In her thought-provoking remarks: "Baby on Board" at the recently concluded annual Society for Corporate Governance conference, SEC Commissioner Peirce expressed her concerns about mandatory board gender (and other minority) diversity quotas, including the creation of quota-compliant boards that may not reflect the most qualified directors under the company's particular facts and circumstances; the tendency to attribute particular viewpoints, skills, and attributes to a particular gender without regard for individual qualifications (i.e., gender stereotyping); and the adverse impacts associated with quota-triggered nominees potentially not being perceived by fellow directors as the best qualified candidates for the job.
She also discussed the challenges associated with eliciting "voluntarily" self-identified diversity characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation - including the pressures imposed on directors to self-disclose personal attributes they otherwise deem private to enable their companies to get diversity "credit," and the potential chilling effect on individuals considering public company directorships due to the expectation that they will be required or expected to relinquish their privacy via self-disclosure in ways that may be uncomfortable, undesirable or damaging as respects their non-directorship roles.
To be clear, Peirce expressed unconditional support for other types of board diversity initiatives, for example, those that encompass expanded pools of candidates to include non-traditional sources such that qualified women and minorities are well and fairly represented - i.e., organically effected change in lieu of regulatory and legislatively imposed quotas.
See these posts from Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation and Mayer Brown; these recent reports: "House Holds Board Diversity Hearing," "House Calls on Banks to Produce Diversity & Inclusion Data and Policies" and "Illinois to Require Extensive Board & Management Diversity Reporting," "Director Self-Identified Diversity Disclosure" and "New Reg. S-K C&DIs: Director Qualifications and Diversity Disclosures"; and additional information & resources on our Board Diversity page.