Norway Sets 40% Female Quota for Boardrooms

Blazing a trail for women’s rights, egalitarian Norway is about to become the first country in the world to insist on female quotas for company boardrooms.

In a decree that has angered employer organisations and meritocratic-minded businesswomen, the government has ordered firms to ensure that at least 40% of their board members are women.

State-owned firms have just 12 months to comply; the country’s 650 public companies have three years. If they fail to meet the deadlines the government has said it will introduce legislation to enforce the quotas.

Although Norway prides itself on being one of the world’s most egalitarian societies, women make up a mere 7% of the boardroom elite (the European average is about 2%) and calls from successive governments to improve the situation have come to nothing.

“The minister has given firms an ultimatum,” Martin Bernsen, a spokesman for Laila Davoy, the minister for children and family affairs, said yesterday. “If they don’t succeed [in hitting the quota] the law will be changed.

“Here in Norway we have what we call an old boys’ network. The typical board member is male, over 55 years of age and has a background in law and economics. They collect people from their own network and that has to change. The minister is very angry about the current situation.”

Many companies claim that they will not be able to find enough suitably qualified women to fill 40% of boardroom posts but Mr Bernsen says government research has shown otherwise. “We have proven that there are lots of educated, highly qualified women out there with the right experience. But firms have to go and look for them.”

The number of women in higher education has over taken men, he added, with 60% of university places now occupied by females.

The figure of 40% was not plucked out of thin air. Informal gender quotas have existed in Norway since 1981 when Gro Harlem Brundtland, the country’s first female prime minister, took power, and around 40% of government posts have been held by women ever since.

Trade unions, who have lobbied for female quotas for the past 20 years, said they were delighted with the new decree.

Mie Opdordsmoen of LO, Norway’s biggest union, said: “Companies need to be forced to hire more women or else they won’t do it and if things were left as they are today it would be a hundred years before we have women making up 40% of company boards.

“Men recruit men. We all recruit people who are like ourselves, and men are in power.”

Ms Opdordsmoen conceded that Norway’s track record on gender equality was impressive but insisted more needed to be done. “We live in a fantasy land where we are practically the world champion of equal rights but that’s dangerous,” she warned. “Young women go into the workplace and realise that it’s not true. They’ve been told they have equal rights but they don’t.”

However, the edict has infuriated the country’s employers’ federation, which says it may make Norway uncompetitive. It also fears that foreign firms may be discouraged from setting up operations in Norway.

Sigrun Vageng, of the federation’s equality department, agreed too few women were reaching boardroom level but said firms would remedy the situation if left to their own devices, adding: “We don’t think the solution is having a new law. It should be up to shareholders to decide whether or not women are appointed to boardroom positions.”

Tags: Boardrooms, Female, Norway, Quota, Sets