Norway was
the first country to introduce a quota for women on company boards and this
initiative is now held as a case study for gender diversity at boardroom level
for the European Union. Ms Viviane Reding, the Vice-President of the European
Commission plans to propose similar measures to achieve gender balance in the
corporate boardrooms.
The
Norwegian government made it mandatory that public corporations must have an
average of at least 40% women as board members. Since its introduction in 2003, female
representation has gradually increased from 6% in 2002 to more than 40% in
2009. The success is mainly due to the broad political support, fairly though
sanctions, intense political and public debate, the database for
women to publicise their skills and training programmes to improve gender equality for companies.
So far,
the European Commission challenged publicly listed companies across Europe to
promote women's leadership by voluntarily signing the 'Women on the Board
Pledge for Europe' (http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/reding/pdf/p_en.pdf). The project will be finalised in March
2012 on International Women’s Day.
Details of
quota legislation can be found in a report by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) titled Women on Board: the
Norwegian Experience.