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Norway’s adoption of a nationwide corporate gender quota可定位至第八段最后一句。第八段开始指出，要求公司把性别作为董事会任职资格的主要考虑因素，将不可避免地导致一些经验不足的私营部门董事会出现，接着定位句说到，挪威在全国范围内采取了企业性别配额措施后，这种情况就发生了。由此可以得出，这一情况导致董事会中出现了一些不合格的成员，C项中的unqualified对应原文中的less experienced，因此选C。

错项排除：原文第九段最后一句中出现elite women，说的是“金裙子”（golden skirt）现象，即同一位精英女性会占据不同董事会的多个席位，A项表述与此相反，故排除。文章虽然一直在讨论女性进入董事会的性别配额制，但是并没有涉及反对女性进入董事会的相关内容，故B项排除。D项内容没有原文依据，故排除。