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：本题为推断题。由于没有明确的定位词，无法定位到具体某段，因此需要整体把握文章大意。文章第一段提出观点，虽然多样性授权受到进步人士的支持，但它通常很难实现他们所主张的平等，对普通人的帮助也不大。接着以性别配额制为例，从不同方面说明这种政府授权是没有必要的，甚至会造成一些不好的影响，最后重申第一段提出的观点。通篇看来，文章里诸多举例论证都是为了说明一个观点：有些政策华而不实，根本无法实现其目的，换句话说，政策的制定应该考虑其本身的可行性，因此选B。

错项排除：文章用很大篇幅讨论性别配额制中的女性等相关内容，但并没有涉及具体的女性工作需求，故A项排除。文章第一段提到平等和公平竞争，但并没有提及“每个人”应该怎么做，故C项排除。D项本身没错，但文中主要讨论的是某些政策的出发点是好的，但却无法真正实现，D项偏离了这一主题，故排除。