Norwegian women break into the boardroom
From this year on Norwegian law requires publicly listed corporations to have at least 40 percent women on their boards of directors. The legislation was actually introduced in 2003, but gave companies five years to bring more women onto their boards with a January 1, 2008 deadline. According to the law, companies that failed to comply by the deadline would be forced to shut down their business. However not one of the companies actually had to close for non-compliance because the situation improved a lot since 2003. Currently almost 38% of board members are female, compared to 15.5% when the legislation was initially introduced. “This reform is a success. The most alarmist people told us the economy would suffer, that investors would flee Oslo, that the level of competence on the boards would plunge,” stated Marit Hoel, the chief of Norway’s Centre for Corporate Diversity (CCD) in the AFP. “What we’ve seen is that the economy is doing very well, that the investors are still there, and that the women who have been appointed to the boards are more highly educated, more international and younger than their male counterparts, which creates a new dynamic.” Norway has also passed positive quotas to increase the number of women serving in the Parliament. As a result a Norway today rank 6th among the world’s Parliaments with 37.9% women members. The United States Congress is far behind, on 65 with 16% female members.
