors by the end of 2019 as part of an effort to close the gender gap in business. By the end of July 2021, a minimum of two women must sit on boards with five members, and there must be at least three women on boards with six or more members. Companies that fail to comply face fines of $100,000 for a first violation and $300,000 for a second or subsequent violation.