What if the government stepped in and said, “ok, all you corporations out there. If you don’t add women to your board rooms pronto we will shut you down?”
Sounds extreme?
Well, that’s just what happened in Norway.
Two years ago, the government told company big wigs, mostly men, they had to install women on their boards or else. This from the Guardian:
The 500 companies listed on Norway’s stock exchange face being shut down unless they install women on their boards over the next two years in a radical initiative imposed by a government determined to help women break through the “glass ceiling”.
Norwegian companies face a two-year deadline to ensure that women hold 40% of the seats of each company listed on the Oslo bourse. New companies have to comply now with the rules and the government is considering extending the law to family-owned companies as well.
The requirement came into effect at the start of this year after companies were given two years to embrace the demands voluntarily following the passing of the law in 2003. State-owned companies are already obliged to comply and now have 45% female representation on their boards.
It seems the government’s mandated board quotas have translated into strides for women, albeit forced strides. The companies that have not complied have until Monday to pretty up their boards. Again from the Guadian:
Almost a quarter of Norway’s companies have failed to comply with a controversial law requiring them to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 40%, according to government figures. If they do not promote more women, they could be shut down.
Norway’s 487 public limited companies, including 175 firms listed on the Oslo stock exchange, have until the end of the year on Monday to implement a 2003 act that requires firms to boost the number of female directors.
The law, which introduced quotas, has been effective in raising the number of women board members at listed companies from 6% in 2001 to 37%.
Norway now boasts the highest proportion of women on boards in the world. Sweden comes second with 19%; the US has around 15%. In the UK, only 11% of directors were female in 2007.
The U.S. still has a long way to go. Maybe corporations here need some sort of swift kick in their collective asses. What do you all think? Can it happen without the big hand of Big Brother, or Big Sister?
December 27th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I hope it never comes to that here. What would be next? Mandatory quotas based on ethnicity? My wife served on the Site Council (a parent-teacher advisory council–not the same as a PTA) of a school in our area. They had such a mandate to include a certain number of women, as well as representatives of major ethic groups in the school–African Americans, Latinos, and Hmong–from the parent population. Almost two years later, those mandates were considered a joke. Although they were on the books, it all came back to reality. You see, no matter how hard they tried to recruit from each of the ethnic groups, they could not get representation from two of them at all. One of those ethnic groups, during this same period, asked to start its own parental advisory group. No one in the school district seemed ready to ask why they would not participate in the structures that were already in place.
I hope more women earn their way into boardrooms across the U.S.A., and I hope they will continue to challenge “good old boy” systems wherever they encounter them, but I hope they will not support any form of forced quotas for corporate board composition–whether based on gender, ethnicity, or any other such categorization.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:13 am
They should have women in the boardrooms; someone has to get the coffee! Okay, bad joke - but it is a bad law too.
I am a man and I am not qualified or interested in being on the board (bored) of any of these companies. The fact is, qualification for such roles is rare - and for the sake of the employees at those companies (men & women) and their families, they should be pushing their boards to include only the most qualified to make the best decisions to keep the company solvent and growing.
Incentives? Maybe that is an option. Meaning, rather than mandate a gender quota, provide incentives to companies that make progress in diversity - hard to police, sure! Subject to abuse and problems, sure. But so is the quota mandate.
December 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am
I understand what you’re both saying, but sometimes things need to be pushed.
Take Gov. George Wallace. Remember, he pledged to block the schoolhouse door of an Alabama school to stop the school from being integrated in 1963. In that case Pres. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to force the hand of people who did not want change.
Today no one thinks it was strange to mandate that schools include both black and white students.
Just thinking out loud here.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:31 am
There are already quotas about hiring minorities. In Calif at least, if you hire the quota of minorities, that including disabled, women, ethnicticty…… you get a tax break. it gives incitive to the major companies to be more diverse in thier hiring process.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:51 am
I understand the desire to “push” the issue, but I fear that such actions will simply create an undercurrent of discontent and resentment.