Madness on stilts. The United Arab Emirates are starting with one woman on boards but we all know the pressure for more women won’t stop until at least 50% of board members are women.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
I wonder if this isn’t just window dressing for a western audience. Given the data given it would seem either some UAE Boards have a lot of women on them, or most already exceed the new requirement. I expect there to be a bit of a boost for wives and female relatives on boards in the UAE (I have always been amused by the french research, after a few years of a 40% quota there, where most were WAGs and (in a very french way) “mistresses”. I suppose in an Arab context there are many more wives to recruit some non execs from.
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Haha great points!!! Thanks Nigel.
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This story gives a good description of how discrimination against men in employment works under UK law. The main legal point is that if there is a “tie” between a man and woman the organisation can choose the woman if it has evidence it has a gender imbalance. But the direct discrimination can only happen if the organisation has identified this and if the choice is between two equally qualified candidates. However the weasel part of this is that if an employing panel isn’t giving the “right results” it can be made to score again, in effect to downgrade the men in order to achieve a female winner. And of course the other bit of “indirect discrimination” here is that the number of male applicants is very much larger than female so it is far more likely that there will be more “qualified” males. So in arbitrarily adjusting scoring to achieve the “correct” mix in the final stages (and getting the panel to revise their scores to achieve this) there is very likely to be better male applicants excluded at various stages before the final stage. In such a competition this may be not so bad if the male candidates have been heard and can still get work. But of course in most employment such a process is much more definitive. This is precisely the process used by local, national government and their agencies to achieve “gender equality”.
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The link.Female pianists favoured over men under major competition’s rules (telegraph.co.uk)
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I predict once the reality sets in this will end.
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