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  3. (1) If you are a youngish man who sits on a European corporate board, you should worry: the chances are that your chairman wants

(1) If you are a youngish man who sits on a European corporate board, you should worry: the chances are that your chairman wants

admin2021-08-05  31
问题    (1) If you are a youngish man who sits on a European corporate board, you should worry: the chances are that your chairman wants to give your seat to a woman. In January the lower house of France’s parliament approved a new law which would force companies to lift the proportion of women on their boards to 40% by 2016. The law would oblige France’s 40 biggest listed firms to put women into 169 seats currently occupied by men. Spain has also introduced a quota at 40%, to be reached by 2015. Italy and the Netherlands are contemplating similar measures. This week Britain’s government threatened to make companies report formally on their recruitment of female directors.
   (2) Compared with America, where women held 15% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2009 according to Catalyst, a lobbying organization, European countries have relatively few female board members. Britain is not too far behind at 12%, according to a survey of Europe’s 300 biggest firms by the European Professional Women’s Network (EPWN). Spain, Italy, France and Germany, however, all lag behind the European average of 10%.
   (3) The exception is Scandinavia, and in particular, Norway, where quotas for women on boards originated. In 2005 the government gave listed firms two years to put women in 40% of board seats on pain of liquidation. Businessmen howled. Riulf Rustad, a professional investor with stakes in several Norwegian companies, said 70% of the new recruits would fail. In fact, there have been no obvious disasters. But a close look at Norway nonetheless suggests that imposing high gender quotas with tight deadlines can be bad for companies.
   (4) The usual arguments for adding women directors are that diverse boards are more creative and innovative, less inclined to " groupthink" and likely to be more independent from senior management. Numerous studies show that high proportions of women directors coincide with superior corporate performance. But there is little academically accepted evidence of a causal relationship. It may be that thriving firms allow themselves the luxury of attending to social issues such as board diversity, whereas poorly performing ones batten down the hatches.
   (5) Women do seem to be particularly effective board members at companies where things are going wrong. A 2008 paper on the impact of female directors by Renee Adams and Daniel Ferreira of the University of Queensland and the London School of Economics found that bosses of American firms whose shares perform poorly are more likely to be fired if the firm has a relatively high number of women directors. On average, however, the paper concluded that firms perform worse as the proportion of women on the board increases. There is certainly no shortage of companies capable of producing stellar results with few or no women on the board. LVMH, a successful French luxury-goods group whose customers are mostly women, has had just one female director over the past ten years: Delphine Arnault, daughter of the firm’s chief executive and controlling shareholder.
   (6) Nor is there any doubt that in many cases low female representation also reflects a broader lack of meritocracy in corporate culture. In France, for instance, interlocking board memberships are common. Women, and many other deserving businesspeople, are excluded from the system. Emma Marcegaglia, head of Confindustria, Italy’s main business lobby, says the dearth of women on boards and in management mainly reflects a controlling male elite at the top of business, the members of which have hardly changed for the past 30 years. (Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister and a prominent tycoon, last year referred to Ms Marcegaglia as a "velina" or showgirl.)
   (7) But what most prevents women from reaching the boardroom, say bosses and headhunters, is lack of hands-on experience of a firm’s core business. Too many women go into functional roles such as accounting, marketing or human resources early in their careers rather than staying in the mainstream, driving profits. Some do so by choice, but others fear they will not get ahead in more chauvinist parts of a business. Getting men to show up at every board meeting—another effect of having more women on boards—is all very well, but what firms really need is savvy business advice. Yet according to EPWN, the pipeline of female executives is " almost empty" : women occupy only 3% of executive roles on boards, compared with 12% of non-executive ones.
   (8) That suggests that the best way to increase the number of women on boards is to ensure that more women gain the right experience further down the corporate hierarchy. That may be a slower process than imposing a quota, but it is also likely to be a more meaningful and effective one.
The author quotes the example of LVMH in Para. 5 to______.
选项 A、show that Delphine Arnault is a successful female chief executive
B、illustrate that a company with a few women can still be very successful
C、convince us that the company should list more female directors to achieve greater success
D、prove that a comparatively high number of females will produce good results
答案B
解析 推断题。作者在第五段前三句中指出，女董事人数的增加会造成公司的运营状况不佳。接着在第四句指出，女董事人数少但运营状况良好的公司并不少，然后引出了LVMH的例子，可见，作者意在证明女董事比例少的公司照样可以成功，故[B]为正确答案。Delphine Arnault确实是一位成功的女性主管，但作者在文中引用例子主要是为了证明自己的观点，并不是单纯为了突出这位女性，故排除[A]；通过作者对LVMH的描述可知，其公司内仅有一位女性主管，女董事人数并不多，[C]、[D]均不符合文意，故排除。
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