When it comes to increasing the number of women in the boardroom, should the U.S. do what Norway is doing? Back in 2002, 70% of that country's leading companies didn't have a single woman in the boardroom. So a year later, the Norwegian legislature voted to ensure that by the end of 2008, every publicly traded and public limited company would have a board that was at least 40% female.
Now that Norway has mandated -- and achieved -- greater gender equity in the boardroom, has it made a difference? That's what Eric Westervelt looked into in today's Morning Edition on National Public Radio. He finds that the law has resulted in a situation that may actually hinder the nation's top professional women:
While few in Norway want to go back to the status quo, many are questioning whether the state can really mandate corporate diversity.
Economist Knut Anton Mork says that....too many talented female business leaders are now spending most of their time in board meetings — with some women sitting on up to a dozen different boards. The law has spawned a growing class of what might be considered professional board sitters, which some in Norway have nicknamed "the Golden Skirts."
"They could have been filling very good and important managerial positions. Instead, they are sitting on boards," Mork says.
In 2007, the Boston Globe reported that in the U.S., only 14.6% of board seats were held by women. An op-ed by former New York Times senior editor Judith H. Dobrzynski suggests that women may be fleeing corporate America because they have been consistently shut out of the top positions:
...[T]he men who run these companies are ignoring a huge talent pool, acting as if it were 1963. No customer or shareholder would let them get away with antiquated attitudes in other areas -- imagine how quickly their competence would be questioned if they devised a marketing campaign for a black-and-white television world. It should be no different for personnel matters....
The men who run these companies should be blushing. After all...male chief executives admitted that a key reason women have not entered C-suites and boardrooms at a faster rate is that they -- themselves -- had failed to take personal responsibility for seeing that women rise.
So, where does that leave women? Between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
If legislating gender equity at the corporate level is of questionable effectiveness, and trusting that talent will rise to the top is a flawed proposition when those already there aren't too keen on giving their qualified female colleagues a shot, how are we going to put more women in the boardroom and change 'business as usual'?
Related article: Qualities of Women Leaders
Comments
Why was Norway able to pass such a law? Because earlier it had required parity in the government. At least half of the lawmakers voting on it were women.
I remember seeing an interview with then-Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. An American male journalist asked, “So, do Norwegian women want to take over the world?” She laughed and said, “Oh, no! We only want to hold up our half of it.”
This is a complicated issue that, as this article points out, goes far beyond the Board Room and pure sexism (men feeling that women are not competent). Women do not rise to the top — be it management or Board positions — because many men see them as being “hindered” by family responsibilities. And many women opt out of the workforce because they ARE “hindered” by family responsibilities (although women do not see it as a hindrance). We must get rid of our outdated notions both in management and at home. If women are to success in business, men must take on their share of the family responsibilities (i.e., hold up their end of the world at home). And businesses must accommodate those family responsibilities for both men and women. Business today IS stuck in 1963, operating as if it’s powered only by men who are free to focus only on business. But with 70% of moms in the workforce nowadays, the face of our businesses and the needs of its workforce are drastically different today.
I am a male from India. We have had a female President, female Prime Ministers and now a female is heading the largest bank of India. However, you know what, not even one single male feels threatened by these women because these women havent reached their through some reservation or something like Norway did or what you are proposing. They have reached there by competing like everyone else. They would have played dirty politics, bribed people done whatever but these women never used their gender as their weapon to rise like you are proposing.
Needless to say, when in the end these women won, all those who lost did feel jealous but no one felt threatened or even for once thought that she has won because of being a women.
Women reservation and stuff like that are going on now in India also but that is only creating tension between the genders and nothing more.
PS: My immediate boss is a female(whose boss is a male) and I always have a feeling that she is in that position not because of her gender but because she has that capability in her. In my company, all the board members are males and that again is because no women has it in her to reach that level…its nothing about sexism or watever…and even if it is….fight it out, dont beg….no one is going to give anything to u if you only beg for it…and if u get it…it will only be more harmful for the society at large just like reservations have always been.