Have Norway's Boardroom gender quotas skirted around the issue?

In 2008, Norway took a stance against female under-representation on listed Boards, obliging companies to have at least 40% of their Director seats filled by women. However, ten years on the quota can only claim to have been a partial success.

Some Norwegian firms reacted to the Government’s plans by either delisting their Board or shrinking to increase representation. Furthermore, reporting in The Economist found that business attitudes towards promoting women to Boards, whether enforced by Government quotas (that come with sanctions) soft-law quotas or guidelines, were met with some protest.

A further report found that only seven per cent of the largest firms now have female bosses, after the quota was introduced.

A difficulty cited in the report for those tasked with hiring more women was that the pool of qualified females was too small, leading to the same few women being spread across Boards. This phenomenon was dubbed ‘golden skirts’, in which only a few women benefitted from the quota.