Progressives often support diversity mandates as a path to equality and a way to level the playing field. But all too often such policies are an insincere form of virtue-signaling that benefits only the most privileged and does little to help average people.

    A pair of bills sponsored by Massachusetts state Senator Jason Lewis and House Speaker Pro Tempore Particia Haddad, to ensure “gender parity on boards and commissions, provide a case in point.

    Haddad and Lewis are concerned that more than half the state-government boards are less than 40 percent female. In order to ensure that elite women have more such opportunities, they have proposed imposing government quotas. If the bills become law, state boards and commissions will be required to set aside 50 percent of board seats for women by 2022.

    The bills are similar to a measure recently adopted in California, which last year became the first state to require gender quotas for private companies. In signing the measure, California Governor Jerry Brown admitted that the law, which expressly classifies people on the basis of sex, is probably unconstitutional.

    The US Supreme Court frowns on sex-based classifications unless they are designed to address an “important” policy interest. Because the California law applies to all boards, even where there is no history of prior discrimination, courts are likely to rule that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of “equal protection”.

    But are such government mandates even necessary? Female participation on corporate boards may not currently mirror the percentage of women in the general population, but so what?

    The number of women on corporate boards has been steadily increasing without government interference. According to a study by Catalyst, between 2010 and 2015 the share of women on the boards of global corporations increased by 54 percent.

    Requiring companies to make gender the primary qualification for board membership will inevitably lead to less experienced private sector boards. That is exactly what happened when Norway adopted a nationwide corporate gender quota.

    Writing in The New Republic, Alice Lee notes that increasing the number of opportunities for board membership without increasing the pool of qualified women to serve on such boards has led to a “golden skirt” phenomenon, where the same elite women scoop up multiple seats on a variety of boards.

    Next time somebody pushes corporate quotas as a way to promote gender equity, remember that such policies are largely self-serving measures that make their sponsors feel good but do little to help average women.

答案精析：本题为细节题。根据题干中的the bills sponsored by Lewis and Haddad可定位至原文第二段第一句。该句指出，刘易斯和哈达德所倡议的法案是为了保证董事会和委员会中的“性别平等”，而题目问的是作者对这项法案的看法。在文章第一段，作者明确提出了一个观点，即多样性授权只对最有特权的人有利，对普通人则没有什么帮助。接着在第二段中就给出了法案的例子，并在段末明确指出，这项法案provide a case in point，也就是说举法案之例说明了作者第一段提出的观点（授权政策对于其初衷的实现几乎没有帮助），而法案本身对其想要保证“性别平等”的初衷也无甚帮助，因此A项正确。

错项排除：文章第三段中提到state-government，但原文说的是刘易斯和哈达德担心州政府委员会中女性比例不足40%，法案如果通过，州委员会将要为女性预留50%的席位，并未说明这会对州政府产生影响或威胁，B项属于过度推断，故排除。文章说法案的目的是保证董事会和委员会中的“性别平等”，并没有说它将提升女性的政治地位，故C项排除。D项的career options过于宽泛，不能替代文中的board seats，故D项排除。