请阅读 Passage 1, 完成第 21~25小题o
Passage 1
Europe is not a gender-equality heaven. In particular, the corporate workplace willnever be completely family-friendly until women are part of senior managementdecisions, and Europe ' s top corporate-governance positions remain overwhelminglymale. Indeed, women hold only 14 percentof positions on European corporate boards.
The Europe Union is now consideringlegislation to compel corporate boards to maintain a certain proportion ofwomen-up to 60 percent. This proposedmandate was born of frustration. Last year,Europe Commission Vice President Viviane Reding issued a call to voluntaryaction. Reding invited corporations tosign up for gender balance goal of 40 percent female board membership. But her appeal was considered a failure: only24 companies took it up.
Do we need quotas to ensure that women cancontinue to climb the corporate ladder fairly as they balance work and family?
"Personally, I don't likequotas," Reding said recently. "But I like what the quotas do. "Quotas get action: they "open the way to equality and they break throughthe glass ceiling," according to Reding, a result seen in France and othercountries with legally binding provisions on placing women in top businesspositions.
I understand Reding's reluctance-and herfrustration. I don't like quotas either;they run counter to my belief in meritocracy, governance by the capable. But, when one considers the obstacles toachieving the meritocratic ideal, it does look as if a fairer world must betemporarily ordered.
After all, four decades of evidence has nowshown that corporations in Europe as well as the US are evading themeritocratic hiring and promotion of women to top positions-no matter how much "soft pressure" is put upon them. When women do break through to the summit ofcorporate power-as, for example, Sheryl Sandberg recently did at Facebook-theyattract massive attention precisely because they remain the exception to therule.
Ifappropriate pubic policies were in place to help all women-whether CEOs ortheir children's caregivers-and all families, Sandberg would be no morenewsworthy than any other highly capable person living in a more just society.
In the European corporate workplace, generally
